A former market research chief from Kraft has been named to head Ryan Research, a new unit of Ryan Partnership.
The internal department is offering Ryan clients custom as well as secondary research and helping Ryan’s own staff acquire insights and develop tactical strategies.
Last month, employees in Ryan offices nationally could have found a story on promo industry trends if they linked into the agency’s intranet and turned to “This Month with Ryan Research,” a new online tool from the department.
“If we conduct research on a general topic such as the millennium, the entire organization can tap into it,” says Paula Friedman, who heads up the department. Friedman joined Ryan’s Westport, CT, office last May after 12 years at Kraft, where she was a marketing research manager.
The unit will offer research of two sorts: custom or proprietary research, and secondary or syndicated research. The unit will draw on outside sources including liaisons and moderators for focus events, firms for quantitative testing, IRI and Nielsen modeling tools, and companies with proprietary rating services.
With the assistance of an intern from Fairfield University, Friedman is conducting research using methods such as focus groups, one-on-one interviews, awareness and usage studies, and attitude surveys.
“I am an information source for the entire company. I see myself as an enabler. We provide insights and then try to turn those into actionable results,” she says.
The department, for example, might help an account exec with a client who wants to know how to test a particular idea, or provide a marketer with advice on how to design a quantitative survey, she says.
Friedman recently brought an outside consultant into the Westport offices to run a session for employees on how to find information on the Web.
“Ryan is working more closely with clients’ ad agencies, so we would potentially be sharing resources and areas of expertise with [their] research departments. Yet most of what I am doing is promotion-related research, which may be outside of the ad agencies’ expertise.”
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