MRG: TouchPoints Lites Up The Room

It was standing room only at last night’s MRG evening meeting, as over 150 people packed in to hear a presentation on the IPA TouchPoints initiative, including suggestions for the product going forward including a topline “TouchPoints Lite” initiative.

Lynne Robinson brought the room up to speed with how the initiative has gone so far, including the launch of the hub survey and the multimedia integrated planning system before handing over to new colleague, Belinda Beeftink, who recently joined the IPA from Telmar (see Beeftink Leaves Telmar For The IPA). She demonstrated how the system can be used by planners to pull out topline data through the Telmar system, however she was quick to explain that it can also be used with IMS and KMR.

Following this were presentations from Jane Watson from Initiative Media and Ben Hourahine from the Future Foundation who both demonstrated how each of their companies is now using the data in a work environment.

Jane was keen to show that Initiative backed the project, however she mentioned that due to its nature, they are finding it difficult to position TouchPoints within the agency. It is aimed to be used by planners, but the wealth of information tends to be fully understood by researchers – is it a planners tool or a researchers tool? The suggestion was put forward by Jane of a “TouchPoints Lite” which takes in the main premise of the data, but without the intricate detail, making it a more accessible tool for planners in their day to day work.

Lynne Robinson commented that the IPA are currently looking into this idea, together with the intention of making the hub survey regularly updated in TouchPoints 2.

At the start of the meeting, MRG chair Hugh Johnson asked whether TouchPoints was the great planning tool we all hoped it would be or whether the project will become “advertising’s equivalent of the Millennium Dome”. How the initiative will pan out still remains to be seen, but there is still huge interest, as demonstrated by the extremely high attendance last night.

IPA: 020 7235 7020 www.ipa.co.uk