Mediacom audit: We weren’t asleep at the wheel but we could have done more, concedes benchmarker Faulkner
Faulkner
The boss of media benchmarker Ebiquity has conceded his company could have done more, after it emerged that it worked with two of the three clients who were misreported to by media agency Mediacom.
Eric Faulkner, CEO of Ebiquity, told Mumbrella: “There are a couple of people in the industry who are saying that we were asleep at the wheel. If you go back and ask were there things we would do differently? Well of course there were. In a perfect world we all could have done more.”
Ebiquity’s media value measurement division, previously known as Faulkner Media Management, works with IAG and Yum Brands to benchmark the performance of their advertising spends against the rest of the industry. Mediacom confirmed today that IAG, Yum and Foxtel has been misled for two years with staff editing documents to reduce audience targets when they had been missed.
Never repeat an accusation – makes you sound guilty even if you’re not.
Auditing uncovers irregular reporting, if someone is being dishonest they can easily get past auditors – happens in every industry
When I was a buyer working on accounts audited by Faulkner, it never occurred to me to forge results to meet the benchmark even though I used to fail the audit every time, because my client (a division of a much larger holding company who insisted on auditing) wanted strategic placement of spots and I bought them a small but highly premium schedule based on wacky concepts like ‘contextual placement’.
I still remember that forlorn look on my boss’s face (edited under the Mumbrella comment policy) as he’d say every time ‘And your campaigns are well over the benchmark…again’ and I’d shrug and say ‘yep…the client loves their campaign, and they’re shifting units…and they think I’m a rockstar’.
Or you know, words to that effect. Maybe.
For gods sake when are we going stop focusing on made up media concepts and junk data like reach and ratings and CPMs…and finally, eventually, inevitably towards client business results? Guess what marketers….you can get amazeballs CPMS or HUGE reach and if you don’t sell your stuff it means precisely zero.
FFS, we’ve been talking about this for years.