The highly experienced advertising and media research authority Scott McDonald has been named the new president and CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation — and the ARF board is
repositioning the 80-year-old foundation.
I spoke with McDonald and ARF board chairman Jed Meyer, EVP-corporate research at Univision Communications, on the eve of today’s
announcement about the evolving scope, vision and innovation needed to take ARF to the next level.
They seem to have a clear path.
Meyer said he believes
McDonald’s appointment underlines the importance of ARF’s role to the advertising, media and research communities it serves, as well as to its continuing leadership, value and growth
opportunities. The board’s goal is to “increase ARF’s visibility and vitally for its many constituents.”
Past ARF chair David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer
of CBS and president of CBS Vision, added: “The search to lead ARF to the next level was a tough assignment and took time.”
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4 Key Challenges
McDonald and Meyer emphasized the need for the ARF to embrace even broader challenges in an exponentially expanding advertising, media and marketing research world. They identified
some of the potential challenges for ARF to address in continuing its role as the neutral focal point. Their list includes:
“Continuing focus on U.S.
stakeholders and liaison with other major industry associations (4As; ANA; MRC; CIMM; etc.).” ARF will attempt to embrace the influences and focus of the other major advertising industry
associations. “There is so much to gain with collaboration,” McDonald said.
“Increasing international cooperation on
common global issues.” McDonald has significant international experience and has worked closely with major industry research and marketing organizations, including the Print & Digital
Research Forum (as Board Chairman), as well as ESOMAR, and i-COM.
He offered the possibility of “synthesizing and distilling international event learnings for ARF members and, as an
example, mentioned the critical importance of privacy issues for many ARF multinational members.” Meyer noted the ARF’s mission of, “involvement in common global issues despite the
logistical challenges.”
“Building the breadth, scope and immediacy of its extensive events program.”
Unlike some other industry research bodies, the ARF is well-funded and staffed. However, its conference business, which is a significant source of revenue, has faces increasingly
aggressive competition. Repositioning ARF events and going to the next level will require increased resources.
This is one way McDonald believes the ARF can maintain its impartial
leadership role in quickly “addressing current topics or the soup du jour” and issues that will come faster with more complexity. He says it will provide ad hoc research quality and
insight opportunities as part of its evolving “neutral industry role.”
While the ARF actively encourages event sponsorships, it is one of the few organizations that do
not allow so-called “pay-for-play” involvement for speakers.
The most recent example was the ARF’s cooperation with Green Book on understanding polling via its
“Predicting Election 2016” workshop, which looked at the intersection of data science and survey research techniques that many companies are struggling with in their day-to-day marketing
efforts. It was informative and fascinating.
“Addressing best practices in data science (Big Data, modeling and analytics) versus traditional
research methods and how they “should” be positioned, individually and in combination, to drive better marketing intelligence and solutions.”
McDonald
indicated: “Improving the overall quality of everything ARF does will include the elements of creative, brand equity and traditional methods and approaches as part of the new agenda in addition
to the data science, data fraud, analytic models and transparency dimensions.
"ARF will continue to take a broad view of the needs and opportunities across the advertising industry to
address ever more complex and increasing numbers of research quality and best practices fears.
“There are scientific foundations to the research and findings essential
to resolving member concerns when making marketing decisions. Expanding the scope and delivering innovation and value to members will raise the equity of ARF.”
“And make ARF
indispensable to our members,” added Meyer.