The genesis of independent media research took place at an informal meeting in the early 90’s between Mohini Bhullar, Marketing Director (India Today), Brahm Vasudeva, CEO Hawkins Co., and myself, representing the 3 user arms of print audience measurement. There was agreement that the National Readership Survey needed to be published at regular intervals and not governed by research agency resources. I was charged with the task of taking this forward with INS and AAAI, both of which, unfortunately, refused any involvement. So, a meeting of 60 advertisers, publishers and advertising agency heads was hosted by Mr Vasudeva at the Oberoi Hotel with a record turnout of 47 persons attending the meeting. It was agreed that Audience Measurement had to be undertaken regularly given the rapid advances taking place in the media. In fact, publishers requested that the scope be enlarged beyond readership to other media as well for emerging audience consumption trends. The meeting gave a green signal to develop a proposal for review.

A month later, a proposal presentation was made at a meeting hosted at the Bombay Gymkhana with attendance being primarily of publishers and advertising agencies. The first murmurs of dissonance was noted at this meeting, but the overall consensus was that this be advanced to fruition. And that is how the Media Research Users Council came to be founded with Nargis Wadia as the first Director General and Brahm Vasudeva as its first Chairperson. The Board compared an equal mix of advertises, agencies and publishers and the Technical Committee was chaired by the very capable Arun Adhikari, Head of Market Research at Hindustan Lever, I Venkat of the Eenadu group and myself as members. And that was how the first Indian Readership Survey was conceived.

MRUC has done tremendously well ever since it was formed in the early 90s. Its work in media research has helped its member companies develop credible business models and find solutions that trigger growth. I would like to thank the founding members, as MRUC's success as an industry body, has a lot to do with its genesis. Leading lights like Roda Mehta, Brahm Vasudev, Mohini Bhullar, Arun Adhikari, I Venkat and many more inspired the industry to unite for a common cause and put their full trust and faith in MRUC's offerings. Over the years, many senior members of the industry have contributed immensely through their active participation.

By the late 80’s the media scene in India had grown complex and clients and their ad agencies felt the need for robust data on all media to arrive at a quantifiable assessment of their media plans. This prompted the getting together of a few concerned ad agency heads along with major advertisers and media owners to form Media Monitoring Services a fore runner of MRUC. At some point, I was elected as President of MMS.

By mid- 90’s MRUC had brought out its first media report – a voluminous exercise, largely spearheaded by a few dedicated individuals voluntarily, lavishing their time and energies on this. However, there were several problems – the reports needed space to be stored; they needed to be marketed professionally on a national scale all of which demanded that the activity acquire a formal corporate structure.

In its 30th year, I had sold my ad agency Inter Publicity and was conducting training courses for ad professionals. I was requested by MRUC to take over and formalize the activity and create a corporate structure, with proper premises, staffing, etc and appointed me with a grandiose tile of Director General!

My 3-years as D.G were indeed rewarding as we marched on bringing out successive reports. My past experience as President of AAAI and the Press Guild stood me in good stead. I enjoyed working with our research agency and the Board. We travelled to the major metros making successful presentations to media users. In all this I was ably supported by Vasundhara Raghavan to whom I am very grateful.

MRUC, the brainchild of dedicated and purposeful industry stalwarts, is an organization tagged with credibility of the highest order. Holding huge reserves of quality research in its domain, puts the Council in an enviable position. There can never be a better-defined concept of non-profit organization as in MRUC, which has positioned itself as the most reliable research provider. Wishing MRUC best wishes for continued development to suit growing media trends and to meet industry’s requirements.

One of the most challenging things for the MRUC Board and the technical team is to provide a currency, which is acceptable to all constituents of the media industry. I have no doubt on the integrity and sincerity of the MRUC team that works with a purpose and a clear target to provide robust data to its members.

The constitution of the MRUC to provide credible, timely, unbiased, cost effective and low-cost media research to the users as laid out by the founding members was a powerful statement of intent in an industry that badly needed it and attracted me to join the cause. As a not-for-profit body, MRUC truly embodies the principles of staying detached while focusing on its objective.

