Meet the New MRA President
June 2008

Name: Jon Last
Title: VP Corporate Marketing, Research & Brand Development

1.) Tell us a little about your job.
Over the past seven years at Golf Digest Publications, I’ve had a unique opportunity, to integrate the traditional functions of a marketing department (strategic planning, market positioning, business analysis, promotion, database marketing, marketing strategy) with a full service marketing research firm. Our former President, who brought me into the company, shared the vision that advertisers were looking to media companies for more than just advertising opportunities. So we built a stand alone functionality that conducts qualitative and quantitative research and marketing consulting for companies in a variety of industries. The common link is a desire to gain greater insight into the minds of affluents and golfers. Our work traverses a wide scope from new product concept testing to brand perception studies to advertising effectiveness research and we’ve serviced a diverse array of categories from golf and travel to financial services, automotive, even food. Unlike most research functions in media companies we’re not at all about using syndicated research for support. Rather, we’re about illumination, by bringing our clients closer to the customers that they are trying to reach through our media.

2.) How long have you been in the industry?
I’ve always been around research. My initial forays in the public relations world, twenty years ago, utilized research to generate publicity for clients. I’ve always been fascinated with the power of marketing research to both drive informed business decisions and to sway public opinions.

3.) What made you choose this field of work?
Like many, I think that marketing research found me, as much as I found it. Going back to my days as a kid, memorizing statistics off the back of baseball cards, I’ve always loved the way that numbers can help tell a story. When I was at Wharton, I used to write a satirical column, which I would conclude each week with some quirky statistic that put the MBA experience into a more grounded perspective. When I got into my first post MBA job at the PGA, there really wasn’t a formal research function. Because I had interest in it, where others didn’t really want to deal with it, I embraced the opportunity, and built out our capabilities to where research not only drove business planning, but also became a significant platform from which we could tell the story of the growth of the golf industry at that time.

4.) What is your biggest accomplishment since you have been in the industry?
I’m so proud to see the MRA become a recognized leader in our profession and to be part of the group that has advanced that cause. Along with that, I could easily cite a number of studies that we’ve done for clients that really helped grow their businesses, but from a macro standpoint, I look back at the last seven years and take great pride in how we built our Research Resource Center, significantly growing that business, every year in both revenue, profitability and project volume.

5.) What is your favorite part about being a member of MRA?
The MRA is about lots of energetic people that care deeply for their profession and for each other. I think that this personal commitment that MRA members have for each other and our industry as a whole, make it unique from any other organization I have had the pleasure to be a part of. The MRA is where I learned so much about how to be good at what I do. But more importantly, it’s where I met those people that helped me to do it, and made life long friends in the process.

6.) As MRA’s new President, what do you hope to accomplish in the upcoming year?
I’ve always been one with ambitious and aggressive goals. Now as I step into the national presidency, I realize that with just one year in the position, so much of what you can tangibly accomplish during that time is predicated by what has happened before you, and the circumstances of your particular year as president.

That said, and as I emphasized in my inaugural address, I want to see marketing research continue to assert its value as the critical fulcrum of enterprise building business decisions. I want to see us be recognized as strategic consultants, and to do that, I want to push our marketing communications efforts, education, certification, and program development to all work in lock step to reinforce the preeminence of our association and the critical nature of what our work brings to organizations.