I sat through a session this morning here a 3MC with the interesting title, “Survey Agencies as Carriers of Multinational Research.” On the face of it this was pretty unusual in that five global MR firms were asked to essentially present their capabilities for doing global survey work. As it turns out, a very large portion of the global public policy and social research being done by various governments in Europe is being done by commercial firms for the simple reason that they have the infrastructure and the technology to do it well. This obviously is a substantial business for them. TNS, for example, says that 25 percent of their total business is in public policy.
The presentations were all over the map with TNS being by far the most convincing about their ability to do global work and do it well. Most striking was just how much global leverage they all have. Four of them told us how many offices they have worldwide. GfK claims the broadest reach with 115 companies around the world. Then comes TNS at 80, IPSOS at 58, and Gallup at 40. Nielsen didn’t give a number but their sheer size and the number of major companies in the Nielsen family is pretty overwhelming.
Equally interesting was the emphasis in the presentations by the three companies we most often compete against. TNS seem to emphasize their global infrastructure for execution. GfK emphasized their academic roots and their “best science” approach. IPSOS was all about their ability execute globally within five areas of specialization (e.g., advertising, opinion, CRM, etc.).
The Gallup and Nielsen presentations were not especially memorable, although anyone who can execute something like the Gallup World Poll in 152 different countries is pretty impressive.