At WPP, what we once called market research or consumer insight is now described as data investment management. Contrary to what the resulting acronym might suggest, we think this is not so dim.

This sector of our business has always been about gathering and interpreting information, but the internet has created a new, ever-expanding universe of data, the sheer volume and complexity of which demands ever-more sophisticated approaches, tools and techniques. It also demands a fundamental shift in how we think about the business itself – hence the new definition. 

Managing clients’ investment in data – in a fragmented, complicated world – is what we do, just as we manage their investment in media (today we talk about media investment management rather than media planning and buying). These two areas are increasingly linked within our group, as we integrate data and media to provide clients with the most telling insights and the best return on their investment.

Some dislike the new terminology – and not only for the admittedly unfortunate abbreviation – because they believe it relegates the role of insight. Not so. Data collection and analysis is nothing unless it produces insights – and, as Jeremy Bullmore has so elegantly argued, insights have little value unless they are potently expressed.

Unearthing and communicating valuable insights remains the core purpose, and the traditional disciplines of market research remain very important in doing that. However, as digital technologies change the world, we need to be at the forefront of new developments. As TNS puts it: “Advances in social media analytics, data flows from connected, ‘Internet of Things’ devices and many other technological innovations mean that the toolkit the researcher can use to find insights has expanded way beyond the survey.”

One manifestation of this new reality is Kantar’s pioneering partnership with Twitter to provide real-time social TV data, since expanded to new research products in the areas of advertising effectiveness, consumer insight, brand equity, customer satisfaction and media measurement. Others include the sophisticated social media analysis engine behind TNS’s social products, and our partnerships and investments with Rentrak and comScore, which are coming together.

So the web – and the data explosion it set off – have changed the game. But another force at work has arguably had just as much of an impact: the rise of fast-growth markets – the so-called BRICS, Next 11 and other nations whose economies have expanded so rapidly in recent decades.

Huge growth in the consuming classes has supported the development of advertising and marketing services and, within that, data investment management. The quantity of data and quality of insights now available to brands in these markets would have been unthinkable not long ago.

Millward Brown, for example, now produces in-depth BrandZ reports on the major brands globally and in China, Latin America, India and, most recently, Indonesia. Shortly after sanctions were lifted, TNS opened an office in Myanmar and conducted the country’s largest ever consumer survey. Soon, we may be able to do the same in Cuba – and even Iran. 

The digital/data/fast-growth market combination means, for the first time, we can offer clients a truly global view of consumer attitudes and behaviour – perhaps the greatest ever opportunity for what we used to call market research.

Sir Martin Sorrell is a patron of MRS and founder and CEO of WPP