AS the financial world crumbled, marketing spending tumbled and entrepreneurial eyes around the globe were glued to television screens, behind the scenes at business news channel CNBC, Alison Bull had to produce the research to keep advertisers investing.
After four months, her boss left and she became head of research for the pan-European operation, reporting to the vice-president of sales.
CNBC is a financial and business news channel broadcast all over the world, battling it out with Bloomberg and CNN for advertisers. Alison, who grew up in Willington, says: "The viewers were high net-worth individuals from across Europe, a group much more difficult to research than people who watch ITV, where I'd been previously."
She also rubbed up against the age-old media issue of friction between advertising and editorial departments.
"One of the biggest challenge was getting the editorial team to understand how research could help make the product better," says Alison.
"We had to find out how senior financial professionals in Europe consumed media throughout the day in order to deliver value to them and advertisers.
"We found that, even though people didn't make decisions based on our market ticker at the bottom of the screen, it needed to be there because it gave the channel credibility.
"Looking at where and when high net-worth individuals go on holiday led to more focus on travel and tourism advertising on the channel.
"As consumers spent more time on the internet, spend shifted and we produced packages with CNBC.com and started producing more branded content rather than conventional 30-second slots."
However, when Alison and her partner, also from Derby, had their first child, the decision was made to return to their home town, away from the hurly-burly of London.
Alongside carrying out freelance research work for Dres Consulting for clients such as the BBC, Eurosport and the Economist, Alison has also set up Looking Glass Research.
She says: "There are very few people in this area who have my background and I thought that there was a gap in the market.
"People who have professional research carried out prior to launching a new product or service will be able to produce a better sales strategy."
It was while still a student, that Alison had her first introduction to professional market research. She carried out some work for Derby surveyor Stephen Salloway at the turn of the millennium, analysing the potential for new property developments in and around Derby.
Her interest in research led her to study a master's degree in marketing and advertising, producing a dissertation on ethnic minorities' media consumption habits.
In 2002, this experience helped her land a job at media consultancy Billets.
She says: "It was my first media analysis role and was all about looking at quality of media against its cost and the quality of the media buy within those channels.
"The quality of the media buy means the positioning of an advert within a programme, whether it's in the centre or the end break, which programmes were used and the effectiveness of reaching the right target audience groups. I worked with a number of big retail brands, auditing how effective their campaigns were.
"It was interesting work but I wanted to get to grips with consumer research."
Alison got her chance with a move to ITV in 2005 to work on the production research team that was involved in studying audience behaviour and using that to maximise viewing figures and, by extension, keeping advertisers happy.
She says: "The work we carried out on shows like Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and Parkinson informed decisions on which guests would be interviewed in which slots and when to have musical acts on."
Television ratings come from the Broadcasters Audience Research Board and are as important to advertisers as to programme producers.
Alison says: "They helped us understand about the demographics of audiences for different programmes. For more detailed information, we would set up focus groups and get feedback from people watching the shows."
The BARB ratings, important as they are for advertisers, are likely to be superceded by more accurate measures of what people are watching on television. Sky TV has its own system for measuring who is watching what and when through its own technology.
And, in the world of superfast broadband, the possibility of knowing exactly what everyone is watching, rather than a sample of a few thousand people, becomes a distinct reality.
Alison says: "Inevitably, there is a big shift towards online advertising but advertisers have to be more creative as consumers do not want to be bombarded with pop-up ads.
"Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are important but assessing the value of that audience is not easy.
"Ten thousand 'likes' on Facebook does not necessarily mean extra sales, it is how you engage with those people and, with Twitter, the quality of followers is more important than the quantity because it is possible to simply buy followers.
"The skill is in integrating social media into your other communications strategies."
