Recognising consumer needs

By Tom Clarke

Understanding audiences has become increasingly important in a fragmented advertising market, says advertising specialist Anna Chitty.

This wide fragmentation makes it very difficult to get a message across, she says.

Anna Chitty is the new managing director of advertising planning and buying company Media Palace, which is part of The Communications Group.

The group also incorporates advertising agency Bates Palace and marketing company One for One Palace Plus.

She replaces Barry Williamson who is stepping aside from full-time involvement with Media Palace.

Anna Chitty says her company now places a heavy emphasis on planning and research, and careful buying of media.

"The skill become understanding the consumer," she says.

"It becomes a case of really understanding who your market is and how to predispose them cost-effectively.

"You can never do that on a single dimension - there has to be a multiplier effect and there has to be significant understanding of the nuance of your target audience and what you're promoting.

"Mainstream media still delivers mass audiences, but the key to any kind of communications is relevance, timeliness and context.

"These are words that are regularly bandied about - the trick is not to pay lip service to them, but to actually fundamentally understand what is relevant to the consumer, then talk to them at an appropriate time and in an appropriate vein."

That means, Anna Chitty says, keeping abreast of what people are doing and how they are living their lives, and then being able to break through and make a connection with them and get them to listen. When they do listen, they need to be rewarded with something that is relevant to them.

She says that applies in the case of the internet, which is all about content and relevance. If a site doesn't deliver, it is unlikely people will ever go back. That, she says, means a lot of money can be wasted.

"I think there's going to be a lot of errors made and a lot of expense put into very much a scattergun approach," she says.

"As much as the internet can be very one-on-one, it can also be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

"There is one school of thought that internet sites should be run by someone with the skills of a journalist, because it is like a newspaper. If you want people to keep coming back, it has to be always current.

"It's very disappointing to find a site that you think looks interesting, but when you go back again the information hasn't changed. In that case, it's unlikely that you'll ever go back again and that means that the site has lost the prospect of being a communications vehicle."

Anna Chitty first joined the group as a media planner in 1994 after living and working overseas. It was then known as Media Decisions.

She moved through to a media director position in 1996, and later became general manager of the enlarged Media Palace after Media Decisions and the media department of Bates Advertising were merged.