People

Andrew loves disruptive change and the opportunities that provides for dynamic businesses. He founded Verve to help clients understand the ever-changing needs of their customers and deliver insights which make a difference in a smarter, more agile, more compelling way.

Prior to Verve Andrew co-founded Research Now – a business which in his 8-year tenure grew from 3 people in a dark office in Pimlico to be the leading online access panel company in Europe which on his exit was sold for $144 million. Andrew is a Chartered Accountant and prior to Research Now was a Senior Manager at PwC where he advised venture capitalists on acquisitions.

Adrian has been at Verve since the early days and oversaw the business develop robust systems, processes and commercial offerings to facilitate scale. As Group MD, Adrian has responsibility for business operations and financial performance.

Prior to joining Verve, Adrian’s background was with the multinational professional services business, PwC. He has lived and worked extensively in Europe and Asia advising blue-chip financial and strategic investors, primarily in connection with merger and acquisition (M&A) processes across a wide range of industries. Adrian is a qualified Chartered Accountant (ACA).

Paul is head of new client development. Paul has been at Verve for over 11 years, developing and overseeing agile community research programmes with consumer and B2B clients in financial services, utilities, retail, FMCG, media, travel and tourism and many more. Paul has a particular interest in innovation and product and service development research and how the application of more agile approaches can elevate the role of customer feedback in these processes. Paul has worked in research for more than 15 years, previously working at TRBI and Synovate and focusing on Public Sector, Finance and FMCG research.

Emma is responsible for creating and delivering the Verve Operational Strategy. As well as heading up the Operational teams at group level she is Verve’s Privacy Officer - leading and maintaining our Information Security Management Structure. Her leadership and strategy planning enables future thinking and quality service to all Verve clients in an agile, fast-paced and changing environment.

With 30 years’ experience Emma brings to Verve knowledge and ability built from experience at TNS, Research Now and Lightspeed where she was instrumental in the successful delivery of many research programmes for major blue-chip companies.

Richard is joint head of the research team in the UK. He joined Verve in 2014, bringing 10 years of research experience from running large-scale Global brand, experience and innovation programmes. He works across a range of categories, including financial services, lifestyle and tech brands to deliver customer communities and broader strategic research projects. He has a particular interest in how customer-brand relationships and service delivery are evolving in the digital age and how this technology can deliver a fuller understanding of consumer behaviour and underlying needs.

Tim Martin has been with Verve for 6 years and now jointly heads up the UK research team, having previously opened the Verve Chicago office. Tim is an expert in retail research with 14 years’ research experience working with FMCG and retail brands. His experience includes exploring customer journeys, triggers and barriers to purchase, branding, concept testing and loyalty.

For Tim, true insight is about connecting multiple data points to provide a rounded view of the consumer to clients. He is most at home in client offices, speaking to you about your business issues or running joint analysis sessions, to help ensure our recommendations are targeted and actionable.

Anna is our lead qualitative and co-creation Director, responsible for programme delivery and insight generation. She has more than 12 years' experience across marketing, strategy consultancy and market research and is an established expert in the field of co-creation and development research. Anna joined Verve after previous experience at Kubi Kalloo, Quadrangle, and Opinion Leader.

Heather joined Verve in 2021 as one of the founding members for their Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) in Johannesburg, South Africa. A passionate client and team manager, Heather oversees a team who service the agency’s global and local clientele. She’s also a multi-method researcher with diverse FMCG and service industry experience, having conducted projects for clients across the African continent using both off- and online approaches. A people person with boundless energy and a strong commercial mind, Heather also feeds into Verve’s development ambitions across the globe.

Graham has over 20 years’ experience in social and market research, having spent time at Opinion Leader and Quadrangle, and working with some of the UK’s biggest brands, as well as a number of ‘niche’ clients such as the Met Office, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the Qatar Foundation. He also led a piece of work that won the MRS ‘Applications of Research’ award in 2016, to help transform the domestic insurance claims journey. This, and similar work for the FCA has focused on shining a light on the end customer experience and bring this perspective to decision making.

Elena leads the company’s advanced analytics program. She is responsible for driving the day-to-day analytical approaches as well as exploring solutions to particular problems and for building, maintaining and improving the analytical tools across the company.

However, where Elena is unique is that she loves communicating the commercial impact of advanced analytics to our clients, so that they make the most of the insight.

Elena has more than 9 years' experience working with a wide range of data across multiple sectors. She specialises in data analysis, data mining and statistical techniques.

