I remember a very silly story that we all must have read in the past... of a man looking for his lost ring under the streetlight while he had lost it elsewhere where it was dark. He was looking under the streetlight since thats where the light was. It was convenient to look for the ring under the street light and very inconvenient by the roadside where it was dark. We all must have laughed wisely and said what a foolish man!!
Lets see what is happening in the media & communication world.
Ideally, all communication (and all brand effort) is targetted towards communicating the value that the brand brings to the consumers. This communication is supposed then to result in a increasing market share for the brand. It can be argued that all brands are not looking for increasing market share but for a stronger bond with the consumer, etc but for argument sake right now stick to the former understanding of brand efforts.
However, when any media campaign in now executed the thing that is measured the most is 'exposure' to the consumer. What relationship this exposure has to increasing market share is rarely understood. And if there is an effort to understand this relationship, it is only at the quantitative level with usually no weightage given to the nature of the exposure (creative and environment variables). Okay, for a moment let us belive that some brands do understand the relationship but then the question is what is a true measure of exposure?
'Eyeballs' is such a overused term and it has different connotations in every media. While in TV an 'impression' is counted if there has been atleast a minute of continuous viewing of a particular channel; in print the Average Issue Readership is the norm. In radio, Outdoor, Internet, Cinema, etc the metrics are all different.
I do not want to bring up the topic of smapling error here at all since it has already seen a lot of coverage in editorial space. So, assumimg that the media surveys that are available are truly representative of the population the question still bothering us is what are they measuring?
TAM (or AMAP) in TV measures the mere presence in the room. It does not measure actually seen and they do not measure anything about the nature of the exposure.
IRS (and NRS) measure if the person recognizes and or recalls the masthead of the publication shown and claims that he/ she read it on a regular basis. There is nothing to say of the advertisement that we placed really got an expousre or not and under what environment, etc. And, that the data is averaged over the past 12 months of behaviour is seen as a strength!! Are not brands much more dynamic.
The Internet companies gloat over the measurability of their medium but they too have the same problems in defining an exposure and the nature of the exposure. Further they can do little to tell the 'profile' of the exposure and hence only talk number of exposures.
Lets not even talk of the other smaller media (radio & cinema) as they do not have enough data to serve the purpose of an argument. And, all the other non-conventoinal media do not have any data at all.
So, to summarize a significant focus of mesurement of a campaign is on measuring the number of exposures (very little in terms of nature of exposure). A clear definition of exposure does not exist. Most media surveys do not measure true exposure. Most media do not have a exposure measurment data. There is no clear relationship between exposure and market share.
So, then what should we do. Should we all close our respective businesses and sit at home. No. We derive measures that are convenient (can be measured) and hope that these measures have someting to do with market share. But, for a large part these measures give us the ability to be able to transact and build businesses. So, a media house sells exposures, a media agency plans exposures, an advertiser buys exposures and so on. And like all things often result in something good these exposure too are supposed to result in sales and increased market share. Of course! there is the whole sales effort also that is driving market share.
So, we all do business in the 'convenient' domain but are still the wise men!!
Okay, I agree that this is the best that can be done with the resources available and etc etc.. okay fine.. but at least lets realize that we are in the domain of human behaviour and not physics and so lets develop measures that capture human elements of these exposures and not just a mere number that is convenient to measure. Only, then can we have relationships between the input and output variables.
It is also very convenient to have a common currency but why do we need a common currency? A car manufacturer sells cars and a scooter manufcaturer sells scooters. They do not arrive at a common currency such as 'wheels per meter' or 'litres per kilometer' and then transact with the world. If one media is delivering a human value then there is absolutely no reason other than convenience to convert that into a GRP and then transact on it comparing it with all other media vehicles.
Each one of us is doing business in the convenience zone and while in the long run the one who breaks out of this zone will be the winner; but the short term perils of not operating on convenience are huge. Do we have the guts!!
