B2B Research Conference 2023

Georgina Beechey, Client Manager, Kantar
Georgina joined Kantar in 2016 and currently operates as a Client Director. She has worked closely with a wide range of clients spanning (but not limited to): telecommunications, automotive, social media, FMCG; helping each business to better understand their customers & how to grow their brands commercially.   

Paul Bolton, Consumer Insights Manager, Ford Motor Company
I joined Ford Motor Company in 1994 as an Undergraduate Trainee. I have worked in a range of quite diverse roles including Planning & Logistics, Sales Programming and Digital Marketing Operations but my real passion and
specialist area is that of Commercial Vehicles where I have worked as a Sales Zone Manager, a Remarketing Manager, a Product Marketing Manager and since 2018 as Ford Europe's lead for Commercial Vehicle Customer Insights. I lead a range of projects to deliver customer insights critical to support the future development of Ford's Commercial Vehicle products and help enable Ford to maintain their position as the leading Commercial Vehicle brand in Europe.

Sarah Bough, Senior Consultant, ideas+visions
Sarah is an experienced qual and quant research practitioner, with a particular specialism in the automotive sector and extensive experience in the B2B Commercial Vehicle space. Helping automotive clients navigate both strategic and tactical issues, pertaining to target customer definition, product development and the customer journey are key strengths. Sarah’s unstinting desire to unlock the insight ‘story’ and distil this to clients in a compelling manner is testament to the long lasting client relationships she has forged throughout her research career; most notably with Ford Motor Company over 2+ decades.

Graeme Cade, Executive Vice President, Savanta
An Engineering graduate and former Strategy Consultant, Graeme joined B2B market research consultancy, Circle Research, as a Senior Research Executive in 2013. Specialising in consultative research engagements and working directly with C-level stakeholders at leading B2B brands, in 2016 Graeme was named ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at the MRS Awards. In 2018, Graeme became Managing Director of Circle Research, in which role he oversaw the integration of the business into the newly formed Savanta, where he has remained since. Now leading the Business, Public and Transport & Services division, Graeme continues to oversee B2B work at Savanta. With his other hat, Graeme also leads Savanta’s extensive M&A activity, gaining rare insights into the inner workings of research agencies around the world as he negotiates deals and integrates acquired businesses.

Charlotte Duff, Head of Insight, FlexMR
Charlotte has been actively involved in the market research industry for over 12 years, and in that time has worked across a variety of sectors, from utilities to financial services, media to CPG and beyond. A background in healthcare has helped Charlotte build a strong appreciation and affinity for research and data analysis, with a particular skill in diagnosing business challenges and devising the most appropriate solutions. Delivering actionable insights that help put consumers at the heart of business is key to Charlotte's approach. Her work has been regularly recognised by the industry; in 2018, Charlotte won the Best New Speaker award at IIeX EU conference for her ‘Man vs. Machine’ research, where Charlotte investigated the power of both AI and expert researchers in their analyses of interesting online insights.

Alice Gillman, Head of Business Development, Porterbrook
Alice joined Porterbrook in 2022 having previously worked for a train manufacturer.  Porterbrook is one of the UK’s leading rolling stock owning companies (ROSCOs) and owns around 1/3 of the national fleet, including HydroFLEX, the UK’s first hydrogen train which was demonstrated at COP26.  Porterbrook took over the Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre in 2021 and Alice’s main focus is to develop the business strategy for the site.  Long Marston was traditionally used for storage of rolling stock with some manufacturing and maintenance activities.  It hosts the annual Rail Live event which sees thousands of exhibitors and visitors from across the industry, including the Rail Minister.   

Aiden Hale, Project Manager, Dig Worldwide
Dig Worldwide are a specialist competitive intelligence agency providing back to basics primary intelligence in a legal and ethical manner. Dig Worldwide operate across a wide range of specialities including, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, Industrial, Biotechnology, Diagnostics, Fintech, Supply Chain Mapping, Congress Attendance and Tradeshow intelligence.
Aiden joined Dig Worldwide in January 2023, bringing 7 years of both clinical and commercial experience in the life science industry and is currently leading projects within Oncology, Consumer Healthcare and B2B Corporate Marketing. Prior to Dig Worldwide, he was working with some of the world's leading investment management firms, performing market research and providing support to clients at every stage of a deal life cycle.

Ian Holt, Global Research Manager, Shell

Stuart Hotchkiss, Customer Research Manager at British Gas Business
Stuart has worked for British Gas for almost 25 years across various areas of the business. He joined the research team at British Gas Business 15 years ago initially to set up their NPS programme. He was then integral to the rolling out of a journey NPS programme across the whole of British Gas embedding real time actionable customer feedback throughout the business.
Working across the functions of the business as research manager he has put customer focused research at the heart of business decisions. The online customer panel community has become the focus of this allowing us to carry out timely, focused and cost effective research the business can respond to.

