This was supposed to be an article about the wonderful global world we live in. I wanted to make an article about how market researchers all other the world can understand each other and cooperate, no matter how far apart we live. In particular, this should be an article about what it is like running a market research company and being an ESOMAR member on the Canary Islands.

I just needed to do one interview to get enough material for this article. I was going to spend five weeks in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria so that would be a piece of cake. I didn't exactly wait til the last minute either. Before leaving Sweden, I checked the ESOMAR directory and found one member on Gran Canaria and one on Tenerife. I sent an email to edei@edei.es, the address listed for EDEI Consultores SA in Las Palmas, the wonderful city I would work in for more than a month.

No reply.

As soon as I got down to paradise, I phoned +34-928-494100 and asked for Mr José Luis Tabare Santos. The person responding only spoke Spanish, which I don't, but I believe she said that Mr Santos was on vacation.


One of the things you do in Paradise while waiting for someone to return your call...

I waited a week or so and phoned again. Once again no English-speaker at hand and definitely no attempt to help me or to understand my request.

With just a week left of my time in Spain, I finally got through to José Luis (at least I think it was him) and he spoke english. Well, at least sort of. He had not seen any email and he had severe difficulties understanding why on earth anyone from Sweden would want to interview him. He gave me a new email address and told me to write again and someone would contact me if they were interested in giving an interview.

When this new address proved to be wrong, I attempted the old one again, but never heard from them this time either. With two days left to disfrutar (enjoy myself – I had picked up some Spanish by then as Edei Consultores were far from the only mono-lingual people on the island) I gave up.


Many flags - still only one language!

What if I had been a multi-national company interested in exploring the potential for investing in a new factory in Gran Canaria? Would I have waited to contact a Spanish research company until I had learned Spanish? Don't think so. Would it be worthwhile for companies like Edei to employ staff who speak some english, so they don't risk to loose deals like that? Obviously, and quite surprisingly, not!

I have recently encountered more examples of uninterest in learning English (I hope it is not inability). Spain is not the only country with this problem (?), but they are among the worst. People from Spain and some other (mostly European) countries apparently don't go to interesting conferences if the organisers don't provide simultaneous translation. Businesspeople in Spain, France and Portugal didn't participate in a web survey I sent out some years ago, just because the invitation was written in english (NB! The questionnaire was available in eight languages, including Spanish, French and Portuguese. Curiously enough, Chinese, Finns, Hungarians etc responded although there was no version of the questionnaire in their languages.)


The guys in Bazar Lunna sure knew how to make a good "Tortilla Canario" and consequently did plenty of business with me.

The true global world is an illusion. We who constantly move across borders, feel at home everywhere and who have more friends in other countries than in our home town, belong to a small and strange clan and have little in common with people in general. Learning English and other foreign languages as good as I possibly can, has been an important goal for me in life (and currently is for my children). It is not for a lot of people in many countries!

When a foreigner speaks to you in English – don't except him or her to be representative of his/her country. And if you want to do good business in southern Europe – be sure to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek...

Henrik Hall
SMRN.se

P.S. If you speak Spanish, feel fre to call Mr Tabare Santos and tell him he missed the interview of his life!

This article was published in the British B2B paper BIG Times immediately after my trip to Spain. It must be stressed that most people I met didn’t refrain from interacting with me just because they didn’t understand what I said. This goes in particular for the wonderful people running our favourite ice cream parlor on Las Canteras.

They didn't make it to SMRN:s top ten of the Innovate conference, but they got what is even better: the chance to win ESOMAR:s most prestigous price for excellence. This is no contradiction and no sign of bad judgement on either side: the ESOMAR jury reads the papers, we don't.

Peter Hartzbech, CEO of innovative and fast growing Danish research software company iMotions, found time in his tight schedule to sit on the program committee for the newly ended ESOMAR Innovate conference in Copenhagen. In this short web-TV interview with SMRN, he explains why he enjoyed being on the committee and why ESOMAR is an organisation we should all support.

