Lack of new blood in research proves costly to agencies

Agencies and their clients are making more use of freelance market

researchers and planners to avoid the rocketing fees being charged by

large qualitative research companies, it was claimed last week.

The rising charges are the result of the massive increases in the wages

research companies are forced to pay junior staff, now in short supply

because of a recruitment clampdown during the recession.

The Association of Qualitative Research Practitioners estimates that

salaries of junior researchers with two or three years’ experience has

risen by 25 per cent in the past six months.

’The shortage of young talent is so desperate that we’re almost reduced

to pulling it in off the streets,’ one research company boss

admitted.

Forced to pass on the rises to their clients, research companies are

facing heavier competition as agencies look to independent market

researchers or invest in their own research departments.

Roddy Glen, founder of the SRG qualitative research agency, told the

AQRP’s annual conference: ’The freelance market is now more mature than

before.’

Freelance researchers, many of them former agency planners forced out

during the recession, were enjoying greater success because of their

more competitive and sophisticated approach to business, Glen said. This

often led them to combine as a team to present for a particular job.

Glen, a former staffer at Collett Dickenson Pearce and BMP DDB, said:

’I’m not predicting the death of large research companies because

there’s plenty of work to go round. But, as an industry, we’re paying a

price for our lack of managerial vision.’

This article was first published on Campaign