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Tim
Callahan
President
ACNielsen North America
Every year has its share of interesting events, and 2004 has been no exception. Our wartime economy has shown some signs of improvement, but employment is not as robust as had been expected. Our elections were completed without too much controversy, and we actually knew who our commander-in-chief was by the next day. Rising healthcare costs caused a run for the border and on Canadian pharmacies. A simple “wardrobe malfunction” caused a major shift in the ways media outlets thought about free speech. And of course, consumers in droves learned how to lose weight by eating more bacon.
ACNielsen has also had our share of exciting events. Our Homescan team has delivered MegaPanel, growing to 91,000 panelists in 2004, with more than 40 clients signed on. Our Homescan MegaPanel initiative allows us greater depth and breadth of understanding consumers and their behavior in and out of home. Our intended progress to 125,000 consumers is also on target, and we will start seeing the benefits of this expansion in 2005.
We expanded our retail coverage to better meet your needs, developing tracking solutions for high-growth channels including club, dollar, do-it-yourself and pet. Furthermore, we expanded our convenience channel to align to the NACS universe; doubled our drug channel sample; and worked hard to sign new retail cooperators, providing you access to key new accounts such as Family Dollar, Duane Reade, the Couche-Tard convenience store family and Office Depot.
We also created LabelTrends, a product to help you understand how manufacturers are positioning products on retail shelves by measuring what is
on—and in—the package.
The web continues to become ever more integral to business, and we are
taking the lead by migrating the concepts of our industry-leading NITRO application to the web-based Answers Interactive™. And our What's in Store product was built to provide manufacturer sales teams with key performance indicators over the web to measure speed-to-shelf, distribution and pricing performance at the store level.
Our focus on being “One VNU” is still a strong underlying driver of what we do. This issue of Consumer Insight highlights our latest testing that combines our media measurement capabilities with our consumer panelists (as well as outside partners) to deliver new, never-before-seen capabilities in out-of-home media measurement and consumption analysis.
Next year will continue our leadership role in the industry by continuing to provide the information you need to understand your customer—the consumer. For both our manufacturer and retailer clients, this means building
on our past successes; continuing to strengthen our client service capabilities;
and providing the highest-quality, most accurate information delivered where and when you need it.
Many of these exciting tools, and much more, will be discussed at our Consumer 360 conference, March 30-April 1, 2005. This industry-leading event will educate, challenge and energize you for the year, and give you a deeper understanding of today's shopper. I encourage you to register now at www.consumer360.com.
Finally, I would like to extend a sincere Thank You for your support in 2004. Not just for your business, but also for your helping us become a better
organization. We have listened to the issues you face and focused our efforts against them.
As always, we will keep you updated on all the exciting events happening here at ACNielsen and VNU, and we hope to have you continue to be a part of it. Best wishes for the holidays and may you have
a safe and prosperous 2005.
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