Petra Masinova, Global Director of Reputation Intelligence, Kantar, starts her presentation at the AMEC Virtual Global Summit on Measurement with a taxing question: is a perception always true to reality?

 

For many years, AMEC and the wider industry have spoken about the authority of data-driven decision making. We know we have the data – but do we really have the evidence behind our assumptions?

 

In this post-truth world we must constantly question our understanding of the world, and guard against making assumptions.

 

This is the thought that kicks off Petra’s presentation of Kantar’s 2021 pan-European Media Navigator study. Kantar launched this study to challenge communications people’s deeply-held assumptions about the way people use the media.

 

In March 2021, Kantar interviewed 700 in-house communications people, along with 6,000 members of the general public, across six markets in Western Europe. This allowed Kantar to compare communications expectations to the far more complex reality.

 

The study considers wide changes including the proliferation of news aggregators, and the shifts in audience trust towards different content sources. It also offers a unique perspective into the tools that communications leaders of today and tomorrow need to realise smarter communications strategies.

 

Petra reveals where the communications industry is getting it right and where dangerous assumptions are being made. There are some startling moments of clarity: the real importance of social influencers; the trust in TV and traditional news sources – revelations that smash popular perceptions held by the communicators.

 

Speaking with Johna Burke, Global Managing Director, AMEC, Petra calls on the communications industry to be “really careful” about perception. “All these ideas that everyone is on social media and print is dead – the truth is that one size does not fit all, and we need to be super careful about differentiating between people using media channels and them actually trusting in them.”