New UK Panel Sourced from Offline Communities

In the UK, a new research panel recruited via real-world communities has launched. ComVerus is majority-owned by investor Touchstone Partners, which is part of recently-founded SHARCC Group.

ComVerus says its founding principle is to give brands and agencies 'confidence that there's a real, verified person behind every response.' The firm says the rise of bots, duplicate identities and AI-generated answers has made it 'harder to know who is participating in primary research.' The new company is not, however, 'positioning itself against AI' - rather, it believes in a 'clear division of labour' where verified humans supply the lived experience and AI delivers rapid analysis of data.

The firm's founders are community builder Kayleigh Laverick (Mamma Social Co.), research agency leaders Jon Darby and Jamie Rayner (Touchstone Partners / Shoppercentric) and social intelligence specialist Catriona Oldershaw (The Insights Distillery). Its qual and quant research participants are recruited through established real-world communities, and its approach reflects three core principles: verify the human, fairly reward their participation, return value to their community.

The communities the new firm works with are established groups based offline, the first being Mamma Social Co, a nationwide network of thousands of parents. The firm says it plans to expand into communities built around sport, work, caring and other shared experiences across the UK. Every member is photo ID verified before they join the panel.

'Being able to say 'this came from a verified person with real lived experience' has a completely different value,' says Laverick. Darby comments: 'After a career in research data, I've learned that better participants lead to better insight and better business decisions. For many years we have battled against poor quality data with unacceptable levels of fraud detection, ComVerus gives researchers something they've been missing: certainty about who they're listening to.'

SHARCC Group was established in July this year, and includes Potentia Insight, its subsidiaries DataTree and SigDiff, and its Sports division; along with independent agencies Pegasus insight, data collection specialist InsightX and mystery shopping specialist Silent Customer. The individual agencies retain their full operational independence.

Web site: www.comverus.com .

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