Has TouchPoints met its expectations?

IS TOUCHPOINTS THE FIRST SUPERSTAR RESEARCH PROJECT?

Most consumer research generates a temporary flutter of interest before fading from view, or else settles comfortably into unremarkable, everyday use. But wherever the IPA's hugely ambitious cross-media survey and database makes an appearance, there are inevitably crowds and there is frequently controversy.

Eagerly scrutinised on the launch of its initial survey a year ago, and again when its database came online in October, TouchPoints was still capable of packing out a meeting of the Media Research Group in February, when Initiative head of consumer insight Jane Watson led a call for a simplified version. In theory, TouchPoints is the right idea at just the right time - a structure for cross-media insight, drawing together its own hub research with that of the various currencies at a time when consumer media habits have never been harder to pin down.

Called for and anticipated by media agencies with mounting fervour since long before its late-2004 pilot, TouchPoints was touted throughout its lengthy gestation as the missing link between the currencies. It would break down consumers' media days, hour by hour, and feed new insights into the planning process that would make it all but obvious how to build the perfect media plan for any given audience.

That final supposition was perhaps a rather ambitious one, but certainly TouchPoints encourages ambitious thinking. TouchPoints commercial director Mark Cross says: "The intention is that TouchPoints isn't just a stand-alone survey. Its ambition is to help us all through a more complex planning process and give us a better understanding of the way people are consuming media."

When TouchPoints finally arrived last year, in two stages, it was perhaps inevitable that the reality couldn't quite match up to the great expectations. Planners reported that the tool was hard to wield and more time-consuming than their schedules allowed, and there were doubts about the data that represented certain media - most notably television.

Media owners too were soon complaining that TouchPoints didn't seem to be forming the basis of agencies' planning decisions.

Jason Brownlee, research director at Other Lines of Enquiry and former head of research at Emap, recalls being asked to contribute a six-figure sum several years ago.

"Emap didn't invest in the end, but I wonder how I would feel today if I had spent that proportion of my budget on a project I had been asked to take part in - and they presented a very strong moral argument that we should - and I discovered it wasn't being used?"

As it prepares for the second iteration of TouchPoints and begins to contemplate the possibility of a rolling survey, the IPA might expect credit for even attempting to produce a coherent response to our fragmenting media. Instead, it has found itself forced to justify its very existence to agencies on the one hand and media owners on the other.

Doreen Dignan, head of MindShare Insight, says part of the problem might have been the amount of hype. "The expectation was so high and also, of course, there has been very large investment from lots of people. It took time to get to the stage where we are just now starting to get some good information out of it. That is a source of frustration for some."

Part of TouchPoints' possible image problem, according to Cross, is that the system was never designed to trade in absolutes - nor could it ever hope to, given the complexity of the brief it has taken on.

"TouchPoints doesn't propose a right or wrong answer to a problem," he says. "It really is horses for courses. It is there to assist us through the complexity, rather than give us simple top-line stuff."

He acknowledges that those who have not mastered the system could easily pull out misleading data and that planners need to spend time mastering the software and using their imagination.

To that end, about 1,000 people have been through the IPA's induction sessions. "The challenge for users is to dig deeper, to target deeper and, if they do that, that is when we will understand the potential of TouchPoints," says Cross, somewhat mystically.

Insights

So, on the occasion of its first birthday, what can TouchPoints actually do? It is certainly capable of offering intriguing insights into our comings and goings as a nation, and the media we are most likely to have to hand as we go about our lives.

While some findings arguably skate a fine line between insight and trivia, TouchPoints can tell you whether men sleep longer than women, whether the Scottish work harder than the Welsh and whether people who live in the Midlands are more stressed than those in the North West. This is because the survey asked respondents to specify their mood as they kept their electronic diaries.

Such hub data, drawn from a 5,000-strong panel, is "data that is designed to travel", according to Cross. It can - as it set out to do - bond with client databases and proprietary and sector-specific research to give further substance to its insights; it is searchable by any number of criteria to produce any number of graphical representations of lives and habits at every age, in every possible demographic niche, in every part of the day.

Such a tool is clearly setting its sights on something more fundamental than puzzling out a particular tactical media challenge, which perhaps explains why those who are trying to do just that can find TouchPoints the proverbial sledgehammer to their nut. Jim Marshall, chairman of Starcom UK and chairman of the IPA's Media Futures Group, concedes there have been growing pains, but his belief in its ultimate value hasn't wavered.

