Kings Fund, Cavendish Square, London was the venue for WARC’s conference on “The Future of Advertising Research 2010” yesterday. The conference is a great initiative as it is an acknowledgement that while the media and communications channel environment is evolving rapidly and the way in which we are advertising is changing, our methods of researching insights and ideas before campaigns as well as tracking their impact afterward, has been slow to match this evolution. Brands need to better understand who their consumer is, what drives them, what matters when making purchase decisions (and in what context) and ultimately get smarter insights around key areas.
MCCP were in attendance to hear a variety of speakers from those working in Brand’s marketing departments, to those from research companies, to representatives of social networking platforms. While the day covered a myriad of perspectives on the challenges for advertising research, there were 4 things we thought were really interesting.
1. Kathy Dykeman from Facebook talked measuring the impact of earned media rather than bought media. In a world where brands can use people as their communications channel, as they become fans of a brand or a campaign on-line, we need to look at how we measure the impact that social network activity has for our brands. Earning media rather than paying for it does not mean it is cheap. It requires a lot of investment in strategic planning and idea generation to make sure you earn the right for your idea to be endorsed and spread