Research Partnership Senior Director and market research veteran Andrew Stokes has been appointed Chief Commercial Officer and will lead the global commercial and client engagement functions within the business. Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in the industry and joined the company a few years after it was founded. He has been instrumental in driving considerable growth amongst the company’s global client base over the past two decades.
This newly appointed role has been created to deliver incremental value to our clients, through optimizing engagement and strategic partnerships across our global clients. Our focus is on delivering an optimal mix of sector expertise, knowledge, innovation and technology from across RP to every client engagement, so that we can best address the business challenges in hand.
Having both a key account management and new business focus, the commercial team will connect clients with multidisciplinary experts across the business, and also leverage parent company Inizio’s wider consultative and end-to-end marketing services when needed.
Director Claire Ajdukiewicz, who recently joined Research Partnership, will be a key member of the team, as will Ed Bell, Business Development Manager. Claire will support Andrew in optimizing the client engagement offering by harnessing her experiences at competitor agencies and client-side exposure. Together, they will operate globally across all Research Partnership services providing sales support and guidance to client-facing teams.
Commenting on Andrew’s appointment, CEO Gareth Phillips said, “We are delighted that Andy has accepted this position, which is critical to driving increased value to clients as we continue to scale. Andy is a respected Director who has driven many important client-service initiatives, most recently establishing an agile proposal response unit to ensure best-in-class solutions are presented to each client challenge. I look forward to working with him as we roll out our commercial strategy in the coming months.”
Andy said, “I’m really excited about taking on this role – it provides me with an amazing opportunity to connect the vast RP / Inizio talent with our client’s increasingly diverse needs and make sure we continue to deliver the quality that we are renowned for.”
