ACNielsen is the world's leading marketing information provider, primarily serving manufacturers and retailers of FMCGs. The company has been operating in Ireland for over 50 years, providing marketing, sales, and category management insights to businesses here. Offering services in more than 100 countries, ACNielsen provides measurement and analysis of marketplace dynamics and consumer attitudes and behaviour. Clients rely on ACNielsen's services to understand competitive performance, to uncover new opportunities and to raise the profitability of their marketing and sales campaigns. ACNielsen Analytic Consulting helps clients address such key business issues as pricing, promotion, marketing mix, assortment and product rationalization, category placement, category structure and in-store, in-market auditing and testing.

With offices in Belfast and Dublin, as well as a dedicated Telephone Research Centre in Dublin, the all-Ireland operation of Ipsos MORI this year celebrates 20 years in the Irish marketplace. Today part of the worldwide Ipsos Group, the firm conducts market research across the public and private sectors, offering the full range of qualitative and quantitative research services, the latter using face-to-face, telephone, self-completion and web-based methodologies. It has an extensive and varied client base. Ipsos MORI was shortlisted as a finalist on the basis of work undertaken on behalf of Sanofi Pasteur MSD, a leading pharmaceutical company focused on the development and marketing of vaccines across Europe.

Tourism Ireland is the organisation responsible for marketing the whole of Ireland overseas as a tourist destination. Its role is to provide strategic leadership in international marketing and in the delivery of world-class marketing programmes focused on best prospects. Tourism Ireland also influences product quality and service delivery through the depth of understanding of overseas customers gathered through segmentation studies which identify Ireland's best prospects for tourism growth. The organisation employs 150 people in key source markets, Britain, USA and Canada, mainland Europe and Australia - as well as in Dublin and Coleraine here in Ireland. The team delivers targeted marketing programmes, and works in close cooperation with industry partners.