IPA Conference Told Media Is Still Unaccountable
Gavin Millar of BT saw huge challenges ahead for media agencies and researchers. Speaking at the IPA’s recent Measuring Media In The Future conference, he revealed that 70% of marketeers in a recent survey had put media as their least accountable marketing expense – a slightly surprising and very worrying statistic for the industry to swallow, as Morag Blazey, conference chair and PHD MD, highlighted in her summing up.
Millar expressed his support for any joint industry research, which would make “media more plannable, tangible, credible and trusted.”
His comments followed Mark Palmer’s slightly unconvincing “pitch” for media agencies to be given a broader communications role. Palmer, managing partner of OMD UK, felt that data planning (consumer research), new product development and PR were three areas that sat more logically with the advertiser’s media agency. “Companies need people “in the middle to control strategy”. He also envisaged direct response and interactive sitting firmly within media agencies in the near future.
In pitching the potential of the media agency, Palmer acknowledged that “word of mouth” remained a very strong and largely uncontrollable media device, and that new communications models were now evolving – citing the launch of Matrix 2 and 3 (DVD immediately after movie release) and Tesco’s clubcard, which enables them to become a massive market research agency in their own right as just two examples.
On a day of crystal-ball gazing, Palmer sagely cited that we always over-estimate short-term change (under 5 years) and under-estimate the longer (10 year) effect.
IPA: 020 7235 7020 www.ipa.co.uk
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