{"id":1536,"date":"2021-12-06T12:13:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T12:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2021-12-06T12:13:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T12:13:02","slug":"telling-you-what-i-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/telling-you-what-i-want\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling You What I Want"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A snide throwaway line has turned into a truism that these days demands attention. \u2018Agencies always know what they want from media measurement \u2026 until someone asks them\u2019 is the line and certainly there\u2019s some truth in the idea that we are all very good at moaning on about this shortcoming or that failure but are rather less good at proposing pragmatic solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This thought occurred to me when I read my old friend Bob Wootton\u2019s piece on Mediatel<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob was kind enough to reference me and the campaign for a levy to fund true cross-media measurement that has featured several times in past Cog Blogs, most recently earlier this month, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also made the point that recent asi events, which are all about audience measurement in video and audio have moved on from being a talking shop to something more mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Bob put it: \u201c(The asi events have) become much more than a talking shop for media researchers who don\u2019t normally venture out quite as much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media researchers do of course venture out a fair bit \u2013 maybe a fairer accusation would be that when they do so they don\u2019t tend to mix with the \u2018right\u2019 people, preferring their own kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mind you that\u2019s true of many tribes within the business \u2013 anyone else remember the days when TV buyers gathered in one pub, planners in another (or more likely in a wine bar)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also true to say (as Richard Marks does in his comment below Bob\u2019s piece) that asi can hardly be accused of not making an effort to attract advertisers and indeed their agencies \u2013 the fact is this tribe thing runs deep and flows both ways (if bodies of water can be deep and flow both ways).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s needed is for a greater degree of consultation and indeed collaboration. Audience researchers are intense, thoughtful people (by and large, stop giggling at the back). They are interested in doing things properly; they\u2019re less concerned with short-term headlines and more concerned with longer-term viability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of these are bad traits, in fact just the opposite. Someone has to ensure that things are done to the highest of standards after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the same time, life moves on. Inventing a cure for something that is no longer a threat isn\u2019t as helpful as coming up with a fix that works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or \u2013 being 90% right beats being 100% late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good luck to asi, and indeed to Mediatel whose Future of Media event started Bob off on his article, for providing the forums (fora?) for debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing about debate is that all parties need to take part \u2013 if one party (say the media researchers) assume primacy and aren\u2019t challenged then the answer risks being unfit for purpose, however technically smart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if the agencies and their clients don\u2019t consider this a subject worthy of serious debate then they can hardly complain if they don\u2019t like the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More inclusion, less tribalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More \u2018here\u2019s a way through\u2019, less \u2018stop giving me the answer to the wrong question\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A snide throwaway line has turned into a truism that these days demands attention. \u2018Agencies always know what they want from media measurement \u2026 until someone asks them\u2019 is the line and certainly there\u2019s some truth in the idea that we are all very good at moaning on about this shortcoming or that failure but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}