Asia expansion for The Insights People as it plans to double headcount
The Insights People is growing its Asia footprint as it expands into three new territories.
The Manchester company, which provides market intelligence around kids, parents, and families, is accelerating its international growth, which will also include the opening of an Asia-Pacific office later this year.
The announcement comes after the company secured £500,000 investment from DSW Angels, the venture capital arm of Dow Schofield Watts in August last year to scale growth.
Speaking to TheBusinessDesk this week, CEO and founder Nick Richardson revealed plans to expand into Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, and South Korea following its success in China, India and Australia in the last two years.
The recent expansion takes the total number of countries it serves clients in to 17.
Said Nick: “We’re fortunate to be growing in these circumstances and have had a good start to 2021 as we continue to be proactive.
“Covid has changed consumer behaviour and it’s had an impact in all aspects of our lives and because everything is changing, research and data has become more important. Covid has accelerated a lot of trends and people want to know what those are.”
Recent insights have revealed video games and YouTube are high growth areas for licensed purchases in the UK, when compared to other media formats.
Amongst 6-9 year olds, 2020 saw a 39 per cent and 36 per cent year-on-year increase in gaming and YouTube related purchases, respectively. In contrast, TV and film purchases both grew by less than 10 per cent.
“The world has changed so much and what that means for brands and retailers from an advertising, product development and marketing perspective is significant,” said Nick.
The Insights People was founded by Nick in 2017 to provide real insights in real-time, an area that is important with the changes in legislation to provide children with far greater protection.
The company surveys 360,000 children and 170,000 parents globally and their data and insights help inform client’s advertising, content, licensing, marketing, product and sales strategies.
Clients include Warner Bros, Formula One, Lego, Bic, Amazon and it has recently signed up Burger King.
Nick said: “Many of our clients are global and we are providing a global solution.
“They want to know what the market trends are for their future decision making.
“We’ve seen huge changes in legislation which are giving children a lot more protection which is fantastic. What we are also seeing now is how children are having an impact in terms of how families are spending their time and money.
“There has been a massive change in the last year due to the pandemic and driven by technological advancements. Children now have access to devices enabling new trends and crazes to spread very quickly and clients want to understand what’s influencing them and why.”
Nick revealed plans for 2021 include opening an APAC office to better serve clients while also growing its team in Manchester. It has already recruited 14 new people this year taking the staff total to 54 with plans to recruit up to a further 40.
As a result, the company has outgrown its Northern Quarter site and is looking to move to larger premises to accommodate future growth.
Nick added: “The funding from DSW Angels has allowed the business to scale and bring more people on board.
“In recent weeks we also launched Media Mix Compass, our media planning tool to assist brands and agencies in the planning, monitoring and evaluating of their media campaigns.
“We’ve also been working in collaboration with several clients such as Warner Brothers and Disney who have all contributed to the design and development of a number of new tech products that we’re launching and we’re excited about that.
“This year has started strong and we are confident of continued growth.”
