MRI, MBI Partner to Launch Multimedia Planning Database

Data collected will give marketers insight into how consumers react to brand messages.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI) announced this week a strategic partnership with the Media Behavior Institute (MBI) to launch a syndicated, consumer-centric, multimedia database with the goal of giving marketers granular insight into how people use media. Details of the partnership were given yesterday at 4A’s “Transformation” Conference in San Francisco.

The project will be based on a research methodology called TouchPoints, which was created by the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). MBI exclusively licensed the IPA Touchpoints name and methodology for use in the U.S. in 2008. Data is collected on a half-hour basis for 10 days with an electronic diary that includes information such as where a respondent was, who they were with, what they were doing and what media they encountered along the way.

“Our goal is to create a U.S. database of consumer activity that can serve as a hub of information on all the factors that could affect a consumer’s receptivity to a brand message,” MRI CEO Kathi Love said in a statement.

MRI and MBI intend to help marketers target consumers within the context of their daily lives by combining the TouchPoints methodology with detailed attitudinal, category and brand purchase behavior for consumers via MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer, which measures the average issue audience of consumer magazines. It will show for precisely which half hour time periods consumers are using a medium alone, using several media concurrently and using media concurrent with another life activity.

To test consumer cooperation, MRI and MBI conducted a pilot test in 2009 in the Detroit and Indianapolis DMAs. Fifty adults in those two markets—all of them respondents to MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer—completed an iPhone-based electronic diary created by MBI. The respondents were asked to report their daily activities, media usage and mood by entering information on the iPhone application for a ten-day period at half-hour intervals.

“The pilot tests exceeded everyone’s expectations for consumer response and timeliness,” Love said. “We know where a respondent was, who they were with, what they were doing and what media they encountered along the way. And, because these consumers are respondents to MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer, we also know what they buy and how they think. This facilitates the highest form of context planning by helping to identify and define communications opportunities, enhance the planning process and inform budget allocation decisions.”

The companies intend to launch an initial version of the database in 2011.