During my stint as the Chairman of MRUC, the council had to face the challenge of ensuring data continuity, especially when the incumbent agency was changed. The vision and support of the fellow council members, both the users of media research and media owners straddling print, TV, radio and digital helped us fulfill our objective.

Today, MRUC plays a bigger role in addressing the industry's need of media research in a complex scenario where there are a phethora of media options to choose from.

Mr Brahm Vasudeva asked me, sometime in 1994, to help form the Readership Research Users Council, as it was first called. My agreement was immediate. The cause was clear – the need for continuous and unbiased research into the media habits of people, linked to what they consume. The founders were chasing an idea, doing something that was needed. We launched the MRUC. As the person charged with Marketing the concept, I sent out more than 200 letters to media owners, advertisers and agency leaders. We collected over Rs 50 lakhs as commitment from that one mailing initiative, in a month. The latent hunger for Media research was clearly there. We launched the IRS, very successfully. The MRUC is a unique institution serving the entire industry. It has no partisan agenda. That is what makes it special. An idea whose time has come cannot be put down by anyone. The MRUC is testimony to this.

" The MRUC has tirelessly pursued its objective of promoting and providing objective,state of the art media research for the benefit of its users. It has done this largely with the help of selfless pro bono time contributed by many of its members.During my term as Chairman,we were able to supplement these efforts with the hiring of a professional,full time salaried CEO to help take the MRUC to a new level. The biggest challenge to the MRUC remains certain vested interests who mistakenly perceive the promotion of state of the art media research as being inimical to their business interests."

The MRUC was formed in to make periodic research available to its constituents comprising of all the stakeholders in the advertising industry – the media, the advertisers and advertising agencies.

I headed MRUC from Oct 2005 to March 2010 and it was one of the most rewarding stints of my advertising career. This period saw MRUC bring in one of its kind Outdoor Media Research in 2009, The Indian Outdoor Survey, and the launch of the New Consumer Classification System (NCCS) replacing the old SEC, also in 2009. The Indian Listenership Track (Radio Research) was also another feather in MRUC’s cap, launched in 2006.

This was the period that MRUC was maturing into truly an industry body catering to not just other media excluded from research earlier, but was completely in sync with the demands of the industry to enhance the classification of consumers itself as a core and fundamental step towards better research, advertising and marketing. It was also during this time that the idea of BARC was formed for TV research and MRUC naturally made every effort to collaborate with BARC, an effort that unfortunately did not fructify then. Other media that was rising rapidly was the Mobile and Internet and here again the MRUC made efforts to measure it along with the IAMAI.

This optimism, that MRUC was maturing into truly an industry body was constrained with the usual limitations of conflicting aims and limited funding. The struggle for independence and neutrality at MRUC was constant and not at all an easy task given the stakeholders.

The core purpose of MRUC was to be an independent body that would measure effectiveness of media and media vehicles for advertising across the length and breadth of India and provide research data that was timely and served the constituent’s need for reliable and accurate media research data. In the context of today’s competitive business environment where there are pressures on the bottom-line, it is inevitable that research driven advertising is likely to be compromised. As I see it, the challenges that MRUC faced then and, I would venture to presume, also faces today is that of data ownership and data integrity, both of which have contrary pulls and which reflect eventually in the financial viability of the projects. And it is my contention that everyone loses. And that is precisely why there is a need for an independent industry body like the MRUC that not only holds up research to high standards but also rallies the industry around research data-driven advertising and marketing.

In conclusion, while I had a steep learning curve at MRUC and enjoyed the challenge of working for a non-profit body, for me, the highlight at MRUC were the legal cases filed against it in the context of the IRS data because these gave me my second career viz. Law. I gained very good insights into the Legal profession having handled four cases filed by Publications against the MRUC. Apart from these cases, several aspects of running MRUC were underpinned by law. And I am grateful to MRUC for that.

MRUC has been at the pulse of media research in India from its earliest days, even when sophisticated measurement tools did not exist. Despite the proliferation of data providers today, MRUC’s IRS remains the most authoritative source single source database for planners. Audience estimates and media reach for many of our planning tools are linked to IRS.

Working with MRUC has been an enriching experience both as part of backend projects like data validation and as an end user, extracting insights for clients. MRUC consistently sets the gold standard for rigor in media research. Credit should also go to the MRUC team for always being available for guidance on using IRS and other products.

