Friendlier era dawns for Nielsen UK

30/May/2002

Still only in her mid-thirties, Nicholas comes - or rather returns - to Britain with an impressive track record. Born in London of Greek Cypriot parents, she studied at the London School of Economics, gaining her MSc in Political Philosophy with a thesis on Socrates. Later she moved to Cyprus and landed a job with the AMER research firm.

She worked for AMER from 1991 to 1999, including two years as manager of its custom research department in Dubai, one year on secondment to Unilever in Dubai and two years as manager of the agency's Moscow office.

During her time with AMER it became part of the ACNielsen network, and when Nicholas left Russia it was to take charge of Nielsen in the Netherlands, where she stayed for three years. For the last of the three years she was also responsible for the agency's Belgian operations.

This career success did not prevent her from having a private life. Married to a Canadian former army officer who now works on the marketing side of Nielsen, she is the mother of a four-year-old daughter.

In October last year she was made Area Vice President, UK and Ireland. This was part of a general reorganisation of Nielsen's European structure in the course of which 18 countries were divided into two groups, each under an Executive Vice President and each comprising three areas.

Heading one group is Glen Cox. Reporting to him in Brussels are Eleni Nicholas, Siegfried De Smedt, Area Vice President for Belgium, France and the Netherlands, and Johan Sjöstrand, whose Nordic bailiwick consists of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

The other group is headed by Mario Leeser, Nicholas's predecessor in Nielsen's Oxford office, who is now also Brussels-based. The three areas reporting to him are: a. Germany, Austria and Switzerland; b. Spain and Portugal; c: Italy, Greece, Turkey and Israel. In another piece of reorganisation, Nielsen Media Research, which for years has been a separate company operating only in North America, is being reunited with the media side of ACNielsen.

One of the practical effects of this move, ordered by VNU, the Dutch publishing group that now owns both Nielsen companies, is to remove media research from Nicholas's control. She does not, for example, have anything directly to do with the television audience measurement contract recently re-awarded to Nielsen in Ireland.

That nevertheless leaves her responsible for about 600 people, located in Birmingham, Harrogate, Newport and Dublin, as well as Oxford. Their activities include retail sales measurement, which constitutes the lion's share of ACNielsen's work, and Homescan, the electronic system for tracking consumer purchasing behaviour.

According to Nicholas Homescan has in the past year been doing well in Britain, as indeed has the whole company. A particular success has been the recent agreement with Boots the Chemists whereby the latter supplies the agency with continuous scanning information for inclusion in its Health and Beauty Care services in the UK and Ireland. Business growth must to some extent be taken on trust, however, since Nielsen does not publish detailed country-by-country results.

According to the latest available Companies House figures, its UK turnover in the year 2000 was over 51.2 million, up by about 12.5% on the previous year.

Assuming almost any plausible growth rate for 2001, it looks as if Nielsen is the UK's fifth largest research agency, in domestic turnover terms, behind Taylor Nelson Sofres, Research International, NOP and Millward Brown.

Unlike the other four companies, though, Nielsen does not provide information for the annual turnover table published by the BMRA (British Market Research Association). This is because for the past several years it has declined to belong to the trade association.

The reason for that is said by insiders to be Nielsen's belief that membership does not give value for money. Whatever the truth of that, there is a widespread impression that the company's original decision was at least partly motivated by the wish not to be seen to have lost its former regular second place in the financial pecking order of UK research firms.

Will Nielsen under Eleni Nicholas join the BMRA? It is not, she replies, a matter to which she has up till now given any thought. Her main priority since her arrival in Oxford has been to get to know the clients.

However, she is certainly in favour of adopting a more extravert public relations policy. This presumably means that her own name and face, at present hardly known outside her company, will become familiar to a much wider circle.

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