What a week! It had all the makings of a soap opera... Scandal, intrigue, well-known personalities (in our industry at least), suspension, threats of criminal action, potential court cases, millions of rands at stake... I'm of course talking about 'Mayhem at Media Park' and not the 'Bold and the Beautiful'. I certainly haven't seen a more dramatic or well-attended press conference in this industry in the past decade or so as the one Media24 held last Wednesday - or quite as many mainstream follow-ups on an industry story. What is the saddest is the taint that lingers like a bad smell on all who work at Media24. That's unfair. It's also unfair to blame the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). While industry whispers differ on whether a whistleblower or normal ABC processes picked up the irregularities in some of Media24's magazines - the fact is that the ABC was there . There are rules, regulations and strict processes that publishers have to follow these days and the process has been tightened up immeasurably in recent years. If anything, what has been proved is that the process does work - at least in recent times - and that any staff at any publishing house that know of or suspect irregularities within their own media houses or rivals have somewhere to report such things and know that they will be taken seriously. As Chris Moerdyk puts it in his column today on the debacle: "The ABC has come a long way in the past year or two but it cannot just sit back and assume that everyone is applauding it, because they aren't. Too many marketers see the Media24 debacle not as an example of ABC efficiency, but as a shortcoming. And that perception cannot be left to fester because the ABC above all other forms of media data is the one we are supposed to be able to trust implicitly."
Have a great week! Louise Marsland, editor@bizcommunity.co. Marketing news: marketingnews@bizcommunity.co. Responses to this column welcomed on our blog.