Media Planning 3

Media Planning - Rev. 2002
(Part 3 of 5)

Strategic epidemics

Malcolm Gladwell, in his current best selling book "The Tipping Point", argues that fashionable trends are usually mainstreamed after being seeded with a small influential group of people and then spread after an incubation period much like a social epidemic. So what looks like a revolution has really been evolving for some time, waiting for the right time to become acceptable. Many new phenomena we see in media planning have roots in the recent past.

Examining an epidemic

To clearly identify the changes taking place in media planning here in the US, we took a survey among the major players in the industry. We spoke with expert practitioners at the major media services, agencies, advertisers, research companies and consultants. The survey was a qualitative one on one situation (sometimes the respondent was accompanied by two or three colleagues, who also contributed). We asked some very specific questions which generally fell into two categories: What are you doing now in strategic media planning that you were not doing five years ago and what do you think you will be doing in the next five years that will be different? We are a wonderful community of professionals, evidenced by the cooperation we received.

The common thread that ran through nearly everything we discussed in these sessions was that media plans are no longer devised to solely influence a media buy. They are designed to generate sales and they are judged accordingly, at least to the extent that is possible.

Here are the major turning points we found in the course of the survey.

Point #1: The British are here, the British are here

One of Gladwell's examples of how social epidemics are started is Paul Revere's ride. It seems that Revere was a very popular fellow at the time and a well-known connector with many friends in the area around Boston. When he took off to the south of Boston shouting, "The British are coming, The British are coming," people listened, reacted and routed the British when they marched through the next day. While Revere rode south, a fellow revolutionary, William Dawes, rode north with the same message. Dawes was an introverted man, not well known to many people. His message passed with little reaction and the British were pretty successful when they went north of Boston.

Well, Dawes must have echoed through our industry five years ago, because the British are here, the British are here. For years, it has been widely accepted that Europe, particularly England, was further along in the process of making media planning more strategic and using more sophisticated research tools than we have. So when the trend toward entering a new age hit us, we more than happily raided the British contingent of research/planners and installed them in some key positions. However, when the survey panel was asked about the differences between European and American strategic media planning, we got some pretty interesting results.

In a few isolated cases, no opinion as to the difference was expressed. However, in most cases, opinions were strong. There was a general acknowledgement that Europe was ahead of the US on Optimization, data integration, fusion and single source research. But, there was a clear indication that we are quite a bit ahead in econometric modeling, ROI routines and concepts like recency. In general, it was felt that Europe spends a good deal of time on documentation, validation and publication and we spend our time improving the bottom line.

Point #2: Optimization

In 1997 P&G requested optimizers from their agencies as they went about a search for a network television AOR. There is general acknowledgement now that Optimizers have become analysis, rather than buying, tools; they are not used to pick the next ideal spot on a schedule that would contribute cheap reach. They are used to analyze schedules more conceptually. This more limited use of the tool occurred in a matter of a few short years. With it is recognition that the next big step in Optimizers will take place when a true multi-media optimizer is developed and widely marketed. That should be only a matter of a short time, once we have a way to gather good information to feed the monster.

Trend #3: Inside/Out

Mark Stewart, head of media at Universal McCann North America, talks about media planning from the inside out. Mark explains that traditionally we would describe a prospect from the outside and work inward, never getting there. We could attribute demographic characteristics to a consumer, but we rarely addressed their motivation to buy or what really made them unique from the inside out. He described the underpinning for one new plan as follows. We have a segment of the public who suffer from social anxiety disorder. This can be treated pharmacologically with anti-anxiety medication (Paxil is one of their clients). These people tend to be anxious and want to control as much of their world as possible. As a result, they write letters to editors, call in to radio talk shows, enter chat rooms and network on the Internet. Media placement for Paxil took advantage of these habits by running adjacent positions. The old way of doing things would have simply identified prospects demographically and led to a far different media plan.