A delegation led by ESOMAR participated in the 2019 WebSummit this year, bringing back the Smart Data Lab in order to help promote the value that the market research and data analytics ecosystem can provide to budding start-up entrepreneurs and their investors. The participation of Kantar and Ipsos this year underlines a growing interest by the sector to do more to promote the value we can provide to the global tech start-up community.
Growing from strength to strength, the 2019 WebSummit in Lisbon attracted more than 70.000 attendees from 160 countries, and amongst the 1200+ speakers were members of the ESOMAR community to bring to the fore the importance of the #bedatasmart messaging and role we can play in supporting the development of human-centric, data-driven organisations. This message was also echoed at our Smart Data Lab booth where we promoted the growing catalogue of support services available to members.
It was the occasion to launch a new expansion of our ESOMAR Plus services, we are announcing a roll out of our Data Counselling service providing guidance and mentoring to start-ups. Our vision is to provide comprehensive support focused on responsible data collection, a focus on quality analysis, an eye to ethical use bringing at the end of the journey a smart usage by the start-up of its personal data assets. This service will be rolled out in partnership with start-up incubator and accelerator programmes worldwide in the coming year. You can find out more about our vision by downloading a white paper we have authored and published on the topic and available for download on the ESOMAR website: https://www.esomar.org/smart-data-lab.
Together with Kantar, ESOMAR also held a start-up workshop to talk about why 90% of products fail, offering tips about the secret of those who don’t. With over 200 registrations, the workshop was quickly sold out. The workshop hosted by Kantar’s Jon Puleston and Jackie Blackler offered unexpected findings and discoveries which will no doubt make start-ups think twice about how they intend to go to market.
Helen Zeitoun from Ipsos also spoke on stage as part of a panel looking at how to make the most of data. You can check out her panel on our Facebook page where we’ve captured the panel session in its entirety.
These participations were also completed with the participation of two of our ESOMAR Council members. President Joaquim Bretcha chaired a panel at the Corporate Innovation Summit stage on the Good, the Bad, and the Future of Big Data with the Chief Data Officer of JCDecaux, Chief Privacy Officer of AT&T, and the Chief Information Officer of Boots.
Vice-President Kristin Luck also represented ESOMAR in a wide range of activities both on-stage and off as part of the Corporate Innovation Summit open exclusively to C-suite level attendees. Kristin was on stage leading panel discussions and was a Mentor for the Women in Tech Sessions alongside Helen Zeitoun.
With many leads both for membership acquisition, and a growing awareness of the value that our community can have for the WebSummit attendees, it is clear that continued participation in high-level events like these are vital to secure the positioning of our community as an integral part of the new data-driven economy. ESOMAR will be keenly anticipating the 2020 edition in the hopes of supporting more ESOMAR corporate members and individuals to raise their visibility and through them the ESOMAR community on stage, in our stand, and in the countless corridors of networking and bartering that make WebSummit such a unique global event. If you want to get involved in the next edition, reach out to your ESOMAR membership liaison to help shape our future participation and your involve3ment in the initiative!