Dr. Leigh Morris

Leigh came to market research from a background in social psychology. Following graduation he secured a position in the Unilever consumer psychology department, based in Bedford. As project director, he led a research programme to develop new methods for assessing the consumer appeal of disruptive innovations.

A move to London was accompanied by a new position in a global research agency, where Leigh applied his training in research design and advanced analytics to the specific area of segmentation. Having spent some years successfully building a segmentation team and offer, he then moved to T-Mobile International to gain further client-side experience.

In 2005 he founded Bonamy Finch, realising the ambition he had held for over ten years to start his own agency.

What’s the most interesting project you have worked on?

A project for the F.A. in England. We interviewed more than 10,000 people involved in football at grassroots level from amateur players to coaches. The RESPECT campaign came out of it.

When it comes to consumer insight, is less really more?

Well, companies can certainly get paralysis through analysis. But no – I don’t believe there is too much research – just too much research done for the wrong reasons...

Tell us a surprising statistic...

23% of people in the UK say they have served shop-bought food at a dinner party and pretended it was their own.

If you ruled the market research world for a day what would you do?

I’d commission a study to see if people do really love or hate Marmite, or if, as I suspect, people’s feelings towards it are normally distributed.

And if you hadn’t worked in research and analytics what would you be doing?

I played guitar in a band for a few years in my early twenties. I like to think that I would have had a career in music if things had fallen out a little differently. Or if I had ever been any good on the guitar.