MRG Conference Report – The Final Day
Jerry Wright, marketing director at Lever Brothers, was the sole client representative at the conference and called on agencies to recognise that the importance of media is declining, giving way to the need for “communication”. He also called on agencies to develop new models for communication planning.
In the TV market he said there was more competition, with a more expensive yet worse service for clients. He highlighted outdoor as the media which would soon become the only truly broadcast media and said the Internet would allow personalised, individual marketing opportunities.
Wright believes that the future lies in “recognising consumers’ differing and dynamic needs” and communicating with them better. He saw the prospects for growth in the TV, PR and sales promotions areas falling, while sponsorship and direct marketing were rising. Interactive was a medium which would arrive in time.
Wright went on to reinforce Martin Sorrell’s views by saying that we need to move from media planning and research to total communications planning and research. Ad agencies should become more like communications consultants or they “won’t be around in twenty years time.” He also predicted that payment by results would become commonplace in agencies.
In the afternoon a debate was held whereby each of the JICs were to defend themselves and prove the future of media research was “safe in their hands.” Doug Read, from Mediacom and speaking on behalf of NRS, said that all JICs could be frustrating and slow to change, simply because they were governed by committees. He said that despite all the criticisms of NRS (see Changes Urged For NRS), the survey continues to provide a working press currency for 80% of press buying: it provides “stability in an unstable world.” Read went on to say that NRS would never tell you how a campaign has performed because this is not what it was designed for. Yet the two things were being mixed up. In terms of additions to the survey, he believed that NRS should be regarded as a start-point and if agencies thought a client was important enough, additional research could be commissioned. Read admitted however that NRS was being increasingly marginalised in the industry.
Sue Read of Laser spoke on behalf of BARB and admitted that there were problems with the 16-24 year olds but this was being rectified. She then went on to highlight how BARB would be coping with guest viewing (modified handsets) and digital TV (probably picture-matching technology *(see AGB Pioneer Digital TV Monitoring)) and concluded that BARB is in a healthy state.
Roger Holland, speaking about JICREG, said it was the cheapest media research and provided good value. Readership models were being refreshed more regularly and brand new measuring systems were available from the JICREG website. Holland is now looking to export the research to Germany.
Douglas MacArthur, md of the RAB, said that RAJAR spends one of the most amounts on research but is still one of the cheapest to fund. New pilots were underway to measure the growing amount of new stations *(see RAJAR Looks At New Methodologies) and MacArthur was confident of the continuing success of RAJAR.
In a response to questions from the floor Doug Read said that half of BARB data is meaningless and advertisers only understood BARB more than other JICs because they spent so much money funding it. He went on to say that magazines generally lose money from the NRS and agreed that they should be on a separate survey.
* Subscribers only