I was lucky enough to be asked to chair this year's session at Cranfield School of Management.
Talking to around 50 MSc and MBA students gathered from around the globe, we were able to present what a great career in our industry can be like, including giving some real examples of the type of work we undertake, what its like to work on both client and agency side and of course the best sort of relationships that can exist between the two.
Rob Ellis from Cog Research started us off with a fascinating case study about work he and his team had undertaken about the best sorts and locations of advertising space on London Underground. As well as demonstrating a real project, Rob was able to show the role that new technology is playing in helping to identify real behaviour rather than just relying on respondents memory and recollection.
Danielle Wakeman from easyJet and Paul Child from Join the Dots ten share their top 10 tips for working in a Lean and efficient way between clients and agencies. It was refreshing to hear how these approaches deliver insights at a pace which allows the organisation to make the right decisions quickly, responding to what their customers are telling them.
We then ran a panel session with our presenters and two other guests - Researching a Career's very own Liz Norman as well Sadhana Halder from The Planning Shop international who 2 years ago has been sat in the audience at the very same ESOMAR event at Cranfield - a fantastic example of what is possible.
We covered a number of issues in the panel session including:-
- What excites you about working in this industry?
- What skills and experiences do you gain by working in our industry compared to other traditional career paths?
- What is it like to be a new entrant in your organisation?
The panel gave great examples which got the audience thinking and allowed some great conversation and questioning of the speakers to continue in the bar afterwards.
So thank you to Paul Baines for hosting the session at Cranfield School of Management, thanks also to the presenters who gave up their time to be there and of course ESOMAR for setting the event up.
Its great to see some of the recommendations we made a couple of years ago now in action!
