Verve Hires Culture, Trends and Semiotics Lead

In the UK, community panels and digital research specialist Verve has appointed former InSites Consulting / Join the Dots exec Kelly McKnight as Executive Director, charged with building its Culture & Trends, Semiotics and Social Intelligence practice.

Launched in 2008, Verve is headquartered in London, with additional offices in Manchester, UK, Chicago and Romania. The firm uses commonly adopted technology to gather feedback, and integrates multiple data sources to deliver more in-depth insight. Yesterday, the company announced it had joined customer intelligence specialist Alida as the latter's first Premium Partner, to help organizations capture the voice of their customers to inform business growth and innovation.

McKnight (pictured) joins after a stint as AD, Truth Central at McCann Worldgroup, prior to which, she was Head of Culture + Trends at Insites Consulting, using trends in combination with primary research techniques to lead on future-facing insight and innovation programmes for global clients. She previously held the same title at Join the Dots, before its acquisition by Insites in 2019.

In her new role, McKnight will work alongside former Join the Dots / InSites Consulting execs - semiotician Kim Howard, and culture and trends specialist Peter Latham - who are joining later this month, as well as the existing team which includes Anna Williams, Kate Downer and Andy Dexter. Rich Preedy, Joint Head of Insight, comments: 'This is a fantastic time for Kelly, Kim and Peter to be joining the Verve team. We're seeing strong client demand for our strategic insights propositions and a desire to push the boundaries of traditional research approaches, as we increasingly become regarded as an extension of our clients' team.'

Web site: www.addverve.com .