NewsLine Column: What Now For Media Research?

With last week’s MRG Conference in Budapest still fresh in everyone’s minds, Media Planning Group’s Denise Turner considers how far the media research industry has come and what lessons it still has to learn.

I had the good fortune to spend most of last week in the lovely city of Budapest, the setting for this year’s MRG conference. The theme was all about the relevance of media research and whether it deserved its place at the top table.

The conference opened with Derek Morris telling delegates that the research industry had “lost its way” and did not deserve to occupy a place at the industry’s “top table”. He suggested that we are not really getting to the heart of how to communicate effectively with consumers of the 21st century and portray them as a “docile population that needs carpet bombing” with thirty second TV commercials.

Jon Wilkins from Naked also delivered some harsh words, saying that researchers are preoccupied with jargon and complex research methodologies. He suggested that the increasingly proactive demands of clients should inspire the industry to drive itself forward.

So should we in the media research community be going round in sackcloth and ashes? As far as I am concerned I don’t think we should be disheartened by these comments. Delegates at the conference should instead be really proud of the strides forward that we are making.

I chaired the second session of the conference which was centred around digesting and measuring consumer behaviour. A strong line-up of presenters demonstrated how the role of media research is changing. Media research doesn’t just look now at consumption of media but is more concerned with understanding the consumer as a whole – a good example of this was OMD’s Communigraphics work which sought to get under the skin of what makes people communicate and what channels are best to reach them. We also had evidence of how new techniques are being applied – and we saw this in action in work that TNS Media are doing for the BBC Daily Life Survey where PDAs are the means by which respondents record their activities. This very deservedly won the Simon Broadbent Best Paper Award sponsored by the IPA.

And there was evidence throughout the conference from both agencies and media owners breaking new ground in research and making sure that we are heard at the top table in all our companies. So all in all I found the conference incredibly encouraging.

And one other thought on the conference – several speakers called for the remit and scope of the MRG to be widened, for us to work more closely with other organisations such as the IPA, ISBA, the MRS and the APG. There is no doubt that the MRG needs to keep up with all that is going on but we do all need to remember that the MRG is a volunteer organisation coming together for the good of the industry as a whole. There is no paid secretariat as with some of the other organisations mentioned.

So I would echo Belinda Beeftink in her comment that the MRG is not the committee that organises training, events and conferences but rather the 170 people that were at the conference and the 700 more that weren’t. So if there are any researchers reading this and you believe the MRG should do more, then please get involved!

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