The 5th in the series around what I term the communications big 6 - conveniently located around a hexagon (that's 2 planning triangles in old money) You can read the original Admap article here. By audiences I mean the delivering of a whole group of people from a few thousand to many million. In advertising this was by and large carried out by media people who were largely left to their own devices. Creative agencies contented themselves with what at best could be described as a qualitative pen portrait of the prospect/customer usually described in terms of demographics and attitudes. When I started to work in direct marketing I stopped describing them and started counting and valuing them. Much as media planners have to do. And the key metrics are quantitative how to increase their value or increase their number. This arms length attitude by traditional account planners is long past. Because clients have embraced audiences. They don't just pay media owners for access to them. Clients have become media owners in their own right and here I am not talking about content but the aggregation of audiences. CRM was part of the story. Though frequently this resulted in datawarehouses which were so unwieldly as to be commercially useless. But as many clients started to turn their transaction systems into marketing databses they started to get into the territory of big data. The most famous of these is the Tesco Club Card but airlines, cable companies, mobible phone companies and of course internet retailers have discovered that the behavioural data they collect as a necessity for trading is worth more than the income they generate from selling.
Data planning used to be a poor relation - but not any more. Data planning is now part and parcel of marketing and an essential component. Frequently it is the database which is required for research and for mainstream marketing activity. We rely on media channels less and less - not only for cost reasons but because there is an incremental cost in measurement and for many data assets held inhouse or close to inhouse - the measurement is inbuilt. Segmentation, testing matrixes - all these have become mainstream tools. Direct marketing agencies and loyalty agencies have the expertise to build business cases fast. Digital agencies are also operating in this territory when they move beyond the technology to modelling and not just counting.
The sheer scale of the big data available means it is a mainstream concern for planners. If you don't understand this stuff then find out fast. The challenge for researchers is the clients are losing interest in samples. Why bother if you can have a dataset that includes near everybody? If you are starting your career then you will need qualitatative skills. But you will also need to be numerate and to talk intelligently about data - don't expect media types and econometricians to do all the lifting for you.
Remember also that mass audiences aren't nearly as interesting as lumpy ones. finding those who are promotionally active, or who love advertising, or who are social, or persuasive - these are much more interesting ways of separating people out. I have a list of such discriminators filed away for checking purposes. Focus also on behaviour and goals rather than demographics and attitudes they much more reliably measurable.
Get to know excel. Learn how to make simple models to test different scenarios - better still get a job in an agency that takes audiences seriously and measures them and you will be taught.
I could write about audience for hours but that will have to do for now.