Far from everything was perfect at the Innovate conference in Copenhagen. How could it have been? The subject is a very tricky one and the conference was only run for the third time. Seventeen presentations from ten countries couldn't possibly all be fantastic - it is rather a success that none of them was poor.

Approaching the end of the second and last day of the Innovate conference in Copenhagen, the pieces are beginning to fall into their places. What yesterday seemed like an endless and futile row of attempts at definition innovation, today proved to be a vital build-up of the foundation the following presentations needed. Todays presentations provided the specific research innovations I hoped to find from the start.

Impressions after the first day of ESOMARs Innovate conference in Copenhagen. Found myself wondering somewhere around afternoon coffee break when the conference was actually going to start. I realised it could have ended already around ten, after the keynote speaker.

The Nielsen Company has signed a global agreement with The Coca-Cola Company, enabling Nielsen to provide integrated services to Coca-Cola in more than 70 countries.

Research Live had a chat with Kim Dedeker, head of consumer and market knowledge at consumer goods P&G, and chair for ARFs council for online research quality, regarding her views on quality control. She believes that the industry needs to do more to address “systemic” quality issues, and that researchers need to be more accountable for their methods – and their results.

One of the coming men in Danish MR has left the company that discovered him. Claus Andersen finished his university studies only a few years ago, but has already made a couple of appearances as speaker on international conferences and held a leading position at qualitative expert Gads. Then came the offer he couldn't refuse!

Den 12 juni 2008 lanserades tidningsräckvidderna från ORVESTO Konsument 2008:1. Insamlingsperioden för enkäterna har i denna omgång varit 1 januari – 30 april. Antalet personer som har deltagit är 15 381 stycken i åldrarna 15-79 år. 

Konsulten Per Olof Sundqvist från BDO har återigen lämnat sina kommentarer om revision av nätet. Denna gång är det till Dagens Media. Lasse Näsström på Kia Index har svarat att det är på gång, i alla fall inom ett år. Som vanligt är det webbplatserna som ska betala för kakan, och som vanligt är det ett konsultföretag som ser sin chans att få monopol på marknaden. Lasse Näsström är dock noga med att påpeka att så inte kommer att ske. Idag finns det öppna och transparanta lösningar som tagits fram av individer som Fulton Yancy. Han har utvecklat en programvara som klarar av revision. Nu är det bara att avvakta och invänta öppningen av de politiska spelen i frågan.

Metro har flest förmögna läsare i Europa. Det visar The European Media & Marketing Survey 2008 från analysföretag Synovate.

Noa (Newspapers Online Analytics) system collects traffic data to online newspapers and provides figures for the overall traffic by month, by day of the week and by time of day. On top of this it also removes duplicate visits to provide monthly de-duplicated data. 

Nu har FDIM som är danska intresseorganisationen för webbplatsägare i Danmark (dvs motsvarigheten till Kommittén för Internet Annonsering, KIA) slagit till igen. Nu har FDIM lanserat rapportering av danska trafiktalen i 'real-tid'. Nu kan du följa de största webbplatsernas besökartal per timme, dygnet runt.

When Research Now is looking for a new Vice Presient for Client Development in the USA, they use the virtual online network LinkedIn. Surely good value for money - if it works. Read on if you feel like working long hours for a great pay on the other side of the Atlantic.

Tidigare ACNielsen chefen Terilyn Reber har etablerat ett internationellt nätverk av datainsamlare som erbjuder allt från CATI/CAWI och onlineundersökningar till globala klienter.

Ipsos has launched a FaceBook application geared at their American panel members.

Med version 8.5 vill WebTrends nå de stora multinationella företagen med sitt erbjudande om effektivare analys, smidigare hantering samt globala rapporteringsmöjligheter.

WPPs CEO says to media that GfK is stalling the process of buying TNS and thereby misleads the market. He says it is about time to close the deal or leave the table.

Enligt en ny undersökning av InsightExpress har våra attityder gentemot Cookies (filer som lagras på din dator) vänt till det positiva. Fler än någonsin tycker att det är bra med Cookies i datorn då det gynnar internetupplevelsen.

