About Us 

UM is a global media agency committed to empowering brands to their full potential of growth through the power of patterns by opening a brand’s aperture and rejecting black-and-white marketing decisions. As the leading global media network in IPG Mediabrands, UM operates in over 100 countries, with more than 3,000 people serving a roster of global clients including American Express, General Mills, Emirates, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co, Dyson, Enterprise holdings, Upfield, Eat Takeaway.com and Mattel. For more information, please visit uk.umww.com

Role Description 

This role sits within our Insight team. We exist to help our clients understand their marketplaces and brand perceptions better. We sit at the heart of our agency, working closely with all agency teams. We provide provocative thinking, bringing a fresh perspective to our clients’ questions. We bring a growth mindset and are solutions focused, ultimately creating insights that spur action.  

When tackling clients’ business challenges, we are methodology-agnostic and utilise a variety of techniques, ensuring our approaches are fit for purpose to answer our clients’ questions.    

Away from our paid client projects, our award-winning thought leadership series, “UK by UM”, shines a light on stereotypes that exist in society today, highlighting the role of advertising and media in understanding and engaging diverse audiences in an effective way.   

A core part of our paid research offering is quantitative research (e.g. campaign evaluation studies, brand & communications trackers and segmentations), as well as large-scale strategic studies such as category usage and attitude studies. Experience and proficiency in quantitative research is therefore essential.   

Further to quant, we also frequently undertake qualitative studies. We are committed believers to the importance of framing statistical analysis in an emotional and attitudinal context. 

This role is a maternity leave cover position, in which you will sit in a team with 3 other researchers. You will be a lead researcher on research projects and will not have line management responsibilities. You will have experience in delivering large and complex quant studies.  

Key Responsibilities

• Leading ad-hoc and longitudinal brand tracking research studies (from initial proposal and questionnaire design all the way through to presenting the findings to our clients) 

• Able to take a brief from internal or external clients and to design research proposals and present output to clients in a compelling way 

• Deliver revenue targets, reporting accurately to key contacts in Finance team 

• Establish key relationships in the agency in order to to identify key opportunities to support clients in new ways 

• Lead multiple projects at once 

• Write questionnaires, discussion guides, manage fieldwork etc. 

• Experience moderating qualitative fieldwork, and reporting it, would be valuable but not essential 

• Have positive relationships with our third-party suppliers 

• You will also be proficient in how to run campaign evaluation studies (Pre vs. Post), as well as in continuous brand and communications tracking 

• Promote the role of research and data as part of the agency media planning process and demonstrate an understanding of UM’s suite of tools 

• Support agency new business pitches 

• Ensure that all projects are delivered to to agreed budgets and timesheets are inputted regularly 

• Identify new methodologies that can be delivered to UM clients 

Desired Skills & Experience

• Experienced in quantitative research ideally in a media agency, market research agency or client-side research role 

• Client management experience; commercial experience working to targets. Ability to write proposals, questionnaires and debriefs  

• You will be an independent worker, confident enough to make your own decisions 

• You will be ready to manage positive client relationships autonomously 

• You will have strong analytical and creative problem solving skills  

• You will have good accuracy in your analysis – and take pride in doing so.  

• You will be keen to be an active member of our agency’s culture and community, and will be energetic in being a visible ambassador for our team within the agency.  

• You will understand the power of data – in all its forms and origins – and will value key datasets as additional lenses onto human behaviour 
• You will be passionate about interesting ways of visualising data when reporting (one of our team’s philosophies is – ‘beyond the bar chart’).  

Nice-to have 

• Experience In qualitative research  

• Experience In social media research