• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 5, 2006

To better understand the experiences consumers have with media, Interpublic Group is tapping some people with professional experience. Specifically, professionals with experience in media content, branding and media technology. On Thursday, the first of those pros, Lydia Loizides, began working at the Consumer Experience Practice (CEP), the new unit within the Interpublic Media Group, headed by long-time Interpublic research diva Stacey Lynn Koerner.

The unit, which may be a first of its kind, is a corporate-level practice that will service both Interpublic agencies such as Initiative Media, FCB and Universal McCann, as well as outside clients, and possibly even other agencies. In that sense, it is a bit like Publicis' recently launched Denuo, a unit of the Paris-based ad giant that is designed to envision and develop the future of media. But unlike Denuo, Interpublic's CEP unit is focused purely on research, and primarily on primary research - the kind that most traditional agencies can't afford, or don't have the manpower to implement.

Koerner, who serves as CEP's president, says that research will be in constant flux as the new unit strives to understand the fundamental nature of how consumers experience media, content and brands in all their forms and manifestations.

"It's different if it's a piece of content: A newspaper, a TV show or a magazine or whatever. Or, if it's a brand, because they have a relationship with the brand and media - new media ,or whatever," Koerner told MediaDailyNews Thursday. "They come together when the marketplace tries to work with advertisers and content providers to forge relationship and get the messages across to consumers."

To truly understand those connections, CEP will field research designed to understand the consumer psyche. She estimated that about 80 percent of the research would be primary studies, while 20 percent would come from special analysis of commonly used syndicated research tools.

Beyond that, the new unit will rely on the wisdom, intuition and intellect of experienced researchers and analysts like Loizides.

Before joining Interpublic, Loizides was principal of Paphion Inc., an advanced media consulting firm that worked with entertainment, media and technology companies to develop media on both traditional and alternative platforms. Before that, she was a leading new media analyst at Ziff Brothers Investments and at Jupiter Research.

Loizides sees her role as part researcher, part analyst, part visionary, and part facilitator.

"Everybody is concerned with and tasked with the same issues how do I reach the consumer. How do I keep them, How do I maintain that relationship. It's about finding a way to create that connection and keep that relationship," she said.

To do this, Loizides said she will be working closely with media companies, especially new platform providers who have access to information about how consumers experience media, including cable operators, digital video recorder services, and others with access to clickstream data.

That's consistent with Koerner's vision of tapping new data streams that go beyond the kind of syndicated products that Madison Avenue has typically used, such as audience measurement data from Nielsen, Arbitron, Mediamark Research Inc., and Simmons Market Research Bureau.

Over the past few years, Koerner, who previously was research chief at Interpublic's Initiative unit, developed a number of new research methods including PropheSEE, a system enabling the agency to predict the success of new TV shows before they are launched. She also worked with BuzzMetrics, now Nielsen BuzzMetrics, to help develop a product that eventually became a syndicated tool known as TV*BuzzMetrics, which mines blogs and online discussions to understand how online buzz is influencing the prospects for TV programs.

Koerner would not provide details of other new research applications, but she said the unit is working with "behavioral targeting technologies," "census-based technologies" such as digital set-top data, and mining social networks for insights about how consumers connect with media, content and brands.

She said she is particularly excited about the prospects of tapping and "reaggregating" data from social networks as better, more dynamic and real-time version of the types of insights media shops traditionally got from syndicated sources like MRI and Simmons.

"We use things like Simmons, like MRI, which are a piece of time that is six months old," she noted, adding that social networks could be exploited as live, continuous panels of consumer behavior and experiences.