President’s Report – June 2024

June has been a busy month for ESOMAR. As well as a face-to-face Council meeting, we have had a client summit and conferences in the USA, attended the Cannes event, attended IIeX in Amsterdam, taken part in several local events around the world, issued a new book on how to write better questionnaires – and much more. My report back this month is going to be a repeat of the report I gave to the ESOMAR members attending our AGM on 27 June, which I reproduce below.

“The timing of this AGM is just 9 months after the last AGM, held in Amsterdam. This change is to bring our accounting in line with the legal requirements in the Netherlands. This is also the first year in memory that the accounts for the previous year have been audited and signed before the end of June – so a big thank you to the ESOMAR team, to our COO Marcel, and to Corrine our Treasurer. More about the accounts shortly.

I would like to take this chance to remind everybody about the timing of the next elections to Council and for President. As previously announced, the current Council’s term of office is two years, which means we complete our term at the end of March 2025, and the new team will take office on April 1, next year. The elections for the new Council and President will take place in early 2025. As Tom de Ruyck will outline in the Town Hall in a few minutes, there will be several changes in the way the 2025 Council operates, including increasing the length of its term of office.

This means that now is a good time for you to start thinking about whether you should stand for Council, or indeed stand for President. Note, to stand for President, you need to have served at least one term on the Council.

The key mission of the current Council has focused on creating a strong and stable base for continued growth and development. The period since the last AGM has continued to be very productive. The reorganization of ESOMAR into Operations headed by Marcel Dekker, Membership/Marketing/Communications/Events headed by Rhiannon Bryant, and the combined Advocacy, Public Affairs and Professional Standards with the ESOMAR Intelligence Unit, led by Xabier Palacio is bearing fruit and we are seeing better connectivity and better services for members.

Another aspect of this reform process, and following an external review of ESOMAR’s challenges, has been the creation of an Advisory Group. This Advisory Group comprises people with very senior experience. This Group will help the ESOMAR Management and Council and they provide an extra set of eyes on some of the key processes. The founder members of this group are Joris Huisman (co-CEO Skim), Annelies Verhaeghe (Chief Platform Officer at Human8), and Pieter Paul Verheggen (Director General at Motivaction and CEO of Glocalities).

Other significant wins over the last 9 months include our first APAC conference since COVID (in Singapore), our first US conference since COVID (in Chicago last week), a reform of the way Reps are supported and recruited, continued growth in the way ESOMAR is tackling the challenges and opportunities created by the boom of in interest in AI (including the AI Taskforce and ESOMAR’s 20 AI questions to ask vendors), and a move to establish and cooperate with initiatives in Africa.

One of the key pillars of ESOMAR is the ICC/ESOMAR Code. The review team, led by Judith Passingham, is working to update the Code and we are hopeful that it will be published next year.

When the current Council was appointed, we promised to keep you informed. We have held quarterly Town Halls (after each face-to-face Council meeting) and I have issued a monthly update report. Hopefully, this has helped to keep you more informed about what ESOMAR is doing. In June we held our face-to-face Council meeting in Barcelona and coupled it with a meeting with the local research association and researchers. This was very successful, and we will recommend to the next Council that they consider something similar, perhaps once a year.

The next AGM is likely to be in June next year, so this is my last AGM as the current President (there will be a General Meeting at Congress in Athens), so I would like to close my report by thanking everybody who has helped create the current good functioning of ESOMAR. In particular, the ESOMAR Team, the ESOMAR Management and leadership, the Committee Chairs, our regional Ambassadors, my colleagues on the Council, and most especially the other members of ESOMAR’s Executive Committee, DG Joaquim Bretcha, COO Marcel Dekker, CSO Rhiannon Bryant, Vice President Tom de Ruyck, and Treasurer Corrine Moy.”