To experience the entire adventure, click here:

By Paul Woolmington Last month we celebrated a group of unsung heroes - our clients. This month, I turn to another group without whom many great innovations and "new nexts" wouldn't have happened - the great community of media partners. As part of The Media Kitchen's manifesto, we list some Rules of Engagement (see www.mediakitchen.tv). Rule No. 5 refers to changing the buyer versus seller paradigm and creating new relationships that are akin to partnerships. Why do we say this? Because nothing great was ever achieved without passion and partnership or, in most cases, without partners (notably …

Over the past year-and-a-half, researchers at the center for media design at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, have been conducting a series of studies, which many experts believe to be the most realistic measure of how people actually use media. Unlike survey methods that rely on people filling out diaries, punching buttons on meters, or answering questions on the phone, the center's researchers followed people around for an entire day and observed what media they consumed. The study was enlightening, revealing that people consume much more of all forms of media than Madison Avenue's best research …

BY John Nardone Marketing accountability is a hot topic these days. It seems that every marketing conference I go to, and every trade publication I read, attempts to address some facet of the issue. According to the hype, marketing accountability is at the top of the industry's agenda. But when it comes to improving marketing accountability, companies are more talk than action. A recent survey conducted by MMAand Forrester Research, in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers, shows that while there is indeed recognition of a problem, few companies have begun coordinated efforts to …

By Jim Kite Is project apollo the "holy grail" of media research that some say it is? The two industry heavyweights behind the research, Nielsen and Arbitron, definitely think so. They promise that it will soon be possible to measure advertising return on investment (ROI) in a way that directly affects the bottom line - by sales and not by impressions, exposures, or clicks. The technology used to capture this data not only sounds cool, but when implemented properly, is also very precise. By supplying participants with Portable People Meters (PPM), encoded signals from various broadcast and …

By Mark Green TNS media intelligence reports that traditional ad spending grew 107 percent since 1990, after being adjusted for inflation. If you include recent fast-growth media like the Internet, which TNS started reporting in 2001, these numbers get hotter still. Over this same period, ad agency staffing actually shrank by 4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports. Media employees did better, with a 36 percent increase in their numbers. However, the BLS doesn't break out media buying from media sales employees, and I have to think that there was disproportionately more …

By Marc Babej Media planners are finally getting the credit they deserve, not only as communications creatives but also as contributors to marketing strategy. Now the time is ripe for a media planning perspective on communications strategy - one that is equally actionable for both media and messaging. Consumer attitudes, the cornerstone of conventional brand strategy, don't fit this bill. Attitudes are thoughts that begin with "I like..." or "I dislike...." There are two fundamental problems with focusing on attitudes: First, attitudes tend to be vague and fleeting. Second, they are notoriously un-predictive of the only thing …

BY PAUL PARTON It seems like you can't open a trade magazine these days without pronouncements about the media revolution. But while media may be changing at lightning speed, it's likely that consumers' media habits will evolve more gradually. Maybe it's just me, but everywhere I look these days there seems to be a story about chaos theory and media's new world order. I'm referring specifically to a story that ran in Advertising Age in April, discussing a hurly-burly wonderland of new media opportunity where everything is on-demand, personalized, and absolutely advertising-free. But I can't help wondering whether …

BY Steve Farella & Audrey Siegel In previous columns, we've noted that consumers are open to receiving messages at different times and in different media, depending on the product category. As the stewards of a brand's media budget, planners must track and measure all communications elements. In today's post-Enron, post-WorldCom environment, accountability is king. Tracking and measurement must be precise. There exists, however, a conflict between our imperative to surround the consumer with messages placed in more effective - and sometimes less traditional - places, and the growing need for accountability. Ironically, the more creative …

BY christopher Schroeder Back in 1988, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas released "Tucker: the Man and his Dream." The film was based on the real-life Preston Tucker who, shortly after World War II, invented one of the sleekest, most technologically advanced (while still affordable) cars ever made. Threatened by his progress, the Big Three automakers, with some help from their friends in Washington, effectively squashed the product, making Tucker into a small footnote of automotive history. There was a good deal of debate that the film oversimplified a complicated story. But whether there was a pro-active …