Neil Shepherd–Smith is an independent Media Research Consultant, who has worked in the advertising industry for over 43 years. Born, brought up and educated in England, Neil left Trinity College, Cambridge with an honours degree in Economics and English. Having started his advertising career in 1959 with the Hawker Siddeley Group, he joined Foote, Cone and Belding Limited, London as a Media Research Executive in 1961. In the twelve years he spent with F.C.B., his responsibilities were extended to all the agency's computer and operational and media research activities. During that period, Neil also worked closely with Dick Metheringham and ultimately succeeded him as Media Research Director; as a result of that productive partnership, Neil was responsible for developing and marketing the COSMIC media planning system.
Following three years with a merchant banking and insurance group, where he developed a computerised on–line client record system, Neil worked for Tempo Computer Services Ltd., a computer bureau in the A.G.B. Group, before leaving in October 1979 to set up the London office of Telmar Group Inc., a company originally based in the U.S.A. and specialising in providing media computer services to the advertising industry world–wide. Once the U.K. company was successfully established, Neil moved to his role as Telmar's International Director of Research and Development. In this capacity, he was responsible for the concept and design of many new Telmar products including enhancements to COSMIC. He was responsible for the specification, programming and implementation of the first comprehensive suite of media planning programs to be offered anywhere in the world on a micro–computer. Neil provided technical and research support to all Telmar's U.S. and International offices and devised a new broadcast model 'FINESSE' to make the fullest use of the increasingly complex audience data becoming available in many countries. He also developed an Outdoor advertising planning system for South Africa.
In 1987, for B.A.R.B., Neil produced a comprehensive report on the user requirements for television audience reporting in the 1990s; as a result, he was commissioned to carry out a similar investigation into the needs of users of the U.K. National Readership Survey. Neil was responsible for the design and specification of the original U.K. Regional Newspaper Database, which has proved to be a valuable source of data to the industry. He became the Technical Consultant to JICREG, the U.K. industry research body for regional newspapers and was deeply involved in the JICREG regional newspaper readership project, developing computer models to predict readership from circulation and demographic data. In 1996, he was appointed as Technical Consultant to POSTAR, the industry research body for the U.K. Outdoor Industry. To give more time to his consultancy commitments, Neil left Telmar at the beginning of 1997 to become an independent consultant. He still retains Telmar as one of his clients, and continues to be the Technical Consultant to JICREG. In 2000, he was appointed as Chairman of the Technical Committee of JICPOPS, the Joint Industry Committee for Population Standards.
Throughout his career, Neil has written and lectured extensively, in the U.K. and abroad, on the subject of computers in advertising and many other topics. He has been a platform speaker at all the Worldwide Readership Research Symposia and in Montreal in June 1983, presented his paper on 'An improved method of estimating cumulative readership'; the methodology has since been incorporated into all relevant Telmar programs under the name 'TRUE–CUME'. In 1988, he drew attention to the neglect of the vital time factor in media planning, reviving interest in this important concept. Perhaps his most controversial paper has been his 1993 attack on the reliability of the 'recent–reading' methodology in measuring average issue readership, reviving a subject that Neil first raised in 1973. During his career, he has also served on many industry committees and he is the only remaining founder–member of the U.K. Media Research Group still in the business.
Neil has been happily married for 40 years, has two children and five grandchildren and lives in a 15th century house in a small village in Buckinghamshire, England. His interests (apart from his family, media and computers) include food, wine and sunshine; perhaps not surprisingly, he takes his holidays in France and Antigua.