White Papers

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Getting Real About Prediction in Marketing Research

By Jan Hofmeyr, International Director of Innovation, Synovate Brand and Communications Practice, Cape Town

I begin this paper with a meta-analysis of the predictive performance of customer satisfaction, purchase intention, and advertising recall. I show that it is poor. Developments in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology help us to understand why. I suggest two routes to improvement: first, through the development of better advertising diagnostics using a new measure of emotional engagement coupled to text mining tools; and second, through the development of a new measure of attitudinal equity based on the Zipf distribution. I finish the paper with a brief discussion about the conservatism of our industry and suggest the need for some changes in orientation.


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Brand Value Creation, Communications and Equity

Prepared By Jannie Hofmeyr and Ged Parton Director of Innovation and CEO respectively, Synovate Brand and Communications Practice.

This is a great time to be in marketing research. The opportunities for both improvement and for changing the way things are done, are huge. We've put this document together to summarise our current thinking on a range of issues. What follows, therefore, is the framework which informs our practice and our offer.


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Marketing Beyond the Monkey

By Christophe Fauconnier and Charles Skinner

Brands have become big business and are invited deeper and deeper into our lives. They have moved beyond the public sphere and are becoming more intimate with their users. More than ever, we are speaking about love markers, Iconic markers, emotional branding, and archetypal brands (we could go on). But are these just fancy ways of talking about creating brand appeal, and making brands more important than they really are?


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From Word of Mouth to Word of Mouse? Or: Are your brands best served by gossip?

By Jan Callebaut of Synovate Censydiam

Even before appearing in court for alleged plagiarism, author Dan Brown topped the bestseller list with four of his novels. An editor of a leading Belgian newspaper suggested that this was not the effect of marketing efforts but rather of word of mouth promotion. How can companies use this marketing technique to their advantage?


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