Finalists revealed for the Audience Award -
MRS Annual Conference 2026
12 May 2026

The MRS Annual Conference 2026: Research on the Edge took place in March. Votes for the audience’s favourite session were collected via the post-event survey, and the top three contributions can now be revealed.

The winner of the MRS Annual Conference 2026 Audience Award will be announced at the MRS Excellence Awards on 5 June.

 1.    5 days in May: how market research helped win the Second World War

Alex Johnston, Commercial Director, STRAT7 Jigsaw

This session revisited a pivotal moment in British history: the five days in May 1940 when the fate of the nation, (arguably the world) hung in the balance, and how market research played a significant role in shaping history.

Pioneering qualitative research methods gauged public sentiment and brought the voices of everyday people to decision-makers for the first time.

2.    Keeping it real (still): how synthetic and human approaches together can build authenticity and impact

Robin Queripel, Global Insights Manager, Sage

Chris Barnes, President, Escalent

Risham Nadeem, Innovation Director, C Space

Take a first look at C Space and Sage’s synthetic respondent exploration. This session shared early thinking, design principles, reflections from live experimentation and explored how synthetic respondents, when built from real human stories, could redefine how we scale empathy.

Hear about initial findings from trials that help answer what forms of synthetic data could help solve the problem of recruiting nice or hard-to-recruit audiences with losing authenticity and how to train synthetic respondents on real community data so they reflect human complexity.

 3.   ReCLASSified: a cross-industry mission to beat media and research’s addiction to ABC1s

Laura Rowe, Managing Partner, OMD UK (Chair)

Panel:

Jon Puleston, Chief Methodologist, Ipsos

Jennifer Carey, Director of Media & Effectiveness, Channel 4

Caroline Clear, Client Strategy Controller, ITV

ReCLASSified unites agencies and industry bodies across media and research, in a bid to find an improved alternative to the outdated socio-economic grouping (SEG) system. The speakers from across media and research discuss why SEG is no longer fit for purpose, what an alternative to SEG could look like and possible solutions to get people to pivot to a new system that would deliver better growth for brands and better understanding through research.