MRG Conference: What Do Agency Media Researchers Do For A Living?

In the first “soapbox” session of the MRG conference, Anthony Jones (European research director, Optimedia) and Jim Kite (director of global research, Universal McCann) addressed the question, “What do agency media researchers do for a living?”

Jones began by answering not only this question but also outlined what they didn’t do and what the implications were for media owners, research agencies and advertisers. The ‘do’ list included everything from being a ‘fount of all knowledge’ to gaining PR for the agency, from econometrics to futurology. The ‘don’t’ list included DOS and TV audience analysis – researchers are leaving the NRS runs to IMS/Telmar these days. There are no long lunches or meetings with media owners either, apparently.

The implications of this for media owners are that they now have a responsibility to know the needs and issues of media research, said Jones, and to develop projects and pitch in an intelligent manner to agencies. Research agencies no longer have time to spend on the technical side of research and therefore require research bodies to get it right every time and to be innovators.

Kite then covered five areas where change is required: firstly an acceptance that researchers don’t know everything and to be proactive in filling these holes in knowledge. New ideas need the support of the management so agencies need to give researchers leadership positions.

Alongside this, continued Kite, researchers must not forget to remain the most knowledgeable and credible person in the office and not to consider themselves as a ‘cost’ within the organisation but rather as a generator of company investment in the agency.

Finally Kite stressed the importance of the MRG’s role as a “collective professional body”. It must beware of becoming a sales platform for agencies and media owners, he warned, and should be an ideas forum and training platform while remaining “relevant to consumers.”

Report by Lucy Condon in Munich