Random thoughts on life, research and everything

We get a lot of email pitches from prospective research partners around the world and the vast majority sound the same – “we’re really brilliant so don’t forget to get in touch blah, blah, blah…”

Occasionally, one cuts through and deserves to be flagged. Now here’s a bunch of researchers we’d like to meet.

Hello,

Once again, the ravages of recession necessitate more eye wateringly desperate marketing communications.

As I’ve said before, I hate doing these almost as much as you hate receiving them, but needs must and there is always the possibility that the planets will align in such a way that this reaches you at the very time you feel like replacing your existing fieldwork supplier. Stranger things have happened.

As you would expect me to say, we provide top quality fieldwork in all the methodologies you will need, so, for the hard of thinking, this includes:

– Telephone interviewing – both domestically and, in particular, internationally. We are especially good at the kind of B2B projects that are often too difficult for most call centres, I can provide proof of this if you ask nicely

– Face to face interviewing – yes it still exists and we can do it exceptionally well all over the UK

– Online interviewing – for those that don’t want to pay for the above two, but still want to point at a number with a stick

– Qualitative research – we do our level best to root out professional respondents as the curse on our industry that they are. Again, we are very good at getting the hard to reach, this includes IT geeks, Doctors and the wealthy. We’ve even done focus groups with the homeless

– In support of the above, we have our very own viewing facility. It is right by Holborn tube station, so we came up with the stunningly original name of Holborn Focus. We don’t need to be that creative, that’s your job.

So to conclude, we are as good as any data collection organisation in the UK and better than most. We are not the cheapest and I’m not particularly cheerful, but we will get your project done on time, to budget and we’ll keep you informed at every step of the way.

As if this isn’t enough, we are spending an obscene amount of money exhibiting at the Insight Show on the 27th and 28th of June at Olympia, ours is the stand set up as a pub called The Dog and Data. There will be hourly pub quizzes, there might be prizes, perhaps even a good one, you never know your luck, but, above all, there will be drink, we will need it. So come along and say hello.

Thank you for reading this far if you did – Richard Sheldrake , Perspective Research Services

We haven’t worked with them but we will certainly call them the next time we need a partner in UK. And they didn’t send this photo. This is one of our friends who sails with us in regattas in Asia. The caption would read Don’t Tell Me You’re Funny, Make Me Laugh.