Being invited by MRUC to ratify the IRS field briefing and accompany them on ground, was a privilege. The field force’s training adherence to the rules and regulations and their understanding of it was visibly evident. Especially rules relating to selection of households, CWE and the righthand rule. I was particularly enthused by MRUC’s sensitivity to avoiding “loss in translation” by including multi language translations of the questionnaire.

“Over two decades ago, the Media Research User Council was formed in order to generate information through unbiased research, that’s accurate, timely, consistent, economical, actionable and, above all, effective. To this end, the council has served the industry beyond all measures of expectation and continues to raise the bar with research that’s independent and focused.

The council has constantly taken on the challenges of an ever-evolving industry and has continued to expand in its scale and scope to emerge as the world’s largest continuous media study. This has largely been made possible by the vision of its founders, the continued endeavour of its council members and the faith and support of media and brand custodians from across television, print, radio, outdoor and digital.

I commend their steadfast vision and commitment to serve the media industry."

Media Research Users' Council has successfully measured the readership and viewership trends of a country as vast and complex as India. Run and managed by experts in publishing, advertising and television industries, the unique concept is that this not for profit organisation gets volunteers who dedicate their time, experience and energy. The number of cross checks done make the data quite robust and reliable. Measurement of media consumption is a great business tool for advertisers and the data collected can also be of immense use by social scientists to understand how the Indian society is composed. I enjoyed my stint in working for MRUC immensely and it was a great experience.

During my tenure, MRUC took some very decisive steps towards revamping the entire readership measurement space . It was a generational leap of sorts with latest CAPI technology being used, enhanced security measures at all levels , enhanced samples, etc . Around the same time the new NCCS system was adopted by the industry which added to the challenges . Change is always tough for people anywhere and even though the IRS encountered challenges after challenges , it did weather the storms which eventually paved the way for an even better and robust sample size , methodology , cross checks, etc, thereby making the study even more future proof . I am glad to have a part of the journey while MRUC itself was in a transitionary space .

With stalwarts of the industry all pulling together, no challenge is unsurmountable and I am sure MRUC will continue to go on from strength to strength in the future too .

MRUC is a pioneer body in Media Research and has done a splendid job in creating the world’s largest print readership survey. This survey has now become the currency over the years and is used by all stakeholders. I am honored to be associated with MRUC which has made a huge improvement in making the Indian Readership Survey a robust study in the years to come.

MRUC has played a pivotal role in media research over the years. While it has become synonymous with its flagship product IRS, MRUC has been working behind the scenes to broadbase its offering to the industry and we hope to see a few new products in the near future.

The soon to be released IRS has undergone a major revamp in terms of the research methodolody, technology and the checks and balances that have been put in place. MRUC has done a terrific job bringing all stakeholders onto the same page for the new IRS.

Providing consistently good quality media measurement to such a large and important medium like Print in a market as complex as ours is very difficult. But to MRUC’s credit it has always come out stronger when faced with challenges.

MRUC has enjoyed a legacy where no other industry body in the country has produced the depth of media studies on a continuos basis for more than two decades. Led by stalwarts from the media, marketing and the advertising fraternity, the Council has fulfilled its core objective of providing gold standard media research for the industry. As part of the MRUC Board, I look forward to being part of the high power team to make media studies relevant as well as future-ready.

“MRUC over the years has been at the forefront of leading cutting edge marketing research for the entire industry. Over the last 2 decades, the IRS has been used by all industry stakeholders from agencies, to the media industry, to marketers and even social researchers. The evolution of the NCCS has been a significant step in recent times. In a country as diverse as India, research and insight play a critical role in informed decision making and MRUC’s pioneering work in helping people understand India is commendable.”

“The Indian Readership Survey has been the lifeline of media planning in India for more than 2 decades. From readership to other media habits to product consumption to durable ownership, IRS offers a wealth of data which forms the foundation of the media strategies for most brands in the country. Over the years, MRUC has taken a lot of effort in continuously improving its flagship product, the IRS. For a complicated market like India the importance of a neutral body like the MRUC can never be stressed upon enough and MRUC should be commended for playing this role without any kind of bias consistently and successfully.”