Victoria Kerton, Head of Corporate and Commercial Restructuring, NatWest Group
Victoria Kerton is Head of Corporate & Commercial Restructuring for NatWest leading a national team of Restructuring relationship managers supporting SME and mid-market customers in financial distress. Victoria is responsible for setting national engagement strategy, working closely with stakeholders and delivering purpose-led activity protecting the Bank’s capital and creating sustainable long term value.
Victoria has been with NatWest for over 17 years and has held various roles across customer facing and business leadership in Relationship Management, Structured Finance, Corporate & Debt Origination and Capital Management serving the Corporate and Commercial markets. Prior to joining NatWest, Victoria worked for Investment Banks in London and Sydney.  

Dominic King, UK Research Lead, Accenture
Dominic explores the relationship between sustainability and business performance at Accenture. For the past four years he has been working with the World Economic Forum to build the next generation of responsible leaders, and previously led inclusion & diversity research projects for organizations such as the IFC, W20, B20 and Girls Who Code. He splits his time between London and Bath, where he plays and watches as much sport as his two young children allow.

Oliver Lewis, Chief Innovation Officer, Convosphere
Oliver has 15+ years of experience as a research professional, including roles as Head of Social Insights at leading agencies and tool providers. He has worked closely with clients in a range of industries to develop bespoke solutions for their research needs and is constantly looking for new ways of doing things that leverage data and technology most efficiently.

David Martin, Group Digital Director, Coca-Cola
David lead the Groupe Digital function at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP). His role covers digital commerce, digital marketing, digital product and the wider digital transformation programmes across the revenue growth space. He is passionate about how technology and data, supported by people, can deliver business change. Key to the success of the programmes at CCEP is a real focus on the customer. Before joining CCEP he spent many years in grocery retail building and running online businesses.

Victoria Maxey, Senior Research Director
Victoria is an experienced mix method researcher with a particular focus on finance, technology and telecoms. B2B research has always made up a significant part of her work and has become her specialism since joining B2B International in 2021. Core to her approach is striving to get past the research findings and help clients to better understand the impact of the results on their organisation’s strategic objectives. As part of B2B arm of Merkle, which encompasses the allied disciplines of media, creative and strategy, Victoria seeks to work holistically to integrate wider agency knowledge into research design and engage with colleagues in other verticals to integrate research into future planning for core clients. 

Anthony Nagle, Co-Founder, Dig Worldwide

Thom Noble, President, CSO CloudArmy Inc.
Thom spent 2 decades in international marketing at GSK, Diageo & Walt Disney and in business consultancy. But for the past 20 years he's been working with neuro-behavioural scientists and technologists around the globe, exploring smarter ways to measure the deeper-level implicit forces now known to trigger decision-making and shape human behaviour.  As a co-founder of CloudArmy, the neuroscience-led insight specialist, Thom's focus is to partner with progressive enterprises seeking to gain competitive-edge through a more forensic evaluation and optimization of their behaviour change strategies & interventions.  

Kirsty Potter, Research Director, Beehive Research
Kirsty joined Beehive Research in January 2022. A certified MRS member, previously she has held a number of research roles, both agency and clientside and she has over 20 years’ experience in helping clients develop their relationships with their customers and stakeholders. Today, she works with a range of organisations to bring customer wisdom into the heart of their business strategies, and has worked with Porterbrook since Summer 2022. Beehive Research is a boutique agency comprising a senior team of experts that is focused on delivering strategic insight to address clients’ bespoke business challenges.

Colette Stevens, Head of Research Excellence, B2B International
Colette has over 10 years’ experience in B2B market research spanning a range of methods and industry sectors. She particularly enjoys supporting B2B organisations to make informed and evidence based decisions, enabling them to grow and stand out from competitors. Alongside colleagues from Merkle B2B’s media, strategy and creative practices she is constantly exploring new methods and techniques to address the challenges faced by clients, ensuring that they stay ahead.

Tom Vannozzi, Head Of Quantitative Research, Jigsaw
Tom is unusual in that he actually wanted to work in market research when he grew up, after attending focus groups as a child.  He has worked in a mixture of agency and clientside roles in the UK and Australia during his career.  Now eschewing qual, for the past 10 years he has headed up quant at Jigsaw. 
What does he enjoy about the world of insights?  It would be the opportunity to experiment and try new ways to meet clients’ objectives, plus also the variety of working across all sectors, from automotive to pet food to headphones.  
Tom has a particular interest in brand and advertising research and has presented several conference papers on the topic for the MRS and ESOMAR.

John Walker, Global Head of Customer Insights, A. P. Moller – Maersk
John leads customer insights and solutions development globally for Maersk, democratising insights and driving customer-led innovation. Leveraging both data and customer empathy, John has helped businesses in energy (E.ON Energy UK), retail (Home Retail Group, John Lewis, Office Depot) sectors grow through customer centricity. Earlier in his career, John was a consultant at Bain & Company.

Ashleigh Waterhouse, Associate Director, Verve
Ashleigh is an Associate Director with over 8 years experience in Research, working in a whole host of sectors and methodologies. She thrives on understanding what makes people tick and why they act the way they do to ensure her clients ideas, products and brands better serve their audiences. Over recent years she has leaned towards larger scale advanced quantitative methods and B2B audiences such as Maersk and Screwfix.

Chris Whitmore, Research Director, Verve