Media research in need of overhaul?

To illustrate my point, if you're a parent you'll know that profound feeling of awe when you wake up one day to find your kids have suddenly grown up overnight.

Your little boy, who only yesterday was watching cartoons on TV and collecting things out of cereal boxes and potato chip packets, has suddenly got the beginnings of a mustache and a voice that has dropped from sounding like a wheel on an out-of-kilter supermarket trolley to something a lot closer to Darth Vader.

Attitude

And your little girl with those trusting, loving eyes, dressing and re-dressing her Barbie Doll and looking so damn cute in a pair of pigtails, suddenly has breasts and an attitude.

Nothing is planned, there's no specific timing, it just kind of dawns on you one day that life has taken a quantum leap forward.

Now this is precisely the feeling I have about the media industry. I don't have any hard evidence, just a kind of gut feel I've developed after 40 years in the business and having raised four kids.

Big challenge

If indeed successful marketing is based on the premise that it is not what marketers want to say but what the consumer wants to hear, this presents an enormous challenge for the media industry. Because, when it comes what consumers want out of media, it really isn't any good asking them directly because off the tops of their heads they simply don't know. Somewhere deep down in their sub-conscious they do, but extracting it is by no means easy.

All of which means that right now, lie factors and margins of error are too big to be trusted – which is why so many editors and programmers still work on the basis of gut feel. In itself, not a bad thing but it would be great if even the best editors we have are able to cross-check their instincts with reliable consumer research.

Paradigm shift

Quite simply, a huge paradigm shift is needed when it comes to extracting information from the consumer about what he or she wants to read, listen to and watch.

Old formulae need to be tossed out and far more subtle and craftier methods need to be developed to get to the real needs and aspirations that lurk deep in consumers' minds.