Minutes: Kick-off Meeting with Archers.

On behalf of the committee and the x-media sub group, Shadi Kandil and Asad ur Rehman had a meeting with Acrhers on 16th Sep 2020.  We are really pleased to report that we have kicked off the work on the preparation of the RFP. Below are some actions coming out of the meeting .

It was agreed that:

• ABG will aim to issue a PO to Archers by end Sep, with a 50% advance to follow by early Oct.
• The contract should also be signed by next week – fingers crossed.
• Archers will, in the meantime, work out a timeline and a project plan with clear next steps.
• Archers will also help us validate the questions we are looking to answer – as outlined in our scope.
• ABG will, once our scope is validated, announce a “Invitation to express interest to participate in the RFP”. This will need a brief Press Release, which will be distributed using various means (trade press, WFA newsletter, Esomar, etc). This will be taken care of at the ABG’s end. The objective of this is to ensue we are casting our net as wide as possible and giving everyone a chance to express their interest.
• Archers will also work on the draft RFP which will subsequently go to the shortlisted partners.

As principle, we also agreed that we will not engage with any research partner on this project til the RFP is rolled out. We also agreed that the issuance RFP will follow a brief Q&A session with the committee members involved with each of the potential partners.

We also shared the following WFA Documents with Archers:

• Draft Proposal to WFA which is very detailed on how the cross platform work comes to life
• Technical Blue Print which was presented for Peer Review in USA and to ISBA in the UK –a very thorough piece of work
• And Q&A from the peer reviews. These help resolve all the questions we might also face as a industry.
• The Peer Review deck from the USA Peer review.

These are built on the same manifesto that is on our site.

We also agreed that we will schedule a call with WFA to explore:

• Use of the above blue print in our market
• Use of the their road-map, and be on their map as a third market for their Cross Media initiative.

This call will be with the X-Media sub group, but we will be happy to have anyone from the committee on the call.