MRG Evening Meeting: Rajar “Needs To Change”
That was the overall feeling of last night’s MRG Evening Meeting in which Malcolm Cox, marketing director of Emap Radio, and Sue Gray, research director of Motive, pointed out how they thought RAJAR should change as its research supply contract comes up for renewal. Also speaking were Roger Gane, international media director of RSL (the present supplier) and Jay Guther, general manager Radio New Ventures at Arbitron USA, which will be bidding for the contract.
Malcolm Cox says that although RAJAR has served the industry well in the past improvements are needed if it is to continue being a useful trading currency. He said that the fundamentals of the survey had not changed since the ’70s even though buying methods had moved into the ’90s and called for re-examination of the RAJAR basics: what do we want it to do? How do we want it done?
Cox believes that RAJAR’s purpose is to make Emap’s customers better. He also stated his belief that RAJAR should aim to take up 8% of agencies’ time to get 10% of ad revenue and that the survey needs to be more user friendly. Future plans for the survey should include: better monitoring of response rates; better monitoring of recruitment; call-back questionnaires about lifestyle/consumer habits; introduction of monthly top-line data among six main target groups; an annual report to provide better indication of the shape of the market. More generally Cox says that RAJAR should get the technicians and consultants away from the survey, simplify the agenda and remove the politics.
Sue Gray then spoke about the frustrations which many agency people feel when trying to use RAJAR and also the lack of confidence in the robustness of the data. In particular she drew attention to the time and effort which is needed to bring up relatively simple data. The electronic version of RAJAR was also said to be slow, complicated and difficult to use.
Gray went on to call for continued lobbying from the RAB and IPA to improve the survey, in particular finding a more efficient interface for dealing with data. She said that there was also a case for the BBC being separated from the commercial stations because they slowed the whole process down. Future developments for RAJAR should include rolling data, supplementary measurements of specialised stations and a new methodology for coping the profusion of new stations. Overall however, she said that agencies were not confident of RAJAR’s future capabilities.
Roger Gane admitted that certain aspects of the RAJAR survey needed to be improved but warned that the industry should not become “too cavalier” when talking about making alterations. He pointed out that changes were being implemented, such as individuals v household samples as well as rolling samples and rim weighting. There were also ongoing alterations to the diary method and Gane accepted that changes were necessary in order to ensure accurate measurement of the growing number of radio stations. He believes that meters could be possible under the next contract but said they would have to measure individuals because so much of radio listening takes place outside the home.
Jay Guther, using examples from his experience in the US, addressed this problem by revealing a prototype people meter. The size and weight of a pager, it is carried by the listener wherever they go and picks up which radio stations they are listening to. Arbitron will be opening a London office in September and by then it hopes to have finalised an agreement with a British partner to bid for the RAJAR contract.
After the presentations were given Belinda Beeftink from Telmar Communications pointed out that in her experience many agency buyers, even those specialising in radio, often needed coaching on how to use the RAJAR data. She said that this was an education process which needed to be addressed by the industry.
In response to Hugh Johnson’s question of whether the BBC should be excluded from RAJAR, Sue Gray said that it would certainly make the whole process quicker though the survey’s credibility would probably suffer as a result. She conceded however that the BBC’s exclusion “may have to happen.” Cox also pointed out that the withdrawal of the BBC would diminish RAJAR’s status as a common currency.