(this is part two of a session on this topic)
Gerard Broussard, Principal, Pre-mediated Media
He introduced “Jolt” which is an alliance of consulting firms sharing a central belief: the future of marketing is about high-quality, transparent targeting data and modeling. The “Ingredients” behind data is often a mystery. Gerard talked about the “Ingredients” concept: What are the “ingredients”, that is, methods, data sources, time frame, number of records, market coverage, reporting level (e.g. households), analysis methods, etc. of a study.
Jane Clarke, CEO & Managing Director, CIMM (Session moderator)
Jane asked the panel’s opinion on the “ingredient” concept and there was strong sentiment in favor of moving forward, starting with discussions on the right elements to feature in a research “ingredients” list.
Louis Jones, EVP, 4A’s
From the agency community, the answer to doing this is, “Yes, please.” We need more confidence that the numbers, methodologies and techniques are accurate. It is a journey (to execute this) and we should start “simple.”
Rick Erwin, President, Audience Solutions, Acxiom
We love this idea. We must do it. But it is not going to work very well because it is not sufficient. What we really need is accreditation. Further, he asked: Will the self-reported labels be accurate; how much will mislabeling become an issue?
George Ivie, Executive Director, Media Ratings Council (MRC)
We want to have more coordination between industry groups. One of the things we need is standard methods for validating the data. We should also consider the summary disclosures available from data providers. There are often supplementary details as well.
Jim Spaeth, Partner, Sequent Partners
We have been talking to virtually all the key providers and the consensus is that this is a fundamental issue. It is a good first step. We have to start somewhere. It needs all the constituencies, it is complicated. There is a lot of work to be done to obtain a document that guides the industry.
An article on this topic by Scott McDonald, ARF President & CEO, was recently featured in Forbes with the title, “Data Quality Issues Vex Marketers: Is Ingredient Labeling a Solution?”
You can read his contribution via this link.