Meeting of ESOMAR Council 28 October

Posted by Ray Poynter 29 October 2020

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Present

Members: President Joaquim Bretcha, Nijat Mammadbayli, Alain Mizrahi, BV Pradeep, Kristin Luck, Nikki Lavoie, Umesh Kumar, Lucy Davison, Niels Schillewaert and me.

Officers: Finn Raben (Director General) and Marie-Agnès Mourot de Lathyle (Chief Finance and Operating Officer).

Also in Attendance: Mike Cooke, Judith Passingham, Dirk Huisman, and Dominique Servant, from the Value Proposition Working Group.

Apologies

Anne-Sophie Damelincourt.

Adjusting to the new virtual paradigm, ESOMAR Council is meeting more frequently, but for a shorter amount of time, and with a more focused agenda. We have lost the inconvenience of travel, but we have added early starts and late finish times for some members of Council because of time differences.

Minutes from the last meeting

The new member initiative for Latin America is underway and should be publicised very soon. Alain Mizrahi reported back on several communication problems, and this was taken on board for further investigation.

Finances

The finances continue to be challenging, the short-term picture is that 2020 will show a loss, despite assistance from the Dutch Government (because we are Dutch employer and tax payers). The next challenge will be to look at a budget for 2021, this will be addressed at the November meeting.

National Representatives

Lucy Davison reported on initiatives with the National Representatives, sharing a framework for assessing the issues facing different countries (see below). Reps/Countries now tend to group with other reps/countries who have similar issues – rather than being geographically focused. This seems to be working, however, the planned face-to-face meeting at Congress could not happen because of COVID, but the co-operation seems to be growing. On December 10 there will be the Awards Party – held virtually.

Diversity

Nikki and Nijat reported back on the progress in terms of Diversity, we are looking to align ESOMAR initiatives with the initiatives other groups are taking.

Value Proposition Working Group

ESOMAR has a working group looking at what ESOMAR should be offering in the future, the Value Proposition Working Group. Today the group presented its first report.

The report today was an opening discussion, showing lots of ideas, but not specifically making final recommendations. The analysis extended previous work that has been done looking at the background to ESOMAR, a SWOT analysis, and looking at how we can think about communities of interest. The community of interest moves away from focusing on just the concept of members.

Key benefits of the current ESOMAR position is that it is global, its role in advocating on behalf of insights (e.g. lobbying governments and legislators), and connecting people across countries. Another key strength has been our face-to-face events and our broadcast services – clearly this strength is evolving/changing.

[Note to readers of this feedback, it would be great to hear what YOU think the SWOT for ESOMAR is – i.e. its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats].

Here is an interesting representation of how the community of interest concept may interact with the concept of membership. Remember, this is not a plan, it is a suggested model for thinking about the future.

The Council members had some questions and reservations about specific elements of the report, but were impressed by the both quality of work and thinking that has gone into this first stage.

The next steps for the Value Proposition working group’s ideas are: 1) detailed feedback on some key points from Council members, 2) external validation (both internally and externally), 3) making the concepts more practical, 4) bring the ideas back to Council for review, before 5) moving on the plan and budget the actions.