Media research – a complete waste of money?

Steve Cox, marketing director of JCDecaux Airport, explains why media research has to be smart and  persuasive insight, communicated in a simple way if it is to be useful and get used…

Ever heard that quote about using statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination? The interesting thing about it for me is that it implies that illumination is superior to support. And I guess in many fields of research this is true. But herein lays a danger for those of us that work in this business of media research. The stuff we learn really has to be useful.

In over a decade of involvement in delivering insight for media sales companies I’ve learned that my job really has two component parts, and unless both are addressed then an awful lot of money can be wasted. There’s getting the insight, and then there’s getting the insight used.

My first research and insight role at a media owner came after more than a decade working on the agency side in media planning and marketing. I’d worked across pretty much all media. I’d bought, sold, planned, strategised and marketed, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff.

My personal vision for my new role in a media sales company saw me sat in some kind of ivory tower dispensing pearls of insight to an eagerly appreciative sales force. They would seize on these pearls and distribute them across the land like the winged monkeys of Oz, returning with happy faces, and bulging order books rather than ruby slippers. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work like that in the real world.

I like to think my team and I came up with some pretty smart stuff. We developed a few promising hypothesis to address our most pressing business needs, we commissioned some innovative studies, we sat through the encouraging debriefs, and we lovingly crafted these into works of PowerPoint splendour. The sales team certainly looked appreciative when we presented it all on a Monday morning in their sales meeting. They seemed to like the big words and the fancy graphics, and they clearly understood absolutely everything as there were no questions whatsoever when we asked “Are there any questions whatsoever?”.

Strangely though, in the weeks that followed we didn’t get a sense that the winged monkeys were eager to load the aforementioned presentation on their laptops. While the insight was undoubtedly useful it didn’t get used. Our sales team didn’t use it, our customers didn’t see it and our pressing business needs went unaddressed. I reckon it took at least a year before we started to get it right.

I can only assume that the rather less challenging economic circumstances of the times were responsible for me hanging onto my job that long. God knows how much we spent on research projects that sat gathering virtual dust in the “Research and Insight” drive on the central server.

Eventually we started using smaller words and more engaging graphics. Our sales team weren’t stupid but they weren’t researchers. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a sales call to a challenging planner or buyer, but it can be a daunting prospect, and it’s a big ask to expect someone to step out of their comfort zone when they’re right in the firing line. Sales teams need illumination and support.

We recognised that our real challenge was not the generation of the insight, but the communication of it in such a way that the sales team not only felt capable of communicating it themselves, but were actively looking forward to doing so. Of course, the researchers could have taken the presentation out, but there weren’t as many of them, and, guess what, they weren’t as good at selling.

We’re currently about to launch the biggest ever out-of-home investigation into how business travellers consume media. It’s a landmark study and we need to ensure it delivers its potential to convince potential clients of the value of our medium – which is why we’ve spent around a month doing the research and around three months working intensively on how best to present the results!

So our holy grail is now smart, persuasive insight, simply communicated. That way we’ll deliver something that is useful and which actually gets used.