It's not easy keeping a thoroughbred in the stable. And it's the same with the veteran campaigner Angus Reid.

Reid, whose name is synonymous with market research and polling, has been offtrack and out of the public spotlight in recent years as his activities have been restricted by a non-compete agreement from the sale of Angus Reid Group to Paris-based Ipsos SA six years ago.

However, Reid is now free to return to the game he loves and the 58-year-old is champing at the bit with his new venture, Angus Reid Strategies.

Although technology has dramatically changed the game since Reid last toiled in the market research and polling industry, the CEO of Angus Reid Strategies and its affiliate, Vision Critical, is gearing up for the new era in market research and bent on carving out his niche in web-based research.

Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
Angus Reid is jumping back in the market research and polling arena with the launch of Angus Reid Strategies.

Judging by Reid's stellar track record in the industry, it may be unwise to bet against his comeback bid to take the online market research space by storm.

1. What was your boyhood dream?

"It was to play professional baseball. I never realized that dream, unfortunately. But I was always very mathematical. I liked mathematics and the idea of doing something in mathematics was appealing to me."

2. Why did you study sociology in university?

"There was a sense back in the '60s that maybe this was a science and a discipline that was going to help you understand how to make the world a better place. There was a little bit of idealism. I don't know if it was misplaced or not. That's where I really learned the art and the science of survey research that I've ended up applying through most of my career."

3. What motivated you to get into the market-research business?

"I was in Winnipeg teaching at the University of Manitoba and I saw a lot of people servicing market research out of Toronto. There really wasn't any market research industry in Western Canada and I thought we really needed something. So I took an unpaid leave of absence from the university back in '79 and started this little company originally called CanWest Survey Research. We quickly developed operations in Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver, and our claim to fame was that we were going to service Western Canada with this little business. That's how the whole thing began."

4. Were the early years a struggle?

"Yeah. I didn't have any startup capital. Everyone laughed at me because they thought that if you weren't in Toronto, you couldn't be successful in market research. The industry was heavily focused on Toronto. People actually really laughed that I was based in Winnipeg. Also, my level of business know-how at the time was somewhat limited, to say the least. So all of those factors coincided to make the first few years an interesting struggle as I learned how to run a business, do marketing and all of the other things that are core elements of a successful business."

5. One of your early clients was former prime minister John Turner when he was running for the Liberal leadership in 1984. What was he like to work with?

Angus Reid

"I never really got to know John Turner all that well. He couldn't decide whether he wanted to have a new team around him or whether he wanted to have the old Pierre Trudeau (Liberal) team around him. So as a result, even though I was his pollster, the guy that was the previous pollster to Trudeau, a guy named Martin Goldfarb, was also around a lot. So it was very hard to get (Turner) to make a decision on anything. He was a very indecisive guy and that was a little frustrating."

6. What was the foundation of your success in building the Angus Reid brand?

"No. 1, we owned the entire research toolbox. We had our own call centres in Winnipeg and then subsequently in Edmonton. We could do our own work. We didn't have to sub-contract things out. It'd be like a magazine owning its own printing presses. It gave us a lot of flexibility. No. 2, we had very good talent that we developed over the years. And, No. 3, we were lucky in that we were able to develop a strong brand name. It was not so much as a result of the Turner involvement, but after '84 I decided that we didn't really want to do any more political work. Instead, we decided to work with the media. We developed relationships with Southam (news service) and then later with the Globe and Mail and CTV. Those relationships put us in very good shape with respect to having a well-known brand in Canada."

7. Why did you sell your company (Angus Reid Group) in 2000?

"To be very crass about it, these people (Paris-based Ipsos SA) offered us an awful lot of money. I mean, they offered us almost $100 million and it was a very good price. We had developed strong operations across North America. I was interested in globalization and developing some joint ventures or some operations in Europe, so I met these people with Ipsos. They actually didn't want to do a joint venture, they wanted to buy us. So they made us an offer we couldn't refuse and I guess the rest is history. I wasn't looking to sell the company. I'm glad I did it at the time. I ended up doing this long-term non-compete (agreement), which I didn't have to do this long. But I thought I'd end up working with these guys for a lot longer than what turned out to be the case. Anyway, the industry has shifted gears and I'm very clearly now into the new part of the industry (online research). I would do the deal again and I think that I was ready for a bit of a break. Now, I'm ready to get back into things."