Phil has 10 years of experience in research, having previously worked on a range of large-scale innovation and brand programmes for FMCG, tech and telecoms clients. He is now a Director on our retail and FMCG accounts, with a focus on triangulating a range of sources, including purchase data, consumer psychology, quantitative research and a range of face-to-face and digital qualitative research, to provide a holistic view of shopper behaviour and attitudes. Phil takes pride in designing flexible approaches to addressing client needs, including recently creating an approach that delivered similar results to a conjoint, but in less than two weeks.

As Technical Director, Amyas’ areas of responsibility include the oversight of Verve’s internal technical operations teams as well as designing and implementing the working processes for Scripting, Data Processing and Quality Assurance. He is also responsible for the integration and management of Verve’s Operations software environment, ensuring Verve continues to be at the forefront in it’s use of cutting edge, flexible technology, providing both community members and clients with the best possible user experience.

Previously Amyas worked as Fieldwork Director at The ID Factor and has 15 years’ experience within the industry. Amyas is a staunch Ipswich Town supporter.

After earning an MBA from Chicago Booth and nearly a decade of developing foundational quantitative and qualitative research skills, Miranda pivoted to the role of stakeholder, building CPG brand strategy. While she loved being a brand owner, she greatly missed the deep, daily connection with consumers that she felt while conducting market research. Now at Verve, she’s found her sweet spot, combining her anthropological-like obsession with understanding consumer behavior with her desire to influence and build business strategy.

Meryl is Head of New Business Development (Africa) and one of the founding members of the Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Solution-focused thinking paired with a true passion for helping her clients is what enables her to deliver impactful stories and actionable insights. She has several years’ experience servicing FMCG and retail clients on agency side, where she has also taken on team leadership, business development and commercial responsibilities. Meryl’s knack for building powerful and lasting relationships with clients sees her unanimously recognised as a true partner and trusted advisor.

Adrian is a senior consultant with extensive experience across emerging methods such as behavioural science, advanced analytics, observational methods and in-the-moment approaches. His role as Innovation Director involves developing solutions, partnerships and go-to-market strategies that will stretch Verve’s offer into new spaces.

Prior to working with Verve, Adrian worked in senior roles with the likes of Kantar, dunnhumby, Nielsen and GfK, where his responsibilities included strategy, product development, marketing, operations and demand generation.

Stuart is an experienced strategist and insight specialist who enjoys digging deep to find insights into people’s needs, wants, tensions and foibles. He has a passion for understanding people and the cultural and societal forces that shape them, bringing this to life in a way that inspires brands to solve their problems in interesting new ways. He has worked in senior client-side roles, run two successful agencies, and won a few awards along the way.

With over 13 years’ research experience, Luke is a quantitative specialist with meticulous attention to detail and an impressive capacity to extract insight from large and complex data sets. Having spent more than 5 years heading up the Samsung account at Verve, his passion lies in the tech space, particularly understanding product development and innovation across multi-market studies. A skilled researcher and manager, Luke truly embodies Verve’s philosophy of working as an extension of our clients’ team to deliver smart digital insight at pace and on a global scale!

A hands-on quallie with nearly 20 years’ agency-side experience, Kate combines research excellence with thoroughness, flexibility, enthusiasm and a love for tricky problems! She’s responsible for delivering insights that enable clients to take action: identifying new opportunities, exploiting changing trends, and engaging effectively with target audiences to grow and succeed.

Simon has over 30 years of retail experience and 20 years of research experience. He’s a market research specialist with a track record of helping clients create brand strategies, product development, income growth and customer engagement (Winner Best Small Agency 2019 – AURAs). Simon has extensive experience leading and delivering successful research projects for food and non-food retailers, hospitality, manufacturers, airports, gambling, leisure, technology, charities, and food & beverage providers.

With over 14 years’ experience in operations, Bogdan is an online research expert helping clients develop and execute cost and time-efficient insight programmes. With a keen interest and experience in developing and testing new platforms and research tools, he is responsible for onboarding blue-chip clients and building customer communities suited both smaller and larger scale insight programmes.

Kaylee has over 14 years’ experience in the market research industry, spending the last 12 of those in Operations. An inspirational leader, Kaylee is skilled at motivating teams to continually improve, drive efficiency and get the best out of their communities in order to deliver quality, meaningful for clients. Kaylee is Verve’s onboarding expert, having set up new communities from a wide range of industries - and she’s particularly brilliant at leading accounts with B2B clients.

In his nearly 15 years of experience in the market research industry, Eugen has honed his ability to see the big picture and identify opportunity spaces that will ensure every project's success. His main focus is on survey programming, whilst also overseeing the development and running of Verve’s Operation Hub in Romania. Prior to joining the team, Eugen specialised in survey programming, data processing/analysis and quality assurance at well-known market research companies like IPSOS and GfK. He is always looking for new and innovative ways to improve operational efficiencies and drive quality improvement initiatives.