RealityMine, which enables marketers to capture and analyze media behavior, media consumption, ad exposure and more through mobile data collection, has named Jim Spaeth Chief Product Officer and Alice K. Sylvester Chief Growth Officer, effective immediately.
Spaeth and Sylvester were co-partners at Sequent Partners, a highly specialized brand and media consultancy with expertise in media and cross-media applications, survey research methods, data analytic techniques and statistical models. Sequent Partners, which was founded in 2003, led a number of high-profile industry projects designed to improve media inputs for marketing mix models.
Spaeth and Sylvester co-founded USA TouchPoints, a syndicated research service utilizing the methodology of the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising (IPA) in Britain, which addresses the growing challenges of understanding and acting upon the changing patterns of media use in the context of how people live their daily lives.
RealityMine provided the data collection technology for the IPA’s TouchPoints program, which led to the company acquiring USA TouchPoints in 2013. Spaeth and Sylvester have served as strategic advisors to RealityMine since the acquisition.
RealityMine combines their proprietary passive mobile metering technology with active eDiary and other in-the-moment survey tools that quantify the context of consumers’ lives and their media consumption behaviors. By the end of 2015, RealityMine will be capturing data from more than 50,000 people globally, representing more than 350,000 days of data and generating nearly 1,000,000,000 behavioral data points per year.
This data is used by companies to help them understand when consumers are most receptive to specific marketing messages, how consumers move along the path to purchase and what a “day in the life” of a target consumer is truly like.
“We are extremely pleased to have the founders of USA TouchPoints joining us – especially at a time when this powerful media planning tool is expanding globally,” said Garry Partington, RealityMine CEO. “Jim and Alice have truly been leaders and innovators in the field of consumer and media analytics and trusted advisors for quite some time. Their joining RealityMine, at a time of incredible growth for our business, could not be better timed.”
Prior to founding Sequent Partners, Spaeth served as President of The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) for seven years. Under his leadership, ARF expanded its scope to incorporate all aspects of market research practice on a global basis. Before joining ARF, Jim spent more than a decade developing new research tools to improve clients’ business performance. He has also led the media research and planning function at General Foods and Young & Rubicam. Spaeth is the co-author of Market Research Matters by Robert Duboff, as well as a frequent conference speaker and industry article contributor. He has served on the boards of a number of industry associations and holds a B.A. in Mathematics, an M.S. in Econometrics and a Ph.D. in Economics.
Prior to joining Sequent Partners in 2008, Sylvester held a variety of positions in research and planning at several major advertising agencies, including Senior Vice President, Account Planning Director, at DraftFCB. She has also worked with Young & Rubicam Inc. as Director of Brand Insights, Leo Burnett as Director of Brand Economics, J. Walter Thompson as Media Research Director and Tatham-Laird & Kudner (now Euro Tatham RSCG).
She is a past Chairman of the Board of The ARF, and a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Advertising Research and is also co-author of Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer, by Allen & Unwin and Kogan Page.
