Neil Higgs Consulting
Make it count
Bio
Neil Higgs is a retired survey statistician with 50 years in the business. He has worked for Unilever, Probe Market Research, Research Surveys (and its subsidiary ResearchWise) and its mergers with TNS and Kantar, as well at the University of the Witwatersrand as a part-time lecturer.
He presently runs a small consultancy, Neil Higgs Consulting.
He has a B.Sc from the University of the Witwatersrand, is a Southern African Marketing Research Association (SAMRA) Accredited Researcher (SAR), a Certified Member of the UK’s Market Research Society (CMRS) and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (FRSS).
He ended his full-time career as Chef Innovation Officer for Kantar in Johannesburg, as well as chief troubleshooter and media spokesperson for over ten years.
His passion is communication and analysis of research, numbers and statistics, and how these apply to the people and to society around us.
Our Services
Neil Higgs, retired "survey statistician troubleshooter", has done us all a massive favour by writing a delightful, clever, informative and helpful book on numbers: All Other Things Being Equal: Making Numbers Make Sense.
The book is about being more comfortable with numbers, finding the story they tell us, finding it easily, and being able to communicate it.
We all encounter numbers and data in our daily lives, and many of us deal with them extensively in our work lives. But how good are we at them really? Neil is determined to help improve people's relationships with numbers and data in a happier way.
Gillian Rightford
The Bell Award aims to acknowledge an individual with a stellar track record of contribution to the sector. The nominees extend outside of the media owner and agency work environments.
The award went to researcher Neil Higgs, who developed and introduced the new socio-economic measure household continuum to replace the outdated Living Standard Measure.
MOST media report
Neil has reached yet another major milestone! He has been with the company for 31 years. Neil’s first day was 17 July 1985 – some of you weren’t even born yet!
If you think about how much the world and market research practice has changed in the last 31 years, you will realise what an amazing achievement this is. We have had the benefit of Neil’s presence for the vast majority of his career. Neil has always been at the forefront of thought leadership throughout the decades, and it is a great privilege to celebrate this huge milestone with him. He has always inspired with his rich knowledge, his passion for the business and its people, his relentless pursuit of excellence and precision, and his commercial acumen. Neil has also served the company in all sorts of areas, in all sorts of capacities, and he has always pushed those around him to greater heights in every single one of his roles.
Neil, we appreciate all the passion that you have poured into the company over the years! We will see the ripple effects of that for many years to come. As you move to retirement, we wish you all the best.
TNS Board
Testimonials
What we are about
Troubleshooting is it
My passion
My main role in consulting is troubleshooting - be it research design, sampling issues or basic analytics. I also troubleshoot results that "look funny" and provide guidance on fixing anomalies
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I provide training on these topics, as well as insight into better numeracy and communication of statistics, numbers and graphics
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I have recently written a book, All/other things being equal (Ceteris Paribus), That seeks to make numbers easy to understand and to communicate in a fun way, overcome people's fear of numbers.
Passing on knowledge
My other passion is to pass on useful things I have learnt.
My projects are the result of this passion - read and absorb!
