NEWS AND EVENTS

Leading global marketing research firm Data Development Worldwide (DDW) announced it has opened new offices in Chicago and Indianapolis. The firm has tapped two industry veterans to run these new locations.

Matt Valle, 36, joins DDW as senior vice president, office director in Chicago. Valle comes from Market Tools where he was senior vice president, central region managing client relationships including Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch, Abbott Labs, Tyson Foods, DuPont, and Best Buy. He's also held management positions at Information Specialists Group, Inc., NFO WorldGroup, and Thomson-West.

"Matt has a proven record of quickly getting to the heart of marketers' business issues and then developing innovative solutions to deliver actionable insights," says Chip Lister, managing director of DDW. "His entrepreneurial approach to building and managing business units is a perfect match for the fast-paced growth we're experiencing."

Valory Myers, 34, joins DDW as vice president, office director in Indianapolis. Myers comes to the firm from Synovate Customer Experience where she was assistant vice president, business development and marketing. There she designed custom research service offerings related to customer experience and loyalty marketing efforts. Myers also served as director, client services at Walker Information.

"Valory's expertise in the area of customer experience and loyalty is of great value to DDW as we continue to develop products and services in the area of service satisfaction measurement," says Lister. "Valory is a solid addition to our already deep bench of top senior-level talent."

This announcement comes at the end of a year marked by significant growth for DDW. The firm climbed to No. 31 on the Honomichl listing of the top 50 U.S. market research organizations. In March, DDW announced its acquisition of Newman-Stein. In October, DDW announced its plans to merge with Marketing Analysts Incorporated (MAi).

Data Development Worldwide (DDW) and Marketing Analysts Incorporated (MAI) have announced a merger creating one of the largest independent market research networks based in the U.S.

DDW, headquartered in New York with offices in key markets throughout the U.S., and MAI, based in Charleston, SC with offices in Charlotte, NC and Morris Plains, N.J., will maintain their respective brands and facilities.

"There are terrific synergies between DDW and MAI," Chip Lister, managing director of DDW, said about the merger. "Chief among them is that we both believe that providing clients with custom-designed solutions is fundamental to delivering truly actionable business solutions to our clients."

Both DDW and MAI have "impressive teams of senior-level research talent," commented Rich Serrins, principal of MAI. "Having teams with this depth and breadth of experience heavily involved in every stage of a project gives our clients great confidence in our process and outcome."

MAI, founded in 1982, is one of the fastest-growing custom market research firms, conducting both quantitative and qualitative studies for Fortune 500 clients around the globe.

Over nearly 50 years, DDW has built a strong reputation for leveraging extensive marketing and unique products and tools to deliver actionable insights to leading global marketers.

Data Development Worldwide (DDW) has climbed to No. 31 on the Honomichl listing of the top 50 U.S. market research firms, on the strength of continued revenue growth in 2007, despite a slumping economy which saw declines for nearly half of the industry's top companies.

Twenty-one of Honomichl's Top 50 marketing research firms reported decreases in revenue in 2007, as the growth of spending for marketing, advertising and public opinion research dropped significantly from the previous year. The report was published in the 35th annual business report of Marketing News, an American Marketing Association publication.

DDW's core markets include consumer products, financial services, pharmaceutical, communications, and the traditional/new media industry. The firm employs more than 100 people with eight locations in the U.S.

DDW completes Newman-Stein acquisition

Lauren Bell

April 10, 2008 

Data Development Worldwide (DDW) has completed its acquisition of Newman Stein, adding to its market research capabilities. 

DDW's purchase of Newman Stein began in the final quarter of 2007. Both companies provide research and actionable insights to marketers, but Newman Stein adds depth to the company's product testing offerings.

"While they operate in the same space, which is primary market research, they brought back to us a capacity that we didn't have much of anymore," explained Chip Lister, president of DDW. "They are top-shelf in the world of product testing, so it really added a breadth to our capacity. The other side is that, having known the company for quite a while, I knew it was an easy fit."

Newman-Stein has been fully integrated with DDW, moving New York employees into DDW offices there. The two companies also combined offices in San Francisco. For a year-long interim period, Newman-Stein will be known as "Newman-Stein, a division of DDW," but soon the company will function completely within DDW.

DDW took on all of Newman-Stein's clients, with no attrition.

There were no layoffs as the result of the acquisition, though Newman-Stein principle Larry Newman will follow through with his retirement plans, announced earlier. William Stein, also a Newman-Stein principle, is now a DDW director.

Lister said that more growth was on the horizon for DDW. The company is looking at other acquisition targets and is also interested in establishing offices outside the US.

"At this stage in the game, I don't think we would go too far afield from our core equities," Lister said, when asked about growth areas. "What Newman-Stein did was round out our core equity, but I don't think I would buy a company completely outside our core equity. Anything we do at this point is going to be linear to who and what we are and adding manpower."

Senior Vice President Ann Tarantino, a valued employee of DDW for over twenty-five years, has assumed leadership of our Florida office. Ann has directed a wide range of projects for clients specializing in new product/service evaluation, customer satisfaction, segmentation research, advertising tracking, market studies and international research.

Ms. Tarantino holds a B.A. in Marketing from Adelphi University in New York.

DDW is pleased to announce the opening of our new office in the Philadelphia area. The office, our eighth location in the U.S., will be headed by Joe Jennings as Vice President.

In addition to a client base centered along the New York to Washington, D.C. corridor, Joe brings considerable expertise in the design and execution of custom research projects. Located in the Philadelphia suburb of Berwyn, the new office will offer clients a thoughtful, hands-on approach to addressing research issues backed by the extensive resources of the entire DDW organization.