Her scholarly look and flair for demographics/psychographics clearly indicate her passion for the art-cum-science of media planning. More importantly, her soft-spoken friendly demeanour has endeared her to many a space-time seller who consider her to be a "guru"! Meet Lodestar's media director Arpita Menon.

Menon has worked in several top agencies such as Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA), FCB Ulka and Chaitra Leo Burnett. After a brief stint in HTA's media planning arm, Menon was invited to head FCB Ulka's newly formed Labcentre. Perhaps this was one of the rare cases when a senior executive with more than a decade of experience in frontline media planning and buying was called to spearhead "backroom" (actually it's rightful place is at the forefront of operations) media research operations. Currently, budding media planners see Menon as a living embodiment of the maxim "Research unused is research wasted!" and try to emulate her understanding of the subject.

Under the able leadership of Menon, the Labcentre started off with two people in Mumbai and one person in Delhi. Menon ardently strives to get a fix on how consumers interact with media and individual programmes. She has played a pivotal lead role in the creation of MEDIAGRAPHICS (billed as a study on "man and mankind" based on media consumption patterns), ImPress, Media Perfedia Involvement Index, Journeyman and Lodestar Matrix amongst others.

Menon watches television to keep abreast of the latest happenings in the leading programmes on various channels. A "travel freak", she enjoys exploring new lands with her family members and loves to experiment with diverse cuisine from different parts of the country.

In a tête-à-tête with indiantelevision.com's Ashwin Kotian, Menon spoke about the importance of "lab-centric" research in media planning and buying in the contemporary age.

Why has media planning research gained increased prominence over the years?
Nearly a decade back, a lot of media related research was minimalist (syndicated annual diaries) and similar to things like the broad-based national census studies. Media planners used to have access to a huge quantum of data but never realised that they needed to move beyond TRPs, channel shares and CPRPs.

However, there were some savvy planners who realised the need for going beyond the routine; clamoured for techniques which would result in better utilization of existing data. Realising the complexity of TV/print data these planners demanded better specific research - awareness tracking data, media weights, scheduling patterns.

The best part was that most of this data was already existing in some form or the other but the planners never looked at it seriously. Currently things have changed and a lot of media specialist agencies/ divisions have seen the merit of undertaking huge investments in media - for instance WPP Media's ATG and Lodestar's Labcentre.

How has Lodestar geared up to align itself to the changed media scenario?
Lodestar's structure is unique because it is a considered to be a part of the parent organization (FCB Ulka) and still given a lot of independence. In some ways, the 15 per cent commission model still has some advantages over the AOR model.

Lodestar was one of the few media specialist agencies which started the Labcentre three years back. It was a great decision to undertake such a project at a time when there was tremendous pressure due to general recession and loss of business due to international alignments.

Also, the organization had the foresight and guts to take senior mainstream media professionals (such as myself) and put them in charge of research - something which would have been considered to be backroom operations. Actually, these are the forerunners of the entire planning and buying operations. Lodestar recognised this aspect of media research.

At Lodestar, media executives are trained to be a part of the client servicing teams in terms of sharing a responsibility of ensuring client profitability and sales. A unique model has been constituted in wherein there are no clear-cut demarcations between media planners and buyers.

Whenever there are separate people looking after the functions, it is possible that planners will get distanced from the market realities. Also, the buyers, despite having good media knowledge, don't necessarily have the requisite client focus or brand knowledge which the planners have. There is clearly a mismatch whenever the two functions of media planning and buying are treated separately. Also, the relationships between buyers and space-time sellers had more of a personal touch or personality driven equations.

At Lodestar media, we realised this ambiguity nearly three years back and took remedial measures.

How do you bridge the gap between media planning research and its actual implementation at the ground level?
The very existence of the Labcentre ensures that planning never takes a backseat. The Labcentre merely develops the systems, processes and tools without getting into the nitty-gritty of strategic planning.

