• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 13, 2007

In the nearly four years since a new team took over the Advertising Research Foundation, they have focused on getting Madison Avenue to rethink the way it looks at advertising research. Now they are trying to get the industry to rethink the way it uses media.

"Media has become more central to marketing. It's not just an afterthought anymore. It's not just something an ad agency does, or that a PR agency does to get press. It's something that is much more integral," Chief Research Officer Joe Plummer asserted recently during a briefing leading up to the foundation's annual conference in New York next week. The briefing, which took place in the ARF's new downtown Manhattan headquarters, laid out in a Feng Shui design, replete with miniature Zen gardens, waterfalls and post-Modern furniture symbolizing just how different the foundation is, as well as the industry it serves.

Thinking different is what the new ARF is all about, and is what the focus of next week's conference will be. Like the past several annual conferences, it is literally branded "Re:think," and the panels, workshops and keynotes all focus on the basic elements of a changing media landscape and on the role advertising research can play in navigating it. Unlike years past when discussions might have focused on parochial issues like audience measurement, or advertising effectiveness, this year's theme is all about strategic thinking and its importance in a rapidly changing media marketplace.

"It probably should have been more strategic than it was," conceded Bob Barocci, a long-time agency executive who took over the ARF nearly four years ago, and recruited Plummer, one of the industry's top researchers, to lead its vision. Historically, he said, the industry in general and the ARF in particular focused "on the message," and media was an afterthought planned by rote. TV was the base buy and everything filled in from there.

"That probably was not the smartest way to think about your communications," he acknowledged, adding, "You can't do that today."

To its credit, the ARF has been trying to move that ball, refocusing the industry's fundamentals, including some of the most basic elements of all, like how people think, and how advertising affects the way they think about brands.

Much of the past three years has focused on collaborations with people like Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, a leading proponent of the role of neuroscience on advertising research, as well as a broad and freewheeling discussion that has attempted to define and figure out ways of applying the so-called concept of consumer "engagement."

The ARF has been criticized by some by trying to oversimplify the concept of engagement, but it is actually close to wrapping up a series of important studies that will shed new light on the way people think and engage with both advertising and media. Some of that learning will be disclosed next week, and some of it via new, in depth white paper scheduled to be released in the next few weeks by the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Perhaps the greatest indication of how much the ARF's media focus has shifted is the rising dominance of online in its discussions and research explorations. Unlike the past when TV clearly dominated everything, online has taken center stage. Among the sweet spots at next week's conference will be a workshop on Sunday that explores how to apply new learning from the ARF's soon-to-be-released Online Advertising Playbook.

But the big theme, during next week's conference will be the role of strategy and how the industry thinks strategically about media.

"The whole idea that strategy matters," said Plummer, noting that the last day of the conference is essentially devoted to the subject, including a panel discussion that brings together the heads of the Big 4 global research organizations - Nielsen Co.'s David Calhoun, TNS' David Lowden, Kantar's Eric Salama, and Gfk's Klaus Wubbenhorst - for the first time ever. While they will discuss the "research company of the future," their panel will be followed by one exploring the "agency of the future"

"Everyone has been focusing on the latest tactic, the latest medium and the latest new technology," said Plummer, "but when you step back it's the strategies that make the difference between being good and being marginal."

Plummer asserted that the industry has reached a "no going back" tipping point, and that its soul-searching would continue until it has completely rethought the very definitions of advertising and media in the next few years.

"We're not going back," he said, adding that is epitomized by a new book by Steven Fredericks, CEO of TNS Media Intelligence. The book, "StrADegy: Advertising in the Digital Age," will be the basis of a luncheon presentation by Fredericks on Tuesday, and Plummer promised it would serve as a keystone for understanding this shift."

"He is going to posit that, as we move forward with advertising in the digital age, advertisers won't think about advertising in terms of the medium they are delivering on, but in terms of the format they deliver: audio, video and text."