Opinion Leaders will be researching the views of most of Australia’s leading opinion formers over the next two years.

Financial Services
Our first survey was conducted over the summer of 2004/5 amongst leading Business & Finance journalists and covered their views on the performance of 39 of Australia's leading institutions. This yielded much fascinating information on the performance of, not just the "four pillars" and their close challengers especially St George, but also the more recently launched mortgage brokers as well as some of the longer established fund management groups. Subsequent surveys have shown how quickly the performance of many institutions can change. Contact us for more details

Motoring
The first survey of motoring journalists took place over the Winter of 2005. The fourth annual survey will be conducted in June 2008 and again there are many interesting trends, particularly in the environmental arena - a key area of concern in this highly competitive market place.

Corporate Social Responsibility
This topic is very much to the fore at present, with many of the big issues  such as global warming appearing in the headlines. Our inaugural report on this area focusses on how the CSR policies of big corporates affects the investment decisions of various opinion leaders including retail shareholders, fund managers and the media.. The first report was published last year with the follow-up report scheduled for Autumn 2009. Click here for more details.

The Responding Samples
Deliberative samples are selected in consultation with acknowledged industry experts including subscribers and questionnaires are designed to engage their interest over an interview that can take between 60 and 90 minutes to complete.

The Measures Used
Opinion Leaders has developed a range of quantitative measures to benchmark organisations over a number of key performance indicators (KPIs). This is supported by a qualitative element, exclusive to each syndicate member, which analyses why they obtained the ratings they did.

Media Relations
One of the KPIs that we measure is media relations effectiveness. Most big corporations devote considerable budgets to servicing the needs of journalists, not for altruistic reasons, but because of the contribution this can make to the bottom line. One of the outputs from Opinion Leaders research into this audience is a league table of all the leading institutions’ success within sector, in servicing these journalists. While big budgets can undoubtedly play a part in gaining favourable press from this audience, there are a host of other influential factors involved, some of which  might seem a little surprising at first sight.