MRG Conference: Harnessing The Power Of Media Brands
On Friday afternoon at the MRG 2000 conference in Munich, Clare de Burca, head of research at Starcom Motive Partnership talked about the agency’s research programme, motive8, and how it is being used to harness the power of media brands.
“The business of marketing is changing and we are reaching the age of the never satisfied customer.” she explained. “Fragmentation is confusing consumers, and this is causing them to return to the brands they trust- a word which has been mentioned a great deal in this morning’s presentations.”
She continued by outlining the fact that with levels of spontaneous recall of TV ads decreasing, as ‘zapping’ increases, there is less time for brands to build relationships. This means that advertisers have to move from the Age of Interruption to the Age of Engagement, or else their messages will simply by eased out.
Trust in brands allows consumers to navigate a world of excess choice and is a statement of their identity. It establishes communities of interest with people talking to each other about the football they have watched or “Corrie”.
Motive8 responds to clients’ requirement for deeper media understanding and more insight into consumers’ behaviour. de Burca did not feel qualitative research was sufficient to understand how consumers communicate, although she acknowledged it is a vital data source.
“For example, when looking at internet users and their media consumption, advertisers need to understand how and why they consume.” she said, “We know that the trouble with numbers is that they treat potential viewers as actual viewers and do not distinguish active viewers.”
“There have been research studies to try to do this, such as Starcom’s US Brainwave Study, presented by Kate Lynch at the last MRG conference in Nice.” she continued. “This study did prove that higher engagement scores were achieved after programmes which engaged the viewer the most, and this resulted in increased purchase.”
de Burca went on to say that she did not feel qualitative research was sufficient on its own, due to its unreliability and the ‘nice to know’ barrier which exists. For this reason, the objectives of motive8 have been to deepen, not negate, industry research and to help brands to engage consumers in the increasingly limited time available.
The research was piloted in 1998, in collaboration with Roddy Glen, a qualitative research guru. It uses focus groups following database analysis of respondent’s day diaries, to establish why they did what they did.
The findings appeared to confirm the point made by Mark Palmer earlier in the conference, when he said that people tended to browse offline media much more than online. It was revealed that people tended to use a search engine or go direct to the site they were interested in, meaning that personal recommendation was the best form of targeting.
The findings also confirmed the importance of active consumption of TV programmes and the importance of community values. They unpick the media/brand/consumer relationships and set media into the context of real life.
Report by Jeannette Middleton in Munich