Testimonials

Testimonials: Strategic Advice

“INFORMA's primary mission is to provide our clients with strategic advice, insights, actionable recommendations and conclusions that can inform and guide their decisions. The key to all successful plans begins with strategic vision. Informa's primary vision is to help clients maximize the outcome of their initiatives.
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Informa helped us understand the challenges and the opportunities facing the rapidly growing network of farmers’ markets in and around the Greenbelt.  The combination of insights from focus groups, individual interviews, and larger scale studies has provided us with a rich base for both analyzing where we are and planning for tomorrow.  Helene works collaboratively, and has been a valuable resource for our Network both in conducting the research and communicating the insights to stakeholders and the general public.  We appreciate her broad experience in food marketing, consumer intelligence and local agricultural issues, as well as her positive energy and commitment. We refer to the outcomes of the research on a regular basis, and, as a result, have acted on the research recommendations.

Anne Freeman
Project Manager
Greenbelt Farmers’ Market Network
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“I believe that your research will contribute to historic health reform and public policy change in Canada …your research is internationally groundbreaking, and has already been favourably received at Health Canada . ”

Rob Cunningham
Senior Policy Analyst
Canadian Cancer Society
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Informa conducted focus groups to help guide the launch of Mapleton’s new brand of ice cream and frozen yogurt  - they were really an eye opener!  They provided very good help in ensuring that we were connecting with shoppers in meaningful ways.  The things we learned from these skillfully conducted sessions were applied to the product descriptions, the packaging design elements and the promotion campaign. 

We again turned to Informa when Mapleton’s revised the pack designs. This time Informa conducted in- store interviews to test new packaging designs.  The guidance from this study helped Mapleton’s make the right decision with confidence.  The result is that our  new, distinctive  packaging has been the key to expanding our retail distribution networks.  Mapleton’s is now available to  happy customers across Canada. 

Informa provides a cost efficient service delivering important insights that have helped us make major decisions.  Helene has a deep understanding of the dairy product sector and the rapidly developing consumer market for organic food.  We also appreciate Helene’s skill for working collaboratively with our team. 

Martin de Groot
Owner
Mapleton Organic Dairy Inc.
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McConnell Weaver Communication Management has focused on leading edge social marketing in the broad spectrum of solid waste management for two decades. During that time we consistently have called upon Informa Market Research to provide the in-depth and measurement opinion research we’ve needed to develop sound, on-target communication strategies and programs. We’ve found that Informa’s extensive body of research on attitudes, perceptions and motivating factors provides value-added insights that benefit the work we do in promoting residential solid waste 3Rs.

Barbara McConnell, APR
President             
McConnell Weaver Strategic Communication  
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First Canadian Place’s Arts & Events Programs have evolved over the years to the point that they are winning international recognition.  Every year we present hundreds of events to thousands of people who either work at First Canadian Place or visit from throughout the downtown core.  Thanks to Informa we have been able to analyze and better understand our audiences’ needs and measure the benefits that this free programming contributes not only to our retailers and service providers but to the image of First Canadian Place.

Brenda Parres
Director Arts & Events
First Canadian Place   
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Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative (TREC) engaged Informa to guide our marketing and advertising campaigns for our new community owned, solar energy installations - SolarShare.  Informa worked with our team to develop and conduct an online measurement survey and focus groups.   These studies provided essential information and indepth insights in a cost efficient and thorough manner.  We also appreciate the value-added that Helene brought to the project with her broad knowledge of behaviour and perceptions related to the environment and ecological issues. 

Judith Lipp
Manager
TREC/SolarShare
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We were very impressed with Informa's excellent facilitation skills and their ability to involve different socio-economic and cultural communities in these discussions. The results of this research have helped us to refocus our efforts to overcoming the barriers. Greenest City 's Ontario Active & Safe Routes to School program worked with Informa Market Research on a Community Based Social Marketing project to identify and understand barriers to program participation. Informa's approach utilized focus groups and telephone interviews with both parents and staff at participating Ontario schools.

Jacky Kennedy
Provincial Coordinator
Active & Safe Routes to School
Greenest City Environmental Organization
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In 2001, the City of Hamilton’s solid waste master plan set a diversion goal of 65 percent to be achieved based on a series of strategic recommendations.  One of them was to implement, sustain and support public education.  Informa Market Research played an integral role in helping us touch base with residential curbside and multi residential recyclers.   The focus groups and measurement surveys Informa conducted on our behalf helped shed light on performance barriers and promotion and education content opportunities.  We appreciated Informa’s considerable social marketing expertise.  The application of these principles have helped drive up higher diversion for blue box and organic materials.
 
Dennis Guy
Master Recycler (formerly Project Manager, Outreach)
City of Hamilton

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Informa Market Research played a critical role by providing valuable indepth insights into potential consumer reactions to new technology that helps track substitution with lower value ingredients in foods using molecular tagging.

Helene quickly grasped our needs, working in close collaboration with a team of students and researchers from University of Guelph and University of Saskatchewan.  Her analyses  of the focus group learning was expertly presented in a detailed report with accompanying recommendations that reflect her impressive grasp of societal views about technology.  

Andreas Boecker, Dr. Sc. Agr.
Associate Professor
Department of Food, Agricultural & Resource Economics, FARE
University of Guelph