Do better!

Column Lucas Hulsebos – CEO DVJ Insights

It will be difficult for us to top 2018. A year where DVJ Insights won a lot of prizes due to our innovative take on research. We were crowned agency of the year and received an FD Gazelle for our consistent growth over the past year. A year to be proud of. But above all, a year not to look back on for too long.

The driver behind our success has to do with 2 fundamental things. On one hand, it’s our passion for research and the possibility to help our clients make better decisions. On the other hand, it’s the continuous need to make research better and relate to the current time. Because innovation is so important and is engraved deeply in our DNA, we’ve crowned 2019 as the year of innovation. Supporting our client’s innovations and innovating our own way of working. But also, through our new Brand Growth theme for 2019: The role of innovation on Brand Growth.

Unfortunately, we see the need in market research to keep things consistent, the most important reason being that you won’t have anything to compare your data to. And yes, it’s true. Re-starting a trend or benchmark takes courage. If there is something that limits innovation, it has to be the need for consistency. Within DVJ we always try to learn from yesterday and today, with the purpose to do it better tomorrow. And if that means that things need to change, then we do it, we change it. Nothing trumps talking about change. We’re constantly reminded at congresses. But the reality is, not a lot of companies do it. The best compliment we received last year is that DVJ is the perfect example of a company that not only talks about change and innovation, but actually does it.

Personally, I find it great to see that our developments catch on. We’re no longer the only agency in the Netherlands with a real ‘Agile’ platform. There are more following. But the question is which platform is helping the ‘non’-researcher, without it turning into a Do-It-Yourself debacle. Once again there’s a huge difference between being able to talk better, or just doing better. Therefore, I hope we use 2019 to do better. We can talk about it again after.