MORI Launches Centre for Reputation Research

UK agency MORI has announced that it is bringing together the different strands of its reputation work to create a new body, The MORI Reputation Centre. The Centre is a joint initiative of its private and public sector divisions and will cover stakeholder audits, branding & identity, image tracking, corporate social responsibility, communications evaluation and employer brand.

MORI, which put itself on the market in June (see www.mrweb.com/drno/news2415.htm ), and announced earlier in the month that it is in exclusive negotiations with venture capital firm ISIS, is a leader in reputational research, working with such clients as the BBC, Procter & Gamble, Toyota and most government departments.

The Centre will be headed up by Stewart Lewis (Director of Corporate Communications Research) and Ben Page (Head of MORI's Social Research Institute). Media evaluation specialists Test Research and other parts of MORI are also involved.

'We have a unique reservoir of skills, experience and data in the MORI Group, and The Reputation Centre brings all this together' says Lewis. 'Our work in the private sector helps inform our public sector work and vice versa'.

According to Ben Page, Head of the Social Research Insititute, 'The scale of reforms in progress across the public sector, and the government's need to explain what it is doing, mean that more than ever, effective communications with customers, stakeholders and staff and partners, are essential. Over and over again, they get forgotten in the rush to deliver, or go half cocked'.

The Centre's first major event will be a conference on 14 October for clients and other specialists in the field, featuring talks by BP and BAT as well as MORI experts.

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

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