Jamie Clarke – Managing Director – France, Netherlands & UK – TolunaID
As TolunaID UK’s Managing Director, I’m fortunate to work closely with clients across the insight agency and consultancy landscape. These relationships give me a front row seat to the priorities, pressures, and progress shaping our industry. I hear what’s keeping people up at night, what’s changing in their client conversations, and where they see the greatest potential for growth.
Last month, we brought many of these voices together at the TolunaID Summer Event in London. It was an afternoon of shared insight, expert discussion and (fortunately) sunshine. The conversations confirmed what I’ve already been hearing from clients across the agency and consultancy world: the insight industry is in a period of flux.
Insight firms are navigating complex challenges, from the rise in bots and survey fraud and the impact of generative AI on research delivery to squeezed budgets and shifting expectations from end clients. At the same time, the pace of innovation continues to accelerate, bringing new tools, new thinking, and new possibilities.
In this environment, partnership really matters. That’s why we’ve doubled down, focusing even more on how we support our clients and work alongside them day to day. For us, that means being more than just a supplier:
- We’re offering tailored quality consultations to help clients stay ahead of emerging threats.
- We’re supporting clients with pitch tools and insight to help win new business.
- We’re continuing to invest in our proprietary panel to ensure scale and consistency.
- We’re developing tools like HarmonAIze Personas, which use synthetic respondents (built from anonymised, first-party data sourced from our proprietary panel) to help clients test, optimize, and anticipate consumer preferences faster and more accurately than ever before.
We’re also committed to being open and transparent. At the event, our Global Head of Quality, Marie Hense, and Head of Labs at System1, Will Headley, hosted a session that pulled back the curtain on what’s really happening behind the scenes in survey data. From ‘Systematic Swindlers’ running coordinated fraud operations, to ‘Half-Hearted Hobgoblins’ who simply lose interest mid-survey, these challenges call for a layered, tech + human approach with intelligent survey design and sophisticated fraud detection – one that protects data quality without punishing genuine respondents.
So yes, things are shifting, but if there’s one thing the event reinforced, it’s that by working closely together and keeping quality and innovation front of mind, we’re well placed to tackle these challenges through genuine partnership.
