Millward Brown in next phase of mobile research strategy across Africa

Millward Brown continues to embrace mobile research as part of its aggressive regional mobile data collection strategy in Africa and the Middle East. The strategy will enable faster delivery of insights to marketers in these regions.

“Market research must adapt to meet clients’ needs for faster feedback on brands and marketing activities,” said Charles Foster, managing director for Africa & Middle East at Millward Brown. “As we become a more mobile-based world, what better way to engage with consumers than by delivering surveys directly to their mobile devices. It makes research in emerging markets, fast, accurate, affordable and accessible. At Millward Brown in Africa and the Middle East, we’re at the forefront of mobile development work worldwide, and South Africa has been appointed as a hub for our core mobile work.”

Millward Brown has developed new software to work on mobile, and has partnered with a mobile panel specialist, in order to provide an integrated solution to its clients that exploit the benefits of the mobile platform such as speed, cost and data accuracy.

Tracking studies in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania have already migrated onto the mobile platform, targeting consumers with both feature phones and smart phones, the firm said. Many more clients are actively considering the shift to mobile and have found that the mobile data collection methodology can be adapted for brand equity, tracking, ad testing as well as numerous other ad-hoc applications such as instore and sponsorship evaluations, geo-tagged location based research and time critical campaign evaluations – unlocking whole new opportunities for our clients.

This strategy mirrors Millward Brown’s focus on mobile in other regions. Millward Brown in Asia recently announced that Nestlé Malaysia has already adopted a mobile-enabled solution and has migrated a brand and communications tracker onto mobile.