ESOMAR Congress 2023 - Supercharging through Day One

Livestreaming, podcasting, networking, exhibiting, presenting - oh my! There was a lot of action today in Amsterdam at the ESOMAR Congress 2023. We kicked off the day with a dance troupe providing an interpretive performance that spoke to the tension between technology and social connection  -  a theme that market researchers have definitely felt intensified in recent years. Our ESOMAR representatives from the Netherlands got us up and moving with a short history of Dutch music.

We also heard from the youngest generation of researchers, who did a fantastic job of pitching their innovative ideas in only 60 seconds each. We’re excited to see who wins the competition (announcing tomorrow afternoon), as delegates were able to vote for their favourite pitch in the conference app. This year’s competitors were: 

• Emma Woodhead, Senior Insights Executive, Opinions, Ireland

• Caryl Anne Marcelo, Associate Research Manager, Prestige Market Research Services Asia Inc, The Philippines

• Jamila Erika De Leon, Research Manager, FastForward MR, The Philippines

• Valere Demelier, Insights Analyst, Nepa, UK

• Catherine Wertz, Senior Manager, SKIM, The Netherlands

• Danny Bowles, Market & Insights Specialist, Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, The Netherlands

• Harita Rawat, Research Executive, Ipsos, India

• Jack Tadman, Associate Director, Opinium Research, UK

• Milica Kovac, New Business Development Manager, EyeSee, Serbia

Our first keynote of the conference was out of this world, as we welcomed Thorsten Fehr of the European Space Agency (ESA) to the stage with his talk “Taking the pulse of our planet from space.” He asked the audience to consider a question: “What is supercharging me?” We concluded the morning’s programme with “short stories” from all of our sponsors, including Virtual Incentives, Dynata, Premise, Quest Mindshare and SurveyMonkey, plus a message from the ESOMAR Foundation, our charitable arm.

There were too many presentations to cover in detail - running from three stages in total - but we did hear from some notable speakers from companies like Meta, Philips, Mondelez, PepsiCo, Heineken and many expert researchers talking about everything from innovative techniques for uncovering insights all the way to sustainability and from AI (of course) all the way to driving greater impact from data across organisations. 

One panel near the end of the day tackled some issues that many insights teams are grappling with across the board - salience and staying power. This super panel was composed of experts from De Beers, Haleon, Pearson and FlexMR (moderated by Keen as Mustard), talking about how to create insights-centric cultures across organisations that feed into informed decision-making. 

The last presentation on today’s programme was a keynote address from Professor Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor of Marketing and Associate Director, International, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Australia. She addressed ways in which companies can shake up the way they conduct brand measurement and improve their brand health tracking. 

We closed out our full-to-the-brim agenda with our Annual General Meeting for members and a special trip for the Heineken experience!