Sometimes, the constant pressure of media planning/buying takes away the intellectual capacities and questioning abilities of the media executives and relegates it to the background. However, life is not black or white. The Labcentre ensures that media planners/buyers undertake implementation of the media tools created by it.

During the annual reviews and KRAs, an effort is made to study whether the planner/buyer has managed to utilize the tools developed by the Lab Centre - for instance a TELCO or a Whirlpool planner will have to use the Labcentre media tools at least for a minimum number of times within a stipulated period. The client is also kept in the loop and they too ensure that the implementation process takes place.

How is MEDIAGRAPHICS different from its peers (3D amongst others)?
The entire philosophy of MEDIAGRAPHICS revolved around identifying the data gaps. MEDIAGRAPHICS is all about peeling the onion one level deeper and going beyond the broad demographic definition of a TG, to isolate segments within any particular broad group with distinct media consumption patterns.

The starting point is NRS (National Readership Survey) data as it is able to offer multimedia usage/ownership. We differentiated the segments based on media habits and each segment would have different and distinct media preferences. Consider for instance segments within the males 25 years+ SEC AB eight metros target audience: Media Mad Fast Tracker; Settled Corpo; Couch Potato; Sarkari Babu; Aiyappan Saar; Common Man; Retail Patel and Traditionalist. Media vehicles are then fine-tuned only to this segment. We ensured that the Media Graphics study was part of the Sesame media planning software and optimizers.

We used the NRS raw data and studied clustering, segmentation issues. However, we believe that MEDIAGRAPHICS is different from the existing models such as 3-D which has been derived from TGI. TGI has more of a psychographic orientation whereas MEDIAGRAPHICS goes beyond that.

What we discovered was that the male SEC AB target audience also had different clusters or segmentation. There were some people within this target audience who would watch Discovery, others who would watch sports so on and so forth. There were several media types hiding within the mass of each particular target group.

MEDIAGRAPHICS fine-tunes the media process by acknowledging the various distinct segments in each target group and then links it to the brands. The unique selling proposition of the study is that it is not just about segments but about media segments.

The best part was the availability of huge samples - for instance in the male SEC AB six metros target audience, we had a sample size of 50,000 individuals. Our study on precision targeting won the gold at the EMVIES.

Tell us about the print media planning tool ImPress?
Lodestar Labcentre kicked off its first major research initiative with the launch of ImPress - a study on generating impact in print medium. ImPress goes beyond the readership estimates of the vehicle to the reach of the advertising communication. ImPress calls for a paradigm shift from CPT (cost per thousand) to CPNP (cost per noticeability point) thereby creating a new currency for press planning and buying.

We created ImPress which revolves around the ad noticeability related issues in print. Most of the existing readership and circulation data was about vehicle reach rather than about ad noticeability. It related to important issues such as "where should I place the ad in order to ensure that my TG (target audience) sees it?" or "when should I place the second ad in the campaign to obtain the requisite response?". The primary research involved 5000 advertisements across five cities and 34 publications.

We finally prepared a three way grid - colour, position and size - in an easy to use format which would be convenient for media planners and buyers.

How does the Media Perfedia Loyalty Index help TV planners?
There is a lot of existing data on television which is not being used. We at Lodestar believe that the role of media buying today has evolved from commodity trading to getting a better fix on how consumers interact with media and with individual programmes.

Media Perfedia Involvement Index measures loyalty and is a unique tool that incorporates programme loyalty and enables a better selection of vehicles. A tool that now enables the advertiser with a 360 degrees holistic picture of programme involvement. It measures the loyalty aspect by assigning weights to the following key variables: Audience appeal; Audience engrossment and Audience Addiction.

Audience Appeal is a measure of the programme's popularity and its ability to attract an audience. Audience Engrossment assesses that quintessential quality that hooks viewers to the small screen in the form of time spent on a programme. Audience Addiction measures audience obsession and gauges episodic repeat viewing or appointment viewing.

