Media Headliner: Cranmer takes his tough approach to research.(Mark Cranmer to join Research International)

Far from throwing in the towel, Mark Cranmer is moving onward and upward with Research International.

Not so very long ago, there was something of a tradition in the advertising business that if the management offered to add either 'international' or 'research' to your job title, you pretty much knew the game was up.

Your desk was about to be moved, metaphorically at least, out into the corridor - a well-appointed corridor, no doubt, but a corridor nonetheless.

This, at least, is what industry wags were pointing out last week when they heard the news that Mark Cranmer, the outgoing chief executive of Starcom MediaVest EMEA, is to become the worldwide chief executive of one of WPP's research companies, Research International. Could Cranmer be so close to retirement?

Well, of course he isn't - although, at 47, he won't be making many more major career shifts. At this stage, he's unlikely to repeat the promiscuity that saw him hop from Lowe Howard-Spink (assistant managing director) to BBDO (managing director) to CDP (deputy managing director) to Bartle Bogle Hegarty (strategic development director) in the space of five hectic years in the early 90s.

In short, Research International is no interim gig taken up at the behest of desperate headhunters. Nor is it a tired second-best. And the witticisms actually miss the point by a wide margin. They assume, from the safety of the ad industry bubble, that his Starcom job was a bigger deal. It wasn't.

True, Research International is only one of 20-odd companies in WPP's Kantar group (which is headed by its chief executive, Eric Salama, to whom Cranmer will now report). However, it boasts greater revenues than Starcom EMEA, and Cranmer's new role is a global position, not merely a European one.