The Remotely Armed Audience

Redefining Media Consultancies

A new role is emerging for media consultants. As our research technology gets better and we are able to more directly relate media planning and buying to product sales, there is a growing realization on the part of marketers that they need to periodically evaluate how they are doing in this arena. Politicians have used media consultants this way for decades, directly linking their public messages to votes and crafting future strategies by polling and auditing information. Finally now, consultants are being asked to do the same thing for advertisers.

Fuel-efficient scheduling

When we shop for a new car, one of the things we are likely to ask about is fuel efficiency, miles per gallon. We buy the car to take us places, but we would like to be as economical as possible. However, fuel efficiency is normally not the most important purchase consideration, in fact it often pales next to style or safety or road handling. After all, the purpose of the automobile is to deliver us somewhere.

The purpose of a media schedule is to deliver an advertiser’s message as effectively as possible, to sell product. We would like to do that economically as well and call that measure of efficiency cost per thousand. Until very recently, we had the means to primarily measure the fuel efficiency of the schedule, not necessarily its effectiveness in stimulating sales. As a result, we became overly dependent upon efficiency as a measure of a media schedule’s worth. But times change and now we can relate media plans more directly to sales. So aside from old habits dying slowly, why are we still disproportionately depending upon CPMs as a measure of media goodness? The post evaluation of any media schedule is still gauged by its efficiency, not its effectiveness.

Nearsighted readings

Now, for the first time, we have the research tools to directly relate sales to the media plan, as well as most other marketing elements like PR, sales promotions, events, etc. Why then, would we still be preoccupied with posting media costs and ratings as a measure of how well we executed our marketing intentions? Sometimes getting a clear reading of little “e” (efficiency) can be a nearsighted exercise. It overlooks big “E”(effectiveness).

An efficiency measure is pretty simple. How much did it cost to deliver 1000 members of the target audience? This may or may not have a bearing on the ultimate purpose of an advertising campaign. The intent of a campaign is rarely to just do things inexpensively. That would be like just investing in penny stocks, which went out in the 80s. Respected investment managers are advocating a flight to quality for now and the immediate future. Respected media managers are now more intent on directly relating their media investment to a return, specifically to sales.

A new investment context

Remembering the old ARF model from the 1960s, not much has really happened in the area of media research in the U. S. until very recently. Until scanner data, single source research and media modeling, we never really got beyond media exposure to measures of ad exposure. retention, persuasion, consideration and action (the sale). As a result, every time we sought to establish how good a media campaign was, we looked at efficiency. But now, with our new research tools, efficiency is becoming more a by-product of good planning and negotiating practices and while it needs to be monitored, we can’t lose sight of the fact that campaigns are designed to deliver product buyers. This is a new investment management context

A new role for media consultants

While consultants are still retained to analyze and evaluate the efficiency of media schedules through independent posts, increasingly, assignments are becoming more focused on appraising the effectiveness of the effort.
After decades of a nagging realization that there was probably much more money at stake in the strategic effectiveness of a buy, rather than its efficiency, we are finally getting the tools to measure effectiveness. We can now in many cases relate media schedules to product sales with hard numbers.

So now consultants are being called in to give a point of view on the effectiveness of a campaign. This makes a lot of sense, because right from the inception of a campaign, when an advertiser writes their annual marketing plan, they normally perform a situation analysis by auditing the complete package of known information related to the past and present marketing of the brand. At this time little attention is paid to media efficiencies as the focus is on what will effectively sell the brand in the future. So from the outset, effectiveness has the edge over efficiency.

Media audits redefined

Recently we performed an audit on the marketing and media research for a major national brand. The goal was to determine if the media plan was effectively delivering the messages we wanted to consumers, turning them in to customers. The marketer did not want any comments on the efficiency of the schedule or how it could be improved. They did not want us to delve into how they could save money on a media buy. All that work had been done and while it could always be revisited and improved, they were much more concerned with the