OTTAWA – The market research industry’s watchdog is launching a full-blown investigation into a Conservative pollster involved in an alleged misinformation campaign against Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.
Brendan Wycks, executive director of The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says the watchdog has received seven formal complaints of professional misconduct against Campaign Research Inc., the company behind the Cotler campaign.
Wycks says Campaign Research was given time to resolve the matter to the complainants’ satisfaction but was unable to do so.
MRIA now is striking a three-member complaints panel to investigate the matter more thoroughly.
The MRIA has become so alarmed about the negative spillover from political telemarketing that it is updating its code of conduct to spell out that voter identification or partisan promotion cannot be conducted under the guise of market research.
Response Marketing Group Not Being Investigated!
CORRECTION: In a story published in the LINK and online on March 10, 2012 called ” Conservative Party Pollster Faces Full-Blown Misconduct Probe”, which was carried from Canadian Press, reported that the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) is also looking into suggestions that another Conservative-allied company – Responsive Marketing Group (“RMG”) – may be passing itself off as legitimate public-opinion research company. The story in that appeared in the LINK never actually mentioned that RMG was being investigated by MRIA. But this was clarified by Canadian Press in a subsequent story they ran where MRIA executive director said they, in fact, were not investigating RMG. The LINK is writing this clarification as a result!
