The Vision
Ardith ("Art") Rivel began his marketing research work in the 1960s, and was a pioneer in designing, marketing and conducting high-end, multi-sponsored market research programs. These projects were aimed at better understanding trends, attitudes and changing dynamics among various respondent groups in a variety of industries. Having gained a particular expertise on the perceptions and behavior of the investment community (portfolio managers and analysts), Art was able to develop the seminal Portfolio Manager Viewpoint series (a yearly survey of US institutional investors geared toward well-known, large cap companies) which began in 1978 under his direction at Yankelovich, Skelly and White. When Art founded Rivel Research Group in 1991 he licensed, and eventually purchased, the rights to the Portfolio Manager Viewpoint series; a body of work that spans over 25 years and is comprised of data from 33 studies.
Expanding to Focus on Individual Companies
Given the growth of the business, in 1993 Art hired Jim Peebles, a former marketing research colleague from Yankelovich, to further develop the company's research programs. In addition to multi-sponsored work addressing broad-based communication and valuation issues within the financial community, Art and Jim perceived another unfilled niche in the marketplace in performing company-specific research for corporate clients. They applied disciplined marketing research procedures in researching a company's most influential investors and/or analysts. The creation of the Core Constituency Research service, with its mix of standardized and customized lines of inquiry, became the foundation for the only normative database of its kind in the market research industry. Rivel's normative database provides unparalleled context and comparability for its clients, having over 300 measurements of companies studied since 1995. To this day, Jim continues to oversee and provide direction to the firm's research initiatives.
A Bright Future
In 1994, Brian Rivel joined the company to learn directly from Art and to help manage the business. Brian has continued to expand his role within the company, becoming the company's President in 2000.
Today, Rivel's work spans the finance, investor relations and corporate communications spheres. Employees of Rivel regularly meet with management teams and boards of directors to keep them abreast of how they are perceived among their key constituencies and to explore what is driving decisions among important audiences.