You’re about to outsource your online marketing to an external vendor. How can you get the best out of the client-vendor relationship? How do you close the gap between their understanding of your business needs, and yours?

We speak with Angela Chiu, who has worked for advertising/digital agencies in Asia and New York, and who is now the Interactive Marketing Manager of Vision Care, Johnson & Johnson. She gives us her views from having worked on ‘both sides of the fence’.

Q: How do you get the best results from working with digital marketing agencies?

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You’ve been allocated a budget to set up your company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme. How do you create one that effectively supports both your brand image and your selected charity/charities?

We spoke to Tiffany Pinkstone, Director of the Sovereign Art Foundation, about her experience. Whilst many companies only pay lip service to their CSR agendas, the Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF), a charity founded by The Sovereign Group in 2003, has become one of the most recognised benefactors of Asian art and artists today. It has since helped raise 1.5 million US dollars in support of causes that use art as a means of rehabilitating trauma and abuse victims in Asia. (more…)

Looking for some advice on when to conduct online research, what factors to consider and how to ensure a smooth research process?

We ask Yuwadee Aiamsontisup (Ree), Research Director, Interactive Research for Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa at TNS, for her expert opinion.

Q: What’s behind the growth of online research?

“The growth of online research is unavoidable when the Internet penetration in many countries keeps on growing. By March 2009, there was 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide, from 360 million in 2000. User growth rate between 2000 and 2008 was 342%, according to Internet World Stats. Imagine the online coverage in the near future! (more…)

Have you benchmarked your website against your competitors yet?

We thought we would compare the online traffic of some of the world’s top management consultants, accounting / audit firms and consumer research companies. These include the likes of Accenture, Bain, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Frost & Sullivan, McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Synovate and TNS, to list a few examples.

There are many sites such as Alexa, Compete, comScore, Hitwise and Nielsen Online that claim to provide reliable benchmarks of site statistics. (more…)

Focus groups are used to test brand concepts, new products and solutions, topics or advertising. Such qualitative research however, depends on how good the group moderator/interviewer is.

Good moderators are adept in knowing when to simply observe and when to probe participants on interesting insights as they present themselves. Once these opportunities are lost, it may be difficult to validate some of the findings afterwards. Things get even trickier when it comes to testing brand perceptions through focus groups. These involve delving into intangible concepts and highly subjective feedback.

What principles do good researchers put into practice, while moderating focus group discussions?

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