Ten years ago this week I started a job that was to change my life, heading up a new BBC audience research team in what was then called the ‘New Media’ division.

And it really was new: BBC Online was a mere two-and-a-half years old, it had 3 million monthly unique users (it now has nearly [...]

The Brandheld bandwagon continues to roll: The MRG has asked us to present the findings at their conference in Malta in November, which means that Simon gets to add another country to his list of ‘countries I’ve visited’ – of which there are currently 4.

This is all very exciting, but something of a pyrrhic victory as [...]

More bad science and telly-bashing combined in today’s Telegraph. So, “children who watch television are more likely to be bullied”. In my school the opposite was true. One kid didn’t have a TV. So we kicked him.

Of course, the report in question doesn’t actually conclude that “children who watch television are more likely to be [...]

Our efforts to recruit great researchers without spending all our money on recruitment consultants is starting to bear fruit (ho ho) with the arrival of Adele Kent-Lemon. Adele joins us as a qualitative Research Manager from HPI, just in time to take part in our 5th birthday celebrations.

It’s been an exciting past week here at Essential as we have made a couple of key appointments.

Nils Arnold has joined us as Director of Quantitative Research. As many of you will know, Nils is a heavyweight quant researcher and econometrician, having previously worked as Head of Marketing Sciences at Ipsos MORI, Associate Director at [...]

AdAge reports today on an interesting survey from the Consumer Electronics Association in the US, which offers some evidence that consumers no longer see new technology as a discretionary purchase – but as an intrinsic part of their everyday lives. And they are sacrificing clothes and food to pay for those smartphone upgrades. (Sort of.) [...]

We’ve had a deluge of Xmas eCards in our inboxes over the last few days. Which is lovely of course. My favourite has to be this effort from BBC Worldwide.

Seasons greetings.

Stuart

Essential is of course platform-neutral, independent and impartial when it comes to media. But as a Virgin Media customer, I am almost salivating with excitement about the announcement today of this potential tie-up between Virgin Media and TiVo.

Although the FT describes it as a ‘rebuff to Project Canvas’, I’d imagine this has got [...]

I’ve just been reading this Research Live contribution from Forrester analyst Tamara Barber, entitled “Market research catches up with Web 2.0”. Tamara confidently asserts that “it’s time for the industry to embrace online communities as a research tool.”

I’m constantly irritated by this assumption that the research industry has yet to wake up [...]