Between labyrinth and compass
The MA Strategy is only useful for strategists who have determined their strategy
At the first workshop held by Wemf on MA Strategy, both its director René Schmutz and Monica Jäggi from the Konnex media agency repeatedly emphasized that MA Strategy is a strategic planning tool that can be used to compare users rather than reach (see box).
It therefore provides information on the frequency of use, but not on the intensity of use. Its aim is not to make an intermedia comparison in all its subtleties, but to illustrate the essential correlations. The MA Strategy can therefore be used to determine which media group is best suited to reach the target group.
MA Strategy does not replace your own mental work
It can also be determined whether titles or channels overlap in a media group. In addition, different media mix variants can be compared with each other. At the strategic level, the MA Strategy can provide assistance in defining the media target group, said Jäggi.
However, media planners must then decide on either a broad or a deep strategy, otherwise they will get lost in the possibilities. Only with the chosen strategy in mind is the MA Strategy also a tool for intermedia comparisons. However, it is not suitable for detailed planning or for analyzing the price-performance ratios of different media types or media-mix combinations. Jäggi draws the following conclusions: "MA Strategy can be used for planning and optimizing the media mix, but it is no substitute for your own mental work or for detailed planning using Mach Basic, Mach Consumer, Telecontrol or radio studies."
Othmar Fischlin from Publimedia took the same line. "No study can replace reality. MA Strategy can therefore only help to review, optimize or support strategic decisions that have already been made."
Two other speakers, Bruno Oetterli from Radiotele and Giordano Giordani from IP Multimedia, pointed out that MA Strategy can be used not only for media planning, but also for marketing one's own type of media. Oetterli consistently applied this marketing approach and used an example to show that, depending on the issue and strategy model, radio, a somewhat underestimated medium in Switzerland, can help to achieve good values in combination with other media - sometimes better values than if it is replaced by other media in the mix.
Oetterli also pointed out that the MA Strategy should also be of interest to radio managers, namely when it comes to forming advertising pools. These are too often put together according to reach alone, but hardly according to affinities.
Finally, Giordani's presentation became somewhat embarrassing as he tried to use MA Strategy to deduce that the IPM has "an interesting media portfolio" to appeal to anyone interested in cars. The proof was not successful, as Giordani promptly mixed up the strategic and detailed planning levels and drew hasty conclusions.
How the MA Strategy comes about
In future, the data for the MA Strategy will be collected with every interview for Mach Basic. The question is whether a title or channel is used daily, weekly, rarely or never. A distinction is thus made between heavy (once a day), medium (several times a week) and light users (once a week). Heavy and medium users together make up the "narrower user group" (ENK).
The approximately 23,500 interviews include print titles, TV and radio stations, cinema and the Internet. This results in the MA Strategy Basic, which can also provide information on the use of small titles and channels.
When combined with the Mach Consumer (around 11500 interviews), the MA Strategy Consumer is created, in which smaller titles and channels are excluded due to the sample size.
Posters and direct mail cannot be included in the MA Strategy, and the Internet is only included as a complete medium. However, the latter is now set to change: Wemf intends to integrate the data from MA Comis into MA Strategy 2001.
After all, from this year onwards, Wemf will only charge those broadcasters and domains that pay for it. This is already the case for print titles.
A clear srg wink with the fence post
For years, they have been arguing about the right method for the intermedia comparison and have each presented their own approaches. Now both Wemf Director René Schmutz and Matthias Steinmann, Head of the SRG Research Service, confirm that the methodological obstacles to a joint intermedia study have been removed and that it would in fact be possible to incorporate radio and telecontrol data into the MA Strategy.
Nevertheless, the first talks were stopped again. Firstly, the research service is currently completely absorbed with the introduction of Radiocontrol and MMXI-Internetpanel. Secondly, Steinmann is surprised that Wemf has agreed to cooperate with the
MMXI competitor ACNielsen (WW 16/01). He is therefore considering providing MMXI clients with the Konso study (43,000 interviews), which is used annually to survey the population for MMXI and whose results are only used internally, as a supplement. This would allow Steinmann to compete directly with MA Comis (2000 interviews).
And Steinmann has yet another fence post ready: How about adding readership questions à la Mach Basic with a limited number of titles to the Konso interviews and then linking them to Radiocontrol data? By the way: TV can also be surveyed with the Radiocontrol clock. The result would be an intermedia study independent of the Wemf - with significantly more interviews...
MA Strategy: useful in strategic planning
(Table on PDF)
