Passionate about methodology? Thought not…

I suggested a couple of months ago that this may be the year of data; and have heard many agencies saying that data is at the centre of everything they do now.

However, we need to clarify what we mean by data. It seems to mean different things to different people… whether it is survey data, customer data or actual data collected by devices. So it was interesting to hear our panel’s views on the importance of media research and media data to agencies at our latest morning seminar on Friday.

The consensus was that senior management care but don’t really “get it” – or if they do, it is from a rather narrow perspective.

It made me think back to an MRG Conference many moons ago, when the IPC ad sales director admitted, during a very eloquent and entertaining speech about the value of industry press data, that she had only the day before looked at how the NRS research was conducted for the first time. The methodology. A word that has most media “business people” making their excuses and leaving, while their researchers get passionate… about methodology that is.

This was in the day when NRS was used by everyone as a trading currency. Before most got time-poor or lazy and found ABC more “relevant”. The same IPC sales director is now running Trinity Mirror, so a lack of interest in methodology did not harm Sly Bailey’s career. Yet I would be amazed if anything has changed. Infact it may well be that a few agency researchers don’t bother with the finer points of methodology much either now.

So the question is, does it matter? Well it does help rather a lot to validate the results you are getting if you can grasp how they were arrived at, but the detail can be left with the research team – as long as they are given the support and investment to answer the questions that clients need answering.

What we all need to understand is the implications of survey data as data sources proliferate – and fuse – the next investment has to be in smart people who can disseminate the information and more smart people who can then relate the results (promptly) to the business in question.