Verve Partners Limited – 3rd December 2008 New Agency – “VERVE” – to offer “Better Research for Less Money” Andrew Cooper, Mike Hall and Jon Gumbrell announced as co-founders of Verve, an agency established to become the “Best Place to Work in Market Research”. Further senior co-founders to be revealed in coming months. London, December 3rd 2008. “VERVE” (or “Verve Partners Limited”) today announces its intention to become one of the “best places to work in market research”, along with a proposition which offers clients “Better Research For Less Money”. The three co-founders of the business announced so far are: Andrew Cooper – Partner and CEO. Co-founder of Research Now plc which in under six years became a global player in online sample provision with 15 offices, 36 country panels, over 400 employees and sales of over £42million. Mike Hall – Partner, Development. Founder of Hall & Partners. A seminal name in advertising research. From 1992 to 2005 he built Hall & Partners to become highly respected Market Research business in the UK and USA before selling to Omnicom. Jon Gumbrell – Partner, Technology Progression. Founder of the iD Factor the IT decision maker specialist panel business. Gumbrell is a proven technology entrepreneur in the market research industry. Further significant senior level co-founders will be announced over the coming months as they come out of their contractual commitments.
Describing Verve’s approach Cooper states: “We have an ambition to build a fantastic business in the world of market research. One which will firstly seek to build a better generalist market research consultancy business. Secondly one which will partner with leading providers of research technology and research propositions, primarily from the US, and bring these to clients in Europe. And thirdly one which will develop its own complementary technology and research propositions – and distribute these globally.” Cooper continues: “We are building a client needs driven business that is very tech/online savvy. We will use technology and the online environment to create greater insight or greater efficiency and in turn provide clients with distinctly better value. “Better Research for Less Money” is our mantra! The current economic climate makes it a mightily exciting time to be building a business based upon such principles.”
With respect to the people model Mike Hall comments:
Verve Partners Limited – 3rd December 2008 “One of the biggest issues in market research is the difficulty agencies have in recruiting and retaining the best quality staff – and core to this issue is that senior level staff often don’t share equitably in the returns from the business. We are addressing this directly by forming a partnership model, which has worked very successfully for the likes of PwC and Accenture, which will enable all high performers to become “Partners” and share in the successful growth of the business.” Continuing Mike Hall enthuses about creating the Verve culture: “Creating an agency is about great people alongside great products. It’s going to be exciting inspiring a team of younger talent to achieve better ideas, better standards and better work. Even just being in funky Shoreditch offices helps create a palpable buzz that fires everybody up. It’s the energy and imagination that make a difference, both for the people who work here and the clients we work for.” Turning to the “tech savvy” approach Gumbrell comments: “Technology development in market research has been limited either by the lack of vision or technical ability of market research agencies. At Verve we will create our own technology, yet at the same time we don’t believe in recreating the wheel. Therefore we are actively partnering with class leading technology providers. Fantastic products from various sectors will be brought together in a comprehensive offering to give our clients an array of tools to help them better understand their customer’s needs. And of course always with the objective of offering our clients “Better Research for Less money”. The Verve temporary website can be found at www.haveverve.com
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Enquiries: Andrew Cooper, Partner and CEO andrew@haveverve.com T: +44 (0)845 680 2041 M:+44 (0)7718 588399 Mike Hall, Partner, Development mike@haveverve.com T: +44 (0)845 680 2041 M:+44 (0)7785 244847