As already trailed through the appearance of the Empire State building on our website, we are delighted to announce the launch of The Value Engineers North America, which is possibly our most exciting news since the company was founded twenty five years ago in 1986! 

To celebrate this great moment, we held an open house at our offices in Manhattan with the great and good of marketing and a sparkly snowman all dropping by.  Thanks to all those dear friends of The Value Engineers who came to raise a glass to our new venture.  For those who could not make it here are a few snaps of the night.

We are very pleased to welcome two new Engineers, both with a specialism in quantitative research: Richie Heron and Sally Kay.

After graduating from Nottingham with a first class degree in marketing, Sally Kay spent some time at TNS in their quantitative consumer division. In 2006 she moved to brand consultancy Clear where she specialised in quantitative insight and strategy, while also working more broadly in qualitative insight and brand innovation. She has built up considerable experience in personal care, financial services and healthcare. Since moving to The Value Engineers at the beginning of November, Sally has been involved in understanding the prestige car customer which has since upped her desire for a flash motor… here’s hoping!

Sally is passionate about helping organisations grow their brands, be it through segmentation, customer insight programmes, strategic intents or innovating new products. In her spare time she usually spends time exercising, wining and dining or being creative… although having just bought a new house most of her weekends are now spent in IKEA!

Richie Heron graduated from the University of Newcastle with a degree in Statistics and started his research career with Martin Hamblin working on segmentation and pricing studies in the healthcare sector. In 2002 he moved to Research International (now TNS) working in new product development and innovation primarily focusing on concept testing and volume forecasting. From 2006 he was based in Chicago working through a key clients innovation journey spanning multiple brands across the globe with the goal of becoming the leading brand in each market.

After 4 years in the US he’s become somewhat Americanized – a fan of ice hockey and country music, a chicken wing connoisseur and gained an understanding and appreciation for the Super Bowl and the advertising extravaganza that goes with it! A fan of history and historical novels (in particular the work of Conn Iggulden) with an indefinable passion to watch or read anything to do with the Titanic. Richie’s current hobby is understanding the business of sport having recently completed a course on hockey general management and scouting.

Last week we took the formal step of ‘wetting the head’ of the new Manhattan office.

It was a small but auspicious step. We had visitors from the UK offices of all of our hub companies, as well as from Cello head office (grilling us over budgets for next year and pushing for even bigger and better things).  The office houses teams from The Value Engineers, Insight Research USA and Leapfrog in America, all of whose comings and goings amplified the buzz of activity. To add more excitement we were greeting clients, running workshops and interviewing for more staff at the same time.

Jenny, our amazing office manager, managed to keep everything running smoothly and the much threatened state of too many meetings / not enough rooms never actually arrived.  We did run out of chairs but people were moving so much I don’t think anyone actually noticed.  We do, however, need a bigger coffee machine, to ensure jet lag caffeine demands are fully met.

Hopefully this will be the first step in many in the US.  It certainly set the office feel we’d like to keep.

Actually, to make sure we take at least one more step, we are going to invite all friends, associates and clients to a drinks party on the 2nd December.  If you happen to be in New York then feel free to drop by and raise a glass. It’ll be even better than last week as the group FD has promised to send us real champagne glasses!

To contact our New York office get in touch with Simon Dannatt or Alex Waters.

We are very proud to announce the arrival of Tim Kaner as Associate Director focusing on Capabilities and Customer Experience.

After graduating from Cambridge with a degree in Modern & Medieval languages, Tim spent the first part of his career in advertising at BMP and then Leo Burnett on categories ranging from beer to banks, shampoo to cereal and trains to Tropicana.

In 1999 he moved client side to Sony Europe, taking responsibility for the development of regional brand and product advertising and the management of creative and media agency relationships. He also worked with a global team to relaunch Aiwa as a youth-targeted brand. In 2004 Tim was appointed Director of Marketing Communications and from 2006 ran the Marketing Strategy Office with a mission to help Sony Europe build a more customer-centric sales and marketing culture. He led a change programme whose scope covered marketing capability, designing and embedding common processes and developing and implementing tools such as customer segmentation. Amongst all of this he also found time to complete an MBA, act as an adviser to the Young Enterprise scheme, be on judging panels for Account Planning Group and IPA effectiveness awards and speak at various conferences.

Tim is passionate about helping organisations understand how they are seen through their customers’ eyes and about using these insights to identify where value can be created through customer experience improvement. He and his wife have two teenage children to keep them on their toes. He tries to find time to improve his sushi making skills and enjoys skiing and scuba diving!

We are really pleased to announce the arrival of our new 2010 graduate intake of Marketing Analysts – Inese, Liana and Kwamina. They join David Holland who started earlier in the year.

Inese Smidre’s degree in Archaeology and Anthropology at Keble College, Oxford allowed her to spend university holidays doing some fascinating travelling and fieldwork. In the summer of first year she stayed with an indigenous group in Amazonian rainforest to study the social and cultural changes their community is undergoing in the face of globalisation. The following year, she changed focus entirely and spent two months in Berlin doing own ethnographic research on graffiti and street artists and their work. Inese comes from Latvia but has lived in England for the last ten years. Her interests include travelling, studying languages and studying art (appreciating not creating graffiti)!

Liana Gregorians graduated from Trinity College, Oxford this year with a degree in Modern Languages. At Oxford she was involved in music and dance, made some tentative steps into the drama scene as a director, and spent a year abroad in Paris, which satisfied and deepened a love of all things French. Liana’s working background is in fashion press and PR, but a desire to get stuck into the finer details of branding and finding out what makes people tick eventually led her to The Value Engineers. In her free time, Liana enjoys travelling, spending far too much money on clothes, and trying to catch up with all the English books she’s missed out on in the last four years.

Kwamina Korsah graduated with a history degree from Magdalene College, Cambridge in June 2010. During his time at Cambridge, he represented the university at rugby and was a member of the college student union committee. He has previous experience in the world of advertising, having undertaken a three-month internship at Mediacom in the summer of 2009, focusing on consumer insight and working on brands such as Bonne Maman, Green King, Max Factor and Volkswagen. He has also worked as a member of the ‘impact team’ at Abercrombie and Fitch in London – a real brand experience!