Parting (from Route) is such sweet sorrow
Opinion
As Denise Turner leaves Route, she shares what she learned about running a business, how JICs work and Route’s superpower.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow” is a famous line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It describes Juliet’s bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye, where sadness is mingled with the anticipation of a future reunion.
It perfectly sums up my emotions as I leave the lovely, clever team at Route to join the IPA.
What is the best way to leave a company where you have worked very happily for a short but intense three years?
I had always thought there were certain things well-behaved people never did. They did not hang around after resigning. And they did not get embarrassingly emotional. But now I am finally leaving Route after resigning many months ago, I find myself in flagrant breach of both rules.
For starters, I’m saying farewell, not goodbye. I will keep working with Route at the IPA and I’ll keep learning about OOH and all the joint industry currencies (JICs).
We will all being doing our bit to maintain and build the UK’s precious JICs in the face of enormous challenges. They tell the truth well and are worth the investment.
As for the rule about not getting emotional, as I sit down to write this I feel so wobbly that I can hardly believe it.
The truth is that the Route job has been the shortest but most rewarding one of my career. But with Euan Mackay now leading a peerless team, they haven’t needed me for some time — not even to order the office tea bags or remind them that my family was on the Barb panel in the early 1980s, when it was all paper diaries.
I could run down the Route phone list and stop at scores of names who are special to me, but it would be a long article if I did. So here are some of the things I want to share.
What I’ve learned
After 25 years in agencies and seven years at Newsworks, and with my lifelong addiction to asking why, I thought I knew all there was to know about JICs. How wrong I was!
Route’s data collection, data capability, data synthesis, data processing, data integration and its general culture of innovation are extraordinary. I marvel at how Euan brings it all to life on conference stages because, famously, audience measurement can be very dry — methodology, sample sizes, map layering…
But it’s vital to remember that we market to people, not devices. Non-researchers in the industry should be able to understand what the numbers say and this ability to share intelligence is a superpower at Route.
Euan once compared the online presence of OOH media to Schrödinger’s Cat — was it there or not? He also used the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan to excite a conference audience about OOH ad measurement — without giving away any secrets about how the then-nascent methodology would work.
I’ve also learned about running a business. Submitting payroll, buying cutlery and bins, changing the benefits programme, automating the finance processes, refurbishing the office…
What I’ve loved
I have never stayed in my lane, so I have loved instigating change and working with the best research agencies and suppliers to understand how OOH has changed since Covid-19.
Our team has almost doubled in size and each member has leaned in, perhaps because my leadership style is about being unafraid to share the fact that I’m not invincible. All weaknesses are permissible — as long as they are not couched, job interview-style, as positives in disguise.
Understanding how your people truly feel is, I believe, the key to building a high-performing team. I loved our away day in my home town of Salisbury, where we shared childhood photos and examined one of the four original Magna Carta manuscripts.
What I’m leaving
I believe that any CEO’s legacy is determined by what happens after they leave.
With that in mind, I’m excited to see the measurement fruits of the new Route contract, which runs until 2032. I’m hoping that Route data and its overall offering continue to grow in visibility. And I can’t wait to see how it’s all brought to life by Route’s brilliant team.
From now on, I will be directing my incessant questioning to all the JICs and media research activities at the IPA. I bet they can hardly wait!
Denise Turner is outgoing CEO of Route and incoming media research director at the IPA