Consortium to Steer Toluna's 'New Category'

Holding company ITWP, which owns Toluna and Harris Interactive Europe, has launched the 'Insights on Demand Consortium', comprising individuals and companies from a range of industries including tech, CPG and supply-side MR.

Founder members are 'committed to promoting' the adoption of the 'new category' announced in November by Toluna. They include consumer giants / brands Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal, Nestlé, Nature's Way; ad and MR agencies such as W2O, AKQA, Simmons Research, Toluna, Harris Interactive; and 'other thought leading organizations that are focused on reshaping market research'.

Insights on Demand aims to recognise and address the need of businesses of all sizes for 'fully integrated approaches to understand constantly shifting consumer sentiment and taste'. The group will provide best-practice approaches and general market education with content distributed via webinars, thought leadership and conferences. It will initially focus on topics including the scalability of expertise, the need for ongoing real-time consumer insight, and fragmentation of research tools and technologies; and says it will 'share key findings with the business community at large'.

Consortium discussions will be held every two months and a Playbook based on each which will be distributed to members, while content will also be used for virtual, web-based events co-sponsored by Adweek and Marketing Week Live. Toluna is drafting a book, 'Insights on Demand', for launch this quarter, intended to 'introduce' the category to the world.

According to founder member and ITWP CEO Frédéric Charles Petit, 'The concept of insights on demand transcends market research and is something much bigger that makes real-time consumer insights accessible to a much broader scope of individuals outside of traditional researchers. AirBnB didn't change the hotel industry, but it did change the way people travel and stay overnight. In the same way, we seek to change the way businesses access consumer insights within today's on-demand economy'.

Holly Rozelle, Director, Marketing Capabilities for Nature's Way Brands, comments: 'In the last year we've been able to create and push Nature's Way to become an insights driven organization. However, we're also cognizant that in order to stay competitive, there's great collective value in meeting with industry leaders to bounce ideas and discuss opportunities. I'm excited that the Insights on Demand Consortium will be able to deliver on that'.

More details and a full list of members are on the web at www.insightsondemand.org/consortium-members .