The Prosper Riley-Smith Effectiveness Award

The Prosper Riley-Smith Effectiveness Award is going from strength to strength. This year the award attracted more entries than ever. The judging committee met in October to discuss and debate all of the entries before arriving at a final shortlist of three papers.

• Chloe Fowler (Razor Research) and Kiri Hoosen (Gü Puds)
  for Gü Puds

• Lucy Green (Morris Hargreaves McIntyre)
  for British Museum

• Nancy MacDonald (2CV) and Krishan Lathigra (COI)
  for Financial Services Authority

What has always set the Prosper Riley-Smith Effectiveness Award apart (and this year is no exception) is the diversity of entries, spanning all kinds of qualitative practice. They effectively showcase the dynamism of what we do for a living and the difference they make to the success of a business.

The judges were also particularly impressed by the number of agency and client collaborative entries submitted this year. The range of methodologies showcased within the papers also demonstrates that we researchers are not resting on our laurels when it comes to developing and implementing inventive solutions to research objectives.

The paper by Chloe Fowler and Kiri Hoosen demonstrated how research was used to bring a research-novice team at Gü closer to its consumers. In doing so, the research helped inspire a young and dynamic company leading to a raft of exciting (and tasty) NPD initiatives due to hit our supermarket shelves soon.

The paper by Lucy Green describes how the British Museum embraced qual to help understand how visitors engage with permanent exhibitions. This insight has resulted in the Museum moving from an object-led to an outcome-led focus when designing exhibitions.

The paper by Nancy MacDonald and Krishan Lathigra describes a set of innovative methodologies that were created to help teenagers get beyond surface responses to the relatively dry subject of personal finance. The paper pinpointed how research helped inspire internal teams to move beyond speculative segmentation models of this audience to a more textured and meaningful understanding. In doing so, the research proved instrumental in the development of a website by helping the web designers build an online resource which tonally presses the right buttons for its audience.

This has been a great year for the Award and the judging committee would like to thank everyone who submitted a paper. There can only be one winner, however, and this will be announced at the MRS Awards Dinner on the 8th December.