UK Industry Celebrates

It's party time for UK researchers, many of whom went straight from the Insight Show in London's Earl's Court to the MRS Awards Dinner at the Café Royal last night. The Show looked better, if still fairly quiet; the Awards were a shade off last year's success, but still pretty good. Does our opinion count? Well here it is anyway.

The Insight Show - in its second year since changing its name from 'The Research Show', has now moved from Olympia to Earl's Court. Numbers attending last year were disappointing and well down on previous years, but from first sight yesterday things looked busier. The new venue has more space, which left the impression of emptiness at certain times and in certain places, but on the whole exhibitors were positive and said the quality was high - furthermore, the extra room to move was not a bad thing and the whole exhibition looks better for it, while a bustle of activity was certainly evident around the more social areas. In the café, where we bought plates of pasta and tomato sauce and were greeted with blank looks when we asked for some cutlery to eat it with, the atmosphere was nevertheless rich with the sound of 'networking', old acquaintances being renewed, and dare we say it deals being struck - and spare tables were not to be had.

The Show looks smarter, and provided the final figure for visitors looks healthy enough will probably be deemed a success - it certainly has some devoted regular exhibitors and we enjoyed walking round, alternately bumping into friends / MrWeb regulars, and putting faces for the first time to email addresses.

The Awards Dinner was once again packed - the spare seat next to me due to illness (I am assured) was one of the few and was actually handy because a timely drop-in visit from the 'circulating' Editor of 'research. magazine' resulted in an extra meal being left which your correspondent devoured happily - the only problem with Guinea Fowl being its disappointing size, more 'Equatorial' than 'Papua New'.

The atmosphere among the 400 assembled was convivial although the room - despite being in such a famous venue, seemed a notch down from last year's higher-ceilinged, somehow grander hall. Our lively and refreshingly audible compere, BBC News presenter Emma Howard, kept up a good pace and a cheerful tone and only wobbled with occasional references to non-existent persons, the highlight being the repeated summoning to the stage of 'JFK' - sadly, the great man could not be with us to receive the Award or tell us 'Ish bin ein Researcher', although two nice enough fellows from GfK Media accepted it on his behalf.

As last year, videos of nominees talking about their companies and policies were provided: I personally think this is a good attempt to liven things up and make the link with Oscars, Advertising awards and other glitzier nights celebrating more traditionally glamorous professions, but I have to concur with what seemed the general view afterwards that the vids could be better. They are technically excellent with seamless segues and animated graphics, but the music is sadly reminiscent of those cinema ads of the 70s, Millwood Brown is not spelt that way and if the offices of our most successful and cutting edge agencies really are full of old filing cabinets, faded panelling and stacks of paper (which indeed they may be), surely we could pretend a bit and film their bosses somewhere else, like in the car park leaning on a visiting Merc or in the foyer of a posh client building?

Many of the nominees and winners were companies who featured last year - see details in the other article in today's DRNO - but I don't think this reflects a lack of new companies (there were indeed a good few of these) or the need for a breath of fresh air. Rather, it indicates that innovative newer agencies like Flamingo and Nunwood, and larger companies like TNS and BMRB are building on previous high standards and establishing a regular claim.

In all a very enjoyable day which made one feel good about the state of the UK MR industry and the people working in it - we'll be attending both next year if we're still allowed. And we did sit nearer the stage this year so either that was a coincidence or someone in high places read last year's Awards dinner article. If the latter, an excellent example of responding to customer feedback - more of the same please!

Nick Thomas

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.