Johan Grassman har börjat på Folksam som Webbanalytiker. Han kommer tidigare från Tradedoubler och Cloude Nine.

Den nye arbejdsgruppe skal bestå af personer, der har indsigt i markedet for netmedierne og de udfordringer, der ligger nu og i fremtiden. Det kan eksempelvis være markedschefer, onlinechefer og lignende.

Att internet skulle vara en farlig plats för ungdomar har det pratats en hel del om, och diskussionen verkar inte vara helt obefogad. Habbo, en av Sveriges största ungdomscommunities för 13 till 18-åringar, genomförde nyligen undersökningen ”Känner du sig säker på internet?”, där 2411 svenska ungdomar svarade på frågor kring sina erfarenheter av internet. Det kom fram att 59% av svenska ungdomar någon gång har upplevt något riktigt obehagligt på nätet. Samtidigt så känner sig 79% av tonåringarna säkra när de surfar.

En opinionsundersökning från företaget Sentio har under dagen skapat stor förvirring hos TT och nyhetsbyråns kunder.

Google har nu lanserat Google Insights for Search. Verktyget ger dig möjlighet att studera söktrender. Verktyget är en uppföljning till Google Trends.

Svenskarna ogillar att tvingas lyssna på privata mobilsamtal. Enligt en undersökning som Tele 2 har gjort är det intima detaljer och relationsproblem som retar upp flest.

Various forms of Web 2.0 like Weblogs, Wikis, Communities, Forums and Microblogs is the common theme for the new German organisation AGSM, Arbeitsgemeinschaft Social Media. The new organisation will among other things develop common standards for measurement of Web 2.0 features.

TNS Infratest in Germany has joined a campaign where the business community in Munich is searching for 850 new talents to employ. The Bavaria region in general and its capital Munich in particular, is one of the hottest business regions in Germany, with plenty of high-tech industries and high-end consultancy firms.

The German market research associations ADM, BVM, DGOF and ASI have formed a joint work group, "Initiative Markt- und Sozialforschung", to better promote the various forms of market and social research. Christoph Naucke, former communications director at the insurance company KarstadtQuelle, will lead the group.

Compared to the UK, or even London alone, the Scandinavian market research arena is ridiculously small. You would have to work hard to find 4000 persons working full-time professionally with market research in any way (not counting interviewers, but secretaries, assistants etc). Still, we are masters in the art of setting up numerous organisations, dividing and weakening the industry, instead of speaking with the one strong voice we are all in such dire need of. And most surprising of all – no one knows why we behave like this!

Confirmit's advanced Web-based survey analysis tool Confirmit Pulsar Web has been launched as an On-Demand (ASP) service. Users can now access the tool from a shared, secure environment via the Internet.

Norways largest research institute, TNS Gallup, takes yet another important step towards strengthening its position as the leading media measurement institute, by signing an agreement for measurement of mobile internet. TNS will be the official provider of mobile internet data with the help of Mobiletech, a young Norwegian software company, on behalf of the association for media houses.

Ulf Hillstedt fick rätt: när planerna på ett samgående blir kända för tidigt, är risken stor att det inte blir något alls. GfK och TNS Gallup har nu gett upp planerna på ett samgående mellan jämlikar, något som avslöjades ryktesvägen i slutet av april i år. Istället verkar GfK vilja ta över initiativet, för att undvika att WPP lägger beslag på TNS.

Last years merger with Pulse Train seems to have done Confirmit very well. Expansion continued in the second quarter of 2008 and so did profits.

This was supposed to be an article about the wonderful global world we live in. I wanted to make an article about how market researchers all other the world can understand each other and cooperate, no matter how far apart we live. In particular, this should be an article about what it is like running a market research company and being an ESOMAR member on the Canary Islands.

Engelska myndigheter tar problemet med "silent calls" från call centers på stort allvar. Inte nog med att de har tydliga regler - de utfärdar kännbara böter för den som bryter mot dem.