Consumer Insight Jury Chairmen
Eric Salama & Aziz Cami

Chairman & CEO: Kantar & Creative Director: Kantar

This year we continued to put the spotlight on creativity and innovation within our research and insight work. This is because we still believe that research and consulting solutions need to inspire clients to enable them to make better commercial and creative decisions. To achieve this we need to invent better ways of undertaking research, with radical new approaches and methodologies and, vitally, better means of presenting those insights in ever more compelling and vivid ways.

So this year's entries were especially pleasing, with a variety of innovative solutions on show, ranging from: high tech neuroscience concepts from Millward Brown to imaginative low tech poster presentations from TNS South Africa; from computer number crunching on an epic scale by MaPS for the Russian telecom giant MTS to pure sensory theatre from Millward Brown in Colombia; from innovative cookie-driven solutions from Kantar Media (for Guardian News and Media) to strange headgear for shoppers from TNS (for ConAgra); Added Value also continued their creative run with winners and nominations for CharacterLab, the digital extension of their Archetype Game, their on-line shopper work for Yahoo!, future gazing for BMW and brand development work for Levi's.

Our Crème de la Crème winner contains many of the attributes we believe to be important for Kantar going forward, collaboration, technology and creativity all leading to a wonderfully innovative solution. In this case it was work undertaken for Procter & Gamble at the Vancouver Olympics by Millward Brown, Cymfony and TNS Custom. Brilliant simplicity at its best.

This was also another record-breaking year for entries in this category, with an ever-increasing number from outside Kantar. Unfortunately none of those made the grade, mainly because too many focused on their creative execution (some of which were truly brilliant) at the expense of revealing the creativity within their insight generation.

To those of you who entered, including the rest of WPP, we urge you to continue to support our category and continue to inspire us.