8. Can you talk about the lawsuit Ipsos-Reid brought against you?

"They took exception to a number of matters that involved my activities after I left the company. I would say their principal issue was that I became involved with Vision Critical, which is our software company and the sister company of Angus Reid Strategies, and that my involvement with Vision Critical somehow breached a restrictive covenant that I had with them. We took exactly the opposite position. We threatened to sue them, they sued us, it was all bull----. And the whole matter was settled. They attempted to win an injunction and lost. In essence, the matter was dropped after that and papers have since been filed in the B.C. courts essentially burying our differences forever."

9. What's the market like these days for telephone research?

"The golden age of telephone research has clearly passed us by. Now, about half of the research that is being conducted in Canada is being done online and that will probably grow even further. I suppose telephone research would be good if only respondents would co-operate with telephone interviewers but unfortunately that's become a bigger problem over the course of the last couple of years.

"I think people are just busier. I think the industry has lost some of its pizzazz. There's a lot of telemarketing that's going on that people now have less time for. I just think we're in a different era perhaps than we were in 20 years ago."

10. How do you enjoy it when a market researcher calls you during dinner hour?

"Well, I normally tell 'em to get lost. I did a market research interview the other day just because I hadn't done one for a while and I was wondering how it had changed. And it had all those problems of being repetitive, slow, and what was promised to be 10 minutes was, in fact, 25 minutes. And it was so poorly designed and again so absolutely repetitive that it just kind of left me shaking my head halfway through saying, 'How do I get out of this hell?' It was a company I bought this boat from. What is the brand name of my boat? Uhhh, Boston Whaler. I suppose it's one thing to call quickly and say, 'How are you going to vote in the next election?' and another thing to get involved with some of these long market research exercises."

11. What are you doing with your new market research venture, Angus Reid Strategies, and where do you plan to take it?

"In a nutshell, the new venture is a full-service market research company. We think there are a lot of companies out there that need the kind of research services and consulting services that we offer and we currently have offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. We're going to build this company out over the course of the next few months here in Canada and early in the New Year, we will put an office in New York and another office in San Francisco. So we see this as a continental market and plan to exploit the significant demand for research services in this market. It's a more competitive market than it's ever been, people want to get at how their products can best be positioned in this market, and that's where market research comes in. On the political side, we'll be doing more frequent rapid turnaround polling both in Canada and the U.S. on the usual issues that are of interest. We've got a Liberal leadership race coming down, we've got a minority government in Ottawa, we've got (political) fireworks in Alberta, so there's lots of stuff happening on the political front that will occupy our agenda."

12. How much of your business will be online research?

"We do some telephone research where we have to. I mean, it's not that we're trying to cloak ourselves only in online. But I'd say our main emphasis is going to be, where possible, looking for online solutions. That's because they're cheaper, they're more effective, at least when you look at respondent engagement. That survey that I did over the telephone that was 25 minutes could have been done online in about 10 minutes. We're going to service clients' needs using the best technology or the most appropriate technology but increasingly that is online."

13. Are you playing catchup a bit against your competitors in online research?

"Not really, because I've been CEO of Vision Critical for the last three years. We like to think we have the world's best software platform for online research and we've got lots of clients in Canada and the U.S. We're not starting this business with zero clients. We're starting with a $7-$10 million base of business and expanding it out from there. I'm frankly more comfortable with the position we're in today than, let's say, other players who've got one foot in the old world of telephone research and one foot in the new world and are kind of half pregnant in terms of how they're moving forward. We don't have any of the legacy issues that face some of the other companies that are out there. If I wasn't confident in what we're doing, I wouldn't have put a substantial investment in this company of my own money. How much? I'm not going to tell you."

14. What's your long-term vision for Angus Reid Strategies?

"I think we can develop a $40- to $50-million company fairly quickly here in North America and I'd like to do some global alliances so that we can do more international work.

"I kind of like the area of global public affairs and I think we'll be able to work in that arena in the next couple to three years. So it's onward and upward. My vision is to pull together a very, very talented group of research people and leaders. In Calgary, we've got Monique Morden, who's a veteran in the research industry who has joined us as senior vice-president and managing director of our Western Canada business. In Toronto, we've got a guy like Ed Morawski, whom I worked with back in the Angus Reid Group days and joined us from the New York office of Ipsos recently (as president and chief operating officer). We've also got to put some emphasis on branding and you'll be hearing about some very innovative polling that we're doing in the next little while. And we need to continue to emphasize some of the global partnerships we're doing and the strong software support from our sister company, Vision Critical. I think if we can pull those elements together we can emerge as a market leader as I did before. I've been through this once before but this time, we're trying to look at a new dynamic. This isn't just trying to develop what we had before."

