Q: What makes media monitoring like a Doner kebab?

A: The category is begging for a shake-up

An article in Marketing Week explained that German Doner kebab brand GDK is addressing ‘deep-seated notions about its category.’ Seen as the standard fare of drinkers after a night in the pub, the Doner kebab could be so much more. Why not eat it at other times, argues GDK. For example, in the middle of the day?

Disrupting an established category takes nerve. Changing customer buying habits isn’t easy, especially where there are entrenched ways of thinking about the product. For many, the word ‘kebab’ conjures up decades-old association with the student nightlife scene and attempts to fend off an impending hangover.

Yet the will to shake things up resonated with us.

Media monitoring is also a category ripe for redefinition. What began life as the press clippings industry hasn’t undergone any radical innovation since the 1990s. Despite attempts at shiny AI packaging and automated reporting, the essential ingredients remain the same greasy metrics – reach, impressions, OTS and even AVEs. All derived from measuring the media coverage itself, to guesstimate the short-term influence on those who read it.

Like the least appetising kebabs (GDK naturally excluded), media evaluation is often padded out by fillers and flavoured with dubious sauces. It is frequently a disappointment, leaving punters hungry for more meat. Take, for example, the ridiculous reach numbers claiming that a media story has reached the entire global population. Not to mention the questionable sauce that is sentiment analysis. Masquerading as a bona fide ketchup, this spurious metric would have us believe that what the media publishes is an exact substitute for customer taste, preference and perception.

Media impact evaluation must be flipped on its head, to start not with what the media published, but what the audience engaged with. Otherwise, its conclusions will remain meat-free and totally unsuitable for being served up in the boardroom. To elevate its status, the Communications function must learn to digest metrics that prove its contribution to organisational objectives, including commercial outcomes such as sales revenue and share price.

In an increasingly volatile world, Communications is still metaphorically queuing in the rain for a kebab. When the sticky brown sauce hits the fan, traditional media evaluation is incapable of preventing the hangover. It can only measure what the media prints, infer likely customer response from sentiment analysis and then wait and see how it plays out commercially. Category disruption means changing the menu to provide real-time insights into how the audience is responding, combining media audience data with other key indicators to anticipate and measure the impact on an organisation’s reputation and business results.

If your executives are bored of digesting bland media evaluation and have an appetite for a better kebab that tickles the tastebuds, get in touch.

Place your order via the form below or drop us a line at hello@metricomm.com.