Having identified the sturdiest programmes on a loyalty index is not sufficient but there is a need to incorporate costs efficiencies. The next step is to plot cost versus the Perfedia Index in order to arrive at the Lodestar Perfedia Grid. Based on these, the following have been identified - Brutus (Low loyalty, high costs); Mark Anthony (High loyalty, high cost); Cassius (Low Loyalty, low costs) and Calpurnia (High loyalty, low costs).

How does Journeyman increase efficiencies for TV planners?
Journeyman - an audience mapping tool - essentially puts audience migration under a magnifier in order to find some method in madness. Under this tool, it is possible to track audience movement for a basket of channels in a certain time-band or daypart.

The Journeyman essentially analyses gain-loss behaviour: how many new viewers switched on to a programme; how many people continued watching a programme; and how many came on to the programme from other channels. It makes it possible to go beyond TRPs and reach of a programme (which are static in nature) and track audience flow and movement and flow.

Journeyman is all about scheduling data on a minute by minute micro level. We developed a lot of target propensity maps through a data mining process. Journeyman can be used as a scheduling tool; a programming selection tool; a "finger-on-the-pulse tool"; programme slotting tool; lower cost alternative determining tool; and an impact scheduling tool.

For instance, the migratory pattern of an audience is basically of two types - christened by Lodestar as "Wanderlust days" and "Armchair" days. On "Armchair" days, strong programmes drive channel viewership and viewers tend to exhibit the oh-so-elusive quality - channel loyalty. Star India's Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) drove viewership into Kyunki… and Kahaani.. so strongly that these programmes overtook KBC in certain markets.

During the "Wanderlust" days, the audience doesn't exhibit any fidelity and flits from channel to channel and programme to programme. On "Armchair" days, the spots must be concentrated on the later half of the programmes preceding the driver programme and continue through to the driver programme owing to audience build-up. During "Wanderlust" days, one should be doing programme buys.

Give us an example of how these research tools helped a client?
For one of our clients Tata Consultancy Services, we used MEDIAGRAPHICS to conduct a cluster analysis. They wanted to target the mid-junior level executives. The traditional readership surveys don't go beyond the officer/executive levels and this was a challenge for us.

Using MEDIAGRAPHICS, we observed that some of the sub-groups - for instance the settled corporate executive - was high on press, Internet with minimal TV - a distinct focus on news, infotainment and niche English channels. The "Settled Corpo" is a middle-aged, middle/senior executive or officer in a private firm who lives in a metro and who has arrived in life. He travels to work in his own car while he listens to radio FM or reads The Economic Times. He has his own mobile phone, PC/laptop and owns most household durables. By using these sub-gradations, we ensured that the specific media plan targeting these executives over-delivered at half the cost.

Tata Indica was advertised on TV for the first time in 1999 and its strongest competitor Santro was miles ahead at that time. The task at hand was to break through the clutter as Santro's budget was four times that of Indica. The normal approach would have been to run the TVC on top programmes across channels.

We used Journeyman to identify "Armchair" days on each of the main channels. We concentrated on the "Armchair" days and the programmes selected on these days were selected as the driver programmes as well as the halo effect programmes (those preceding or following the driver programmes). The campaign concentrated on those days when the audiences loyalty was high. This resulted in high visibility significant for the launch.

Using Journeyman wherein we did something different for our client TELCO Normally, media execs used to bargain hard for the first spot in a break during events. Our studies showed that during event programmes breaks, viewers switched channels and came back as closer towards the end of the break. The last spot was important and had higher viewership density.

What are the personal challenges that you would look forward to?
The acceptance varies from client to client. The smarter ones have gone up the ladder and realised that accurate research-backed media buying and planning can add tremendous value to them. The old "bania mentality" is a thing of the past. Clients have realised and accepted that the future belongs to "media AORs" and not "buying AORs". Clients have realised that media research is one of the key elements of getting closer to the customer.