Welcome to AURA

Review of 2024 

By AURA Chair, Ruth Hinton

The Cambridge Dictionary has chosen ‘manifest’ as their word of the year for 2024; the Collins word of the year is ‘brat’; Oxford University Press have gone with ‘brain rot’! 

But for AURA, I’m going for ‘support’ as our word of 2024. Not so zeitgeisty and buzzy admittedly, and if you’re familiar with AURA - the UK’s biggest community exclusively for clientside researchers - then you’ll probably already recognise some reasons why. But I think we got particularly supportive this year - and couldn’t we all do with a bit of that, in the year that was for many a slog of ‘survive til ‘25’…

We recently researched our researchers (thank you Vaughan Flood and the team at Flood & Partners for this research and Viv Harrison for guiding it on behalf of the AURA team) - and ‘supportive’ was the top word used by members to describe AURA. As the great marketing guru Dolly Parton says, ‘find out who you are and do it on purpose’ - and we in the AURA leadership team fully intend to lean into our supportive positioning.

In that research, we were also delighted to find out that 75% of members not only would recommend AURA - they already have. It’s great to know we have so many supportive advocates in our community.

We also heard that most of our members have a role that covers more than market research - such as trends analysis, competitor intelligence and data analytics - and over a quarter have international roles covering more than the UK.  Knowing this will help us provide even more relevant content, to support our members in these broad roles. 

Our members describe their approach to AI as ‘curious’, and the majority are ‘exploring’ rather than ‘using’ AI at the moment. Our last AURA event of the year - in partnership with The AQR - was therefore spot on in showcasing practical applications of AI for better insight: another example of relevant real life examples, aimed squarely at supporting our members, even though they work in a wide variety of sectors.

Moving on from our research, to our team

Our team of volunteers has expanded in 2024 - and this is what keeps AURA special, because we are run by members, for members: keeping quality and relevance high, and costs low. So thank you to everyone who has taken part in a sub-committee in 2024 - attracting new members, judging some of the AURA Awards and curating great content for all of our events. We really appreciate the extra help and fresh perspectives. 

We also welcomed two new volunteer directors, officially elected during our AGM. Viv Harrison has done an amazing job for nearly 5 years, always a positive and supportive voice for our members and all the other Directors; always offering guidance and plans to make the AURA experience better for all.  She has now stood down as an AURA Director; so we send a big warm welcome to Irene Grovenstein who is now leading on member engagement and retention; and to Maddie Shields, leading on attracting new members and explaining what it’s like to join. We hope they will enjoy being part of our leadership team. 

In our support team, Suzanne Lugthart had been leading our marketing and member communications for more than 5 years - and when she stood down in the summer, we thanked her with a special AURA Award for all her hard work and super efficiency in bringing the friendly AURA brand to life. We have welcomed Julia Joskey to take over this role - who is off to a flying start with lots of engaging content and updates, and thanks to both of them for a super-smooth handover. Thanks also for their excellent ongoing support to Tom Kerr, leading our events as both the friendly host and liaising with all our wonderful speakers in preparation; and Richard Drury, keeping our finances in order and onboarding another host of new members this year.

Regarding our activities

The Working Well Together Charter - to encourage better client-agency partnerships - was launched this year and it has really taken off, with a growing list of clientside and agency supporters. We’re grateful to Quirks, the ICG, the AQR, the MRS Senior Client Council, the MRS People and Talent Group, the MRS &more conference and the IMA for helping us spread the word - and there is much more to come from our cross-sector WWT Team next year.

But the highlight of any AURA year is always the time we spend together - with members supporting each other by sharing their experience and advice. During the last financial year, we hosted - or co-hosted - 9 in-person events and 19 webinars; and scored an amazing 4.25 out of 5 on average from our members for the quality of these events. And our AURA Awards Dinner and our member attendance at the Quirks London event were both our biggest yet! 

So as we head into 2025 - and amazingly, AURA’s 60th year! -  a final thank you on behalf of the AURA Directors (Ruth, Irene, Louise Sharpe, Maddie, Steven Darby and Tim Steere) to the literally hundreds of insight folk who in 2024 shared their stories and their learning with our AURA community. Someone said recently that the research sector has ‘always relied on the kindness of strangers’ - in the form of our participants - and this is true of our supportive clientside community too. Long may it continue!