"It doesn't give you a media plan, but in terms of assisting the process of proper communication planning, this does infinitely more than anything has ever been able to do in the past, because it is cross-media," says Marshall. "Also, it doesn't make any qualitative judgements - it uses the standard industry currencies and that was absolutely how it was meant to be."

The natural place for TouchPoints is at the beginning of the strategic process, says Cross. On that basis, media owners who involve themselves at that stage will be the ones who understand its value.

"It is there to help inform the writing of the brief, help us understand channel relationships, find the channel strategy and, yes, plan the media as well," he adds.

Clients and agencies aren't the only ones taking a broader strategic view, of course. Marshall points to founder subscriber News International's use of TouchPoints in its own market research before launching thelondonpaper.

"This is about designing for the future and if you look at media owners, they are not the same now as they will be in years to come," says Marshall. "They are going to be increasingly cross-platform and, I think, cross-media."

Backlash

It would be a mistake to overstate the recent backlash against TouchPoints, when the enterprise has kept all its founding agency and media owner backers on board. Yahoo! and Flextech have been subsequent additions to the latter camp, while the number of agencies involved has also swelled.

What's more, while critics question the extent to which it is actually used, the agencies that have backed the enterprise from the outset have no hesitation in restating their commitment at executive level.

"The whole thing was like an experiment," says Jo Rigby, head of OMD Insight. "We view it as a continuing experiment into the search for the perfect set of insights into how people can be communicated with. At the pitch for TouchPoints 2, everybody was of the opinion that it wasn't perfect when it was delivered, and nobody expected it to be perfect, and that it is up to everybody to continue to work to make it better."

Among its flaws, Rigby suggests, is the issue that some of TouchPoints' insights are easier than others to relate to specific media planning problems. However, she adds, it would be hard to decide which parts of the database could actually be dispensed with. "You know when you have got your wardrobe and you only wear 20% of the clothes, but you don't want to chuck out the other 80%?" she quips.

The IPA's message is that those with a point to make are more than welcome to make it.

"The people using the data need to feed back what they want and how they want to use it, and how they want to work," says IPA senior research manager Belinda Beeftink.

Meanwhile, those in the agency world who have backed TouchPoints since the beginning are not so much defensive as outraged that the industry should be taking shots at something with such pure motives, just one year in.

"It has got to be about collective responsibility," says Richard Hartell, planning director at Starcom Mediavest.

"Something like this needed to happen. It is never going to be perfect and if it does have detractors, that is pretty bad play really.

"At the end of the day, this is the industry deciding that we have got a common goal and working towards it."

TOUCHPOINTS IN ACTION

It is the peculiar nature of research that conclusively discovering something you already knew is a thing to be celebrated.

TouchPoints offers many such moments, and it is these that give credibility to the more surprising discoveries.

The project's commercial director, Mark Cross, admits: "What TouchPoints does two-thirds of the time is to confirm the obvious. That's good: it gives you a substantive framework to dig deeper and get your insights."

So it is that a dummy brief, run as a test case with the key target audience of Scottish & Newcastle brewers in mind, tells us that 18 to 34-year-old men who go out on a given Saturday night, are more likely to feel good between 3pm and 11pm on that day, than 18 to 34-year-old men in general.

On Sunday - would you believe it - those who were out the night before are more likely to get up late, and they spend their day of rest eating, drinking and talking more than the average. They are far less likely to have a girlfriend or spouse than those who stay in, and they spend far more time with their friends at weekends than is statistically true for their age group as a whole.

These are not the insights TouchPoints promises; they are the reassuringly obvious findings that show you are on the right track. Buried among them are more intriguing findings: the fact that, at two points on Saturday afternoon, radio listening overtakes TV consumption for the 18 to 34-year-olds who are going out that night. Likewise, the fact that, while the young men who go out watch less television than their age group as a whole, their preferences are particularly strong compared to the average - in descending order, they most like the Paramount Comedy Channel, ITV3, Channel 4 and Sky Sports 1 and 3.

These glimpses may not always redefine a brand's perception of its target market, but they can offer an unforeseen tip for a new direction to pursue.

For example, Scottish & Newcastle UK marketing communications manager Tom Gill admits: "The argument for radio is one I haven't heard. Radio has a very low share of alcoholic drinks."

Gill believes TouchPoints could ultimately give insight into brand interaction as it matures: "In terms of precise outputs at this stage, I am not sure we are seeing definite conclusions being drawn. We are not getting eureka moments, but it is giving us a lot of data, and down the line we will get some insights."