BritainThinks is MRS 'Agency of The Year'
December 8 2020
London-based qual-led insight and strategy specialist BritainThinks has been named 2020 Agency of the Year in this year's MRS Awards ceremony, conducted online last night.
Launched in 2010 by Deborah Mattinson, Viki Cooke and Ben Shimshon (pictured), employee-owned BritainThinks offers strategic advice for political, corporate and not-for-profit clients. The company now has a team of 48 and an annual turnover of £5.7m. Also at the virtual ceremony:
- Former Royal Statistical Society (RSS) President, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, OBE, received the MRS President's Medal, after a lifetime spent devoted to informing public discourse with data-driven insight.
- Tesco and C Space scooped the UK Business Impact of the Year Award for their entry that demonstrated the value of 'quality evidence' in times of economic and societal flux.
- The Global Business Impact of the Year category was won by NATO and Yonder, with findings having allowed NATO to transform from a policy-led communications approach to an evidence-based strategy.
- The winner of the Liz Nelson Award for Social Impact, launched last year, was chosen personally by TNS co-founder Liz Nelson, and the gong went to Humankind Research and STOP THE TRAFFIK, for their exploration of forms of exploitation involved in migration from Lithuania to the UK.
- Walnut Unlimited Research Manager Bessie Pike and qual researcher Tarek Chaudhury were the joint recipients of the Young Researcher of the Year Award - Pike for introducing a new approach that was adopted across her organisation, and Chaudhury for his 'unconventional, but entirely logical', route into research; initially as a Broadcast Assistant at the BBC before stints at insight consultancy Flamingo, and then machine learning specialist Discover.ai, where he currently works as a Strategist.
- This year's Best Place to Work winner was full-service agency Northstar Research, for its entry demonstrating the business' investment in people and support for their progression.
- The Innovation of the Year category was awarded to Jigsaw Research, for its WhatsApp-supported and authenticated WhatsApp research project.
Jane Frost, CEO of MRS, comments: 'The quality and breadth of these entries reflects how resilient and dynamic our sector continues to be and reaffirms my view that we are well equipped to build on our progress this year and tackle whatever comes in 2021. Congratulations to this year's winners and I look forward to seeing everyone next December, when hopefully we can celebrate another successful year in research in-person'.
A full list of winners and finalists can be found at:
www.mrs.org.uk/awards/mrs-awards .
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
