
MMR at what may have been our first booth at a professional conference, in 2009.
MMR Strategy Group was founded as Marylander Marketing Research. In the 1970s and 1980s, MMR largely conducted marketing research surveys. These were the days when many surveys were conducted in person or over the telephone, so the company had a designated telephone room, where employees made calls into the evening, when they could reach people with day jobs. MMR also conducted surveys via postal mail, particularly home use tests that required consumers to use the product consistently over time, often involving multiple members of the family in the process of trying the product and reporting their reactions. Later in this era, MMR began to take some work providing testimony in legal disputes.
Dr. Isaacson in his former office, getting ready to move from MMR’s old location to the location where we’ve been for 18 years.
In 2005, Bruce Isaacson became President of MMR. The company carried on much of the same marketing research business, including mall intercept surveys conducted for marketing research. These surveys often required MMR personnel to travel and were largely conducted in person using actual products. In those days, MMR routinely purchased products, altered the product where necessary to create controls, and shipped the product across the country to interviewing locations, which were often located within shopping malls or other high-traffic locations.
MMR staff preparing a very large shipment for research for a mall study, circa 2016.
As technology changed and online surveys became widely accepted, MMR’s call center eventually dwindled and disappeared, and in-person studies became less frequent. Today, MMR conducts nearly all of its interviewing online.
The view from a witness chair, from which an MMR expert testified. Year unknown.
Starting in the late 2000s and early 2010s, MMR, under Dr. Isaacson’s leadership, began to provide expert witness services for litigation, conducting surveys for parties in trademark and false advertising disputes and then testifying as needed. As his projects and his reputation grew, so did the firm. Dr. Justin Anderson joined MMR in 2014, eventually becoming a testifying expert and Senior Vice President of the firm. Another testifying expert and a Vice President, Dr. Keith Botner, joined in 2019. More staff was hired as well, to handle the project and administrative workload for MMR as it grew.
Dr. Isaacson’s office, circa 2018; we ran out of space in the rest of the office for shipments from a mall study.
Today, MMR is a thriving company providing research for advertising claim substantiation, litigation surveys and rebuttals, and marketing research. Our staff holds ten PhDs and ten MBAs or master’s degrees. We have worked for some of the top law firms in the United States, several federal agencies, and Fortune 500 companies. Most importantly, our clients continue to come to us for reliable surveys and credible expert testimony. We are proud of the reputation we’ve built over the past 50 years, and look forward to building it for many years to come.