Top ESOMAR Award for David Smith

UK researchers scooped four of the five ESOMAR annual excellence awards presented at the final session of the association's 60th Congress in Berlin, with David Smith of DVL Smith Group taking home the top John Downham Award and a prize of EUR 10,000.

Smith was selected for 'outstanding achievement and stimulating excellence', and nominators and jury members agreed that his work has both defined the area of market intelligence and 'moved the whole industry forward'. He was also recognised for his involvement in initiatives such as creating and delivering the Skills Development ESOMAR masterclasses globally, putting together the '12 killer questions for market intelligence', and giving ESOMAR Decision Making workshops.

Smith has a 25 year background in marketing intelligence and earlier in the year left his post as Chairman of Illuminas to relaunch his old firm, DVL Smith - backed by Australian marketing group, Photon which owns MR agency The Leading Edge (www.mrweb.com/drno/news6289.htm ). He has won many previous MR awards, is a published author and has contributed to the ESOMAR Handbook of Market Research.

The judges summed up by saying that Smith's work is seen by many as the definitive reference on new evidence-based consulting. 'David's reputation globally as a clear thinker and driver of skills in the research industry is exemplary.'

The three other awards going to UK researchers for 'best papers presented at an ESOMAR event in 2006/2007' were:

• The Best Paper Overall (The Fernanda Monti Award) and a prize of EUR 2,500 - Mark Earls, Herd Consulting for his paper If 'We' not 'I'... Then what? From Anglo-Saxon to global world views of human behaviour (www.researchtalk.co.uk/rt/2007/02/13/mark-earls-the-we-is-mightier-than-the-i )
• The Best Case History Award a prize value of EUR 1,500 - Mike Cooke and Phyllis MacFarlane, GfK NOP for their joint paper, Training the next generation: It's market research, but not as we know it (www.mrweb.com/drno/news7336.htm ), and
• The Best Methodological Paper Award with a prize also valued at EUR 1,500 - Orlando Wood, BrainJuicer Labs for his paper, Using faces: Measuring emotional engagement for early stage creative

Ayobamidele Gnädig and Oliver Schieleit from German firm HTP Concept took The ESOMAR Excellence Award for the Best Paper presented at an ESOMAR event 2006/2007 and a prize of EUR 4,000 for their paper, Death of depth? Understanding the obvious beyond the obvious.

Prize winners were selected from 170 submissions, with three short listed for each of the three categories - Best Methodology, Best Case Study and Best Overall Paper. These Congress awards will be added to the shortlist for The ESOMAR Excellence Award for Best Paper presented at an ESOMAR event during 2007 and 2008.

Commented ESOMAR Director General Véronique Jeannin: 'The high quality of the 2007 papers make a real contribution to celebrating excellence in the Market Research industry'.

Winners' websites are: www.dvlsmithgroup.com , http://herd.typepad.com, www.gfknop.com , www.brainjuicer.com and www.htp-concept.de.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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