The duo were recently in Karachi to launch Millward Brown's country office in Pakistan. The Aurora team caught up with them to discuss their plans and how they foresee market research evolving in Pakistan.

AURORA: Why did Millward Brown decide to open a country office in Pakistan rather than continue to work through a sister company?

CHARLES FOSTER: Unilever and Coke are our biggest clients and they have driven us into markets in which we would not have normally gone into. The other feature is that as a company Millward Brown has over the past 10 years been on a geographical expansion strategy. I have started eight offices across Africa and the Middle East, which are part of our strategy to penetrate markets we were not in. This has enabled us to grow in scale and represent our clients in far greater geographies. Almost every client would much rather have insights from people who live on the ground.

A: Specifically why Pakistan in 2014?

CF: Pakistan was the only country in the ‘Next 11’ we didn’t have, and there was increasing pressure from key clients.

DAREN POOLE: We need to be careful that we roll out our solutions in a very faithful way. Our clients will want to see the same thought process, philosophies and quality of delivery in every market. Our growth has been tremendous, but we have to grow with care.

I am sure there are another 10 or 15 markets that some of our managers would love us to be in right now, but we have to do that with due diligence.

A: Does the strategy include the acquisition of a local client base as well?

CF: We would not go into a market without expecting, in a five-year plan, that half our business would come from local businesses.

A: Market research in Pakistan is underserved; most local clients are either reluctant to put spend there or they do not see value in the results. Does Millward Brown foresee a change in this mindset?

DP: In the UK, 30 years ago, market research was all about data collection, then as the market evolved, it became less about data collection and more about insights. Then clients went from wanting insights to wanting answers to questions, and today they want implementation plans. Based on talks with our team here, I predict that we might see this happen in Pakistan in the next five years; going from not valuing market research to saying, “tell me how to implement my plan.” It is going to be about recognising the value of a brand. The retail sector is changing in Pakistan and a lot more choices are going to be made on the basis of brand rather than product, and clients will come to believe that market research will help them win that brand race.

A: How will Millward Brown position itself in terms of what it brings to the table compared to other market research agencies?

CF: We have influenced millions of dollars of spend across different media channels and the creative that goes behind those executions has been massively influenced by Millward Brown’s expertise. BrandZ has played an enormous part in how marketers position their brands and address their marketing spend. Once clients start to see the effectiveness of our advice in changing marketing decisions and leading to greater ROI, the message will spread and we will start to penetrate those marketers who suddenly find themselves at a disadvantage against the people who are using and getting top quality advice. It can make massive differences to the delivery of businesses to the bottom line.

DP: We are experts in helping grow great brands and very purposely focus on brands, communications and media, because if we get those three things right we will get brand growth. In my area of the business – creative development – we have proven time and time again that our recommendations on a piece of creative can be up to 40% more effective. We recently looked at the value of the top 100 BrandZ brands over a five-year period; brands that did not use Link saw 10% growth in that period, whereas those that used Link grew by 45%. When the average value of one of those brands is 1.02 billion dollars that is a significant change in brand value.

A: There are few people with formal training in market research in Pakistan, added to which it is not perceived as a ‘glamorous’ profession compared to marketing or advertising. How difficult is it going to be to find the right people from a potentially small pool?

CF: Market research did have a staid image associated with numbers and crunching cross tabs, but this is a much smaller part of our business now than it used to be. We are far more automated and operationally less heavy. Answering surveys used to be the preserve of marketers, but today you can’t pick up a newspaper without seeing another survey. It has become much more up front and bigger in people’s lives, and we find it easier to recruit on that basis, because people have a better understanding of what market research does. It has become a part of people’s daily life. You said you didn’t think there is a big pool of people in Pakistan to draw from, yet earlier I was impressed to see a table full of academics with a background in market research. I can tell you that many of the countries we operate in do not have universities which have specialities in market research. You are actually at top of the tree relatively speaking.

A: Will you be working with Oasis?

CF: We will be using their facilities where possible. They certainly have expertise on the ground; we are already using a fair amount of their field work and we will continue to push more work in their direction. To an extent we have specialisation which is not necessarily theirs.

A: How are the specialisations different?

CF: Concentrating on ourselves, we are focused on our core areas of expertise, which is brand, media and communication and I think it will become obvious to marketers in Pakistan that we are the place to go to for that kind of input. Very rarely in a Millward Brown report will you find question, chart, answer; we don’t do it like that. What we present is the derivation of the culmination of all the responses.

DP: One of the things which make us different from our competitors is that we give our clients issue-based presentations. We collect the data, find the themes and then speak to the client and say, “What’s keeping you awake at night? What’s worrying you about the situation in your communications, in your brand, in your competition, in your pricing,” whatever it may be, and we build a story around that. It is very much like advertising.

A: Listening to your presentation earlier, it almost seems that Millward Brown is positioning itself as an advertising agency.

CF: Yes, but if you take a global look, advertising agencies are beginning to nibble on what were traditional market research areas, strategic planning agencies are starting to nibble into creative agencies, media agencies split away 10 years ago and now some are beginning to reform as part of advertising agencies. It is becoming much more blurry around the edges. It is no longer quite as easy to send a brief to a media shop and not expect that they will give some insight from a creative standpoint. You find that digital agencies are tinkering with the ground which traditionally belonged to the major above the line agencies. It’s a lovely merging of the whole world!

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