Media Research Awards 2017: Newsworks wins Grand Prix

Pioneers working the media research community were celebrating in force on Thursday (23 February) at the 2017 Media Research Awards, hosted by Mediatel.

The winners were led by Newsworks, which took the Grand Prix prize along with Gold in the Best Custom Media Research for its ‘How People Buy’ project – as well as picking up the award for Trade Body of the Year.

“For the second year running, the top prize is taken by the news media following News UK’s success in 2016,” said judge David Brennan, founder of Media Native.

“This demonstrates that, when the pressure is on, relevant, contextual, innovative insight can help drive the narrative and, most importantly, influence the bottom line.”

‘How People Buy’ explored the consumer decision journey, with a focus on the roles of different media channels along the path to purchase. The results led to the development of an interactive tool to help media planners choose the right channels to move people along the purchase journey and ultimately drive sales.

Lynne Robinson, research director at the IPA and a fellow judge, added that Newsworks produced a wide ranging and impressive body of work designed to reinforce and redefine newsbrands’ role in the fast changing communications environment.

“It was well designed and executed and presented in such a way that maximised its impact and use,” she said.

The Best Custom Media Research category also saw awards handed out for Silver and Bronze in recognition of the size and quality of the shortlist.

Sky Media took Silver for ‘Getting Engaged: A TV Love Story’, while the Bronze award was handed to Mindshare for ‘Full Throttle: Understanding Automotive Decision Making’.

Best Media Research Tracking Project was won this year by Trinity Mirror Solutions for its ‘Mouthpiece Panel: Feeling the Pulse of Modal Britain’.

Chair of the judging panel and director of Research the Media, Richard Marks, said the project was a worthy winner as it plays a key role in supporting Trinity Mirror’s Modal Britain strategy.

“The panel has had a clear impact across editorial, ad sales and marketing,” he said. “It’s great to see research at the very heart of such a successful and transformational initiative for the business.”

The Best International Media Research Project – a new category for 2017 – was won by the BBC World Service for its project ‘NextGen: Reaching Young Global Audiences’.

“The BBC World Service was a clear winner,” said Richard Shotton, deputy head of evidence at OMD.

“They had a highly ambitious, multi-disciplinary approach which covered: desk research, media diaries, interviews, mobile ethnography, Facebook discussion groups and surveys.

“The breadth of approaches led to powerful insights and tangible changes, such as a move away from global breaking news and an emphasis on solutions focused journalism. A very impressive entry.”

The award for Excellence in Measuring Effectiveness of a Media Campaign was taken by Sky for its ‘Mr Porter.com, Sky AdSmart’ project.

Judge Catherine Blizzard, director of marketing and audiences, BBC World Service, said she was impressed with the use of new research techniques to really understand media campaign effectiveness across the category.

“The Sky entry stood out for the use of combined signed-in and survey data to create robust behavioural test and control samples – in addition to being extremely well written,” she said.

The gong for Best Use of Data Sets was handed to ITV for ‘Putting the Science into Social Planning’ with partners Mediabrands Marketing Sciences.

“ITV and Mediabrands managed to conquer a mountain of big data in order to establish the relationship between social media activity and viewing levels,” said Richard Marks.

“They did this by having clearly defined mission objectives: an ROI model for social media and television, with guidelines that are now shaping ITV’s social engagement strategy.”

In the Best Social Media Project category Mediabrands Marketing Sciences took the award for its ‘Social Fingerprinting’ project.

“The Mediabrands solution sought to combine content and context, unlike most existing SM tools,” said judge Brian Jacobs, founder director, Enreach.

“The judges liked that this was a genuinely new initiative, and that the entry featured a successful application on a client case. Another plus is that the tool is now actively used throughout their network.”

The award for Excellence in Research Presentation went to Metro, MailOnline and Metro.co.uk for the ‘Millennial Rules’ project.

“As someone whose job it often is to communicate the results of complicated research to a broad audience, I was particularly pleased to see that the winners – and, indeed, the entire shortlist – really went to some lengths to bring the work to life and find interesting ways to ensure people could engage with the results,” said judge David Pidgeon, editor of Mediatel Newsline.

“Metro, MailOnline and Metro.co.uk have done an excellent job and I hope others can learn from what they have achieved.”

Meanwhile, for the second year in a row, the Research Agency Team of the Year was awarded to MTM.

“Once again MTM have clinched the Research Agency Team of the Year Award, this time by using a range of techniques and partnering with clients to focus on impact,” commented judge Kristin Bayliss, global account measurement lead, Facebook.

“The team went beyond simply traditional questionnaires and fieldwork to deliver a lot of hybrid and multi-stage projects, drawing on the benefits of combined methodologies.”

Finally, the Media Agency of the Year award was handed to MEC UK.

“The breadth and depth of the work of the MEC analytics and insight team is very impressive, and it is clear that their influence and impact is felt across the whole agency,” said judge Denise Turner, insight director at Newsworks.

“They marry established and innovative research methods to directly affect client business.”

The Media Research Awards are now in their third year and were set up to reward those individuals, teams and businesses driving innovation in an industry where measurement and insight are at the very heart of business planning and success.

Commenting on the overall standard of 2017’s competitors, Derek Jones, CEO of Mediatel, said: “For the third annual awards the quality remained incredibly high, really demonstrating that the UK delivers world-class projects.

“We are extremely proud to run the only awards of this type in the UK and do so in the firm belief that it helps drive innovation. A huge congratulations to the winners.”

The awards precede the Future of Media Research Conference on 13 March where a selection of the winners will showcase their work.