15. Are you as excited about this venture as you were in your early years in the research business?

"In some respects, I'm more excited because in the early days I had my entire life and all of my equity tied up in a company. This time, I'm doing this because I want to do it. I can be much more focused on this as a company rather than something that is 100 per cent my life. And that balance is going to be a good thing."

16. Would you contemplate taking the company public?

"Well, sure. Nothing's off the table. Right now, we're just looking at building a great company and that's going to be the focus of my activity over the next three or four years. At that stage, we'll look at what the market looks like and, sure, a public offering is always on the table."

17. What's it like working with your two children in your business?

"Overall, it's a positive.

We try to run this as a corporate company. We've got an independent board of directors. This is definitely not a family business in that sort of traditional sense of a family business. On the Vision Critical side, my son (Andrew Reid is president of Vision Critical), who started that business, continues to be there. My daughter (Jennifer Reid), who was working with me back in the Angus Reid Group days, is an expert in online research. She has come over and joined me here and runs one of our divisions as an expert in that area. It's fun working with your kids."

18. How would you describe your management style?

"I like to think that I'm firm but inclusive and I put a lot of emphasis on participation. In any services-based company with really smart people, particularly in professional services, which is the essence of this company, you have to be able to lead cats. You've got to lead through selling it, rather than telling it. And you've got to lead by example and you've got to have a vision that people buy into. If you can get those combinations down right, I think that somehow miraculously at the end of the day people will tend to follow you."

19. After all these years in business, what drives you to continue to work and build a business?

"Well, I enjoy enterprise. During my time away (after selling Angus Reid Group), I spent six or seven months out at UBC (University of British Columbia) as a university professor again. I realized that even though I've got all of the credentials to spend as much time there as I want, being a loaner at the university is not my idea of fun. I like to develop and work with new enterprises. When you look at this combination of Vision Critical and Angus Reid Strategies, it's a young company. The average age would probably be 30 or 31 and I'm 58. I get a lot of personal fulfilment and enjoyment out of the chance to work with colleagues and with younger people and provide a little bit of grey hair. I like to take all that energy and give it some direction. It's not about the money. It's just about enjoying my job and enjoying the opportunity to form something where before there was nothing. Some people like to garden. I like to build companies."

20. When you reflect on your life and career, of what are you proudest?

"I think what we did with Angus Reid Group was quite an accomplishment, building something that people said was impossible to do and ending up with the largest company in our industry. I'm also proud that I've been able to develop a family that is working together well and getting along together well. On work and family fronts, I think things have gone quite well."

Angus Reid

* Title: Chairman/CEO, Angus Reid Strategies; CEO, Vision Critical.

* Born/Raised/Age: Regina/ Regina, Vancouver/58.

* Education: University of Manitoba, BA, master's (sociology); Carleton University, PhD.

* Career: Reid was the CEO and owner of Angus Reid Group from 1979 to 2001.

He was also founder of the company. He started Angus Reid Strategies in 2002 and became CEO of its affiliate, Vision Critical, in 2004.

* Accolades: Reid is a former recipient of the American Marketing Association's marketer of the year award and the Pacific Region entrepreneur of the year award. He has also been honoured with the distinguished career award by the Canadian Public Relations Society. He has honourary doctorates from the University of Manitoba and Simon Fraser University.

* First job: Professor, University of Manitoba.

* Drives to work in: Jaguar.

* Time Online: 20 hours per week.

* Pastime: Golf.

* Favourite TV show: The Shield.

* Last book read: London Fields, by Martin Amis.

Angus Reid Strategies

* Brass: Angus Reid, chairman/CEO; Ed Morawski, president/chief operating officer; Monique Morden, senior vice-president/managing director, Western Canada; Chris Ferneyhough, VP.

* Profile: Angus Reid Strategies is a full-service public opinion and market research company providing consulting and services to clients in North America with an emphasis on online research. The Vancouver-based company recently opened offices in Calgary and Toronto.

* Affiliate: Vision Critical, a company founded by Andrew Reid, Angus Reid's son, provides software and technology to Angus Reid Strategies.

* Ownership: Angus Reid and family members own more than 50 per cent of Angus Reid Strategies.

* Websites: www.angusreidstrategies.com, www.visioncritical.com

* Head Office: #700, 858 Beatty St., Vancouver, V6B 1C1.

* Phone/Fax: (604) 647-1985/647-1005.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)