Media Week

Rumours that these men - and they are usually men - are kept under lock and chain in sealed rooms, fed raw meat and only let out come trading season each autumn are slightly wide of the mark. But they are certainly formidable characters.

In their annual negotiations, they thrash out the levels at which vast swathes of the UK's advertising spend will be priced. Out of work hours, or on the golf course, they are the best of friends - even best men at each others' weddings. But come deal time, they suspend all notions of friendship and conduct negotiations that would make the G8 summit on climate change look like a vicar's tea party.

It's an amazing feat and also a great skill. Beneath the easy stereotypes, what is often forgotten is that the Collinses and Digbys of this world can only be such tough negotiators because they are absolutely on top of their briefs. They have an answer for every argument and counter-argument and they don't yield easily.

This week's feature focuses on the next stage down the trading food chain, where the day-to-day deals are carried out. Media Week asked a cross-section of the top buyers at the UK's media agencies how media owners should best go about getting a slice of their clients' money.

It makes fascinating reading and is well worth the attention of any budding sales rep. The words that describe good media owner/agency relationships are things like flexibility, collaboration, fleet of foot, openness, regular contact, knowledge, understanding and anticipation.

All these qualities are a world away from the stereotyped Rotweiller characteristics commonly associated with the top traders. Sure, these guys strike a tough bargain, but they didn't get where they are today through brute force alone - they are more sophisticated and complex than that. Just ask Chris Locke - he'll tell you that himself.

The survey, which analysed the media habits of 5,400 representative UK adults (page 24), becomes more valuable each time new data is released, as it allows planners to analyse trends over time and react accordingly. The plan now is to instigate TouchPoints3 in 2009 before establishing it as a rolling six-monthly survey thereafter.

For this to happen, the media owners and media agencies that fund it will have to commit the necessary funds. Reactions to last week's launch appear positive and some media owners have already accounted for TouchPoints3 in next year's budgets. One client - the COI - has even bought into the survey, and the IPA hopes others may follow. Economies of scale mean it won't end up costing £1.25m a time, but it needs to become as natural as TGI for interrogating data to get buy-in from the relevant parties.

One issue has always been that most agencies have their own media research and planning systems, which they use to distinguish themselves from their competitors. These systems interrogate various chunks of data, TouchPoints being one of those datasets. Rather unhelpfully, ZenithOptimedia has its own survey, also called TouchPoints. At least now, the TouchPoints2 label will distinguish the two pieces of research from each other.

Digital is obviously big news in TouchPoints2 and it offers fascinating insights into podcasts, social networking, internet TV and other new-media developments. But it also emphasises the continuing impact and importance of so-called "traditional" media. With each iteration, TouchPoints gains more currency, and a generation of planners is growing up with a system that could become a de facto standard that will mean better-informed planning and better campaigns for clients.

Love him or hate him, the legendary co-founder of computer behemoth Microsoft has had a bigger effect on the communications industry than almost any other individual.

On a personal level, his influence can be tracked back 25 years to a time before PCs and easy-to-use software applications. I well remember writing my university dissertation in long hand - quite a tortuous feat when it's a 15,000-word document. Students of today have a PC on every desk - as do most homes, as Gates famously predicted - and the thought of writing anything long hand is anathema.

Suralan Sugar hit the nail on the head in Fiona Bruce's excellent Money Programme documentary about Gates on the BBC recently. Gates backed software, while Sugar bet his Amstrad house on hardware. Sugar still did rather well for himself. But Gates went on to become the richest man in the world by getting his products established as the de facto standard that drove the rise of the PC.

And without the PC, would the internet have become so all-encompassing and ubiquitous in such a short space of time? And the other great technological development of our time - mobile devices - also relies to some extent on Windows-based software as it looks to extend its reach from pure call revenue to content offerings.

The web has accelerated our connected PC world and made the globe a much smaller place. Young people are completely comfortable with computers, the web and mobile, and their media consumption is ruled by this.

Gates will still be seen around Microsoft Towers and I find it hard to believe he won't retain some influence on the firm as it tackles its biggest challenge thus far - the emergence of the 21st-Century's tech behemoth Google. But his focus now is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

No doubt computer technology would still have developed apace, with or without Gates, but I suspect the world - and especially the world of media - would have been a very different place without his drive, vision and influence.