Reporting directly to Tim Balbirnie, CEO of Synovate Asia Pacific, Sherman will work closely with key clients with a special focus on the Hong Kong, mainland China and Korea markets.
His role at Synovate, part of media buying group Aegis, will be to provide insights across the research process from identifying client needs, through to helping clients integrate research findings into their broader marketing activities.
Sherman spent 17 years working with McKinsey in senior research and strategic marketing and research roles. For the past seven years, he built and led McKinsey's Asia Pacific Marketing practice, including managing a team of marketing specialists around the region.
His client work involved marketing segmentation and strategy, new-product development, branding and marketing spend effectiveness. He has particular experience within the banking and financial services, telecoms and FMCG market sectors. Earlier in his career, he co-founded McKinsey's Global CRM practice.
According to Balbirnie, Sherman's appointment will further sharpen Synovate's commitment to help clients analyse and use data to continually improve their businesses.
"More and more, clients are demanding that market research play a vital part in the overall marketing discipline. And we are excited to continually expand our brief -- going beyond the realm of pure data collecting and reporting -- and heading into analysing, consulting and brainstorming to name just a few activities," he said.
Balbirnie said that the research industry needs to move towards this model across the world.
"The way we are approaching this at Synovate is to reinvent research -- to work harder and better at understanding our clients' marketing issues and needs before we start a project. This understanding then carries all the way through the project and beyond," he said.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Sherman worked with Procter & Gamble as a brand manager based in the US, having graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA.
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