Winning our first MRS Award: Our Reflections…
In partnership with one of our clients, Nationwide Building Society, lens was recently delighted to win the 2021 MRS/AURA Award for ‘Insight Management.’
The Award was based on our work with Nationwide on a longitudinal digital ethnography study - the largest and longest ethnographic research project that the business has ever undertaken, focused exclusively on families.
Through winning the Award, the MRS and AURA recognised Nationwide and lens for using insight to fundamentally shift a) the way in which Nationwide designs propositions and experiences for families and b) how Nationwide approaches research – moving from the traditional approach of starting with a defined brief (and a long list of objectives/ hypotheses) to starting with an audience and a very ‘open mind.’
(If you’d like to hear more about the project, please do get in touch and we’d be happy to share)…
Our reflections…
lens is Vicky and Helen – two researchers with a specialism in customer experience (CX), who co-founded our small business almost six years ago. We’re also two Northerners, renowned for our authentic, honest, and down-to-earth approach! And we’re incredibly proud, humbled, and honoured to now be able to say that we are ‘Award winners’…
…So we’re writing this blog to brag, right? Wrong! We’re genuinely not! As small business owners, we simply wanted to share our true reflections of what this Award means – for lens as a business, and to us personally:
As a ‘newer’ agency to the industry, it is hugely valuable to be acknowledged in this way - for collaborating with our clients and in terms of the credibility that comes with being recognised by the MRS and AURA, specifically.
We have since been invited to present our approach and learnings at two AURA events (earlier this year) and will also be speaking at the upcoming ‘MRS North: Awards Showcase’ event in June. Not only is it rewarding to be able to discuss our own work that we’re very passionate about, it is important to share our learnings and consider with other professionals, both agency and client-side, how we move and shape the direction of research and insight moving forwards.
Personally, though, this award means a lot. Naturally, we can get carried away in running a business, focusing on projects and ensuring our clients are happy… As such, we don’t stop to reflect; winning this award certainly made us pause in our tracks and reflect on what was such a high for the both of us – just before Christmas and a few days before Vicky got married!
We hope this is a sign of what’s to come for smaller and newer agencies such as lens – a ‘landscape’ within which more businesses choose to work with us and an openness by industry bodies such as the MRS and AURA to (continue to) recognise newer and smaller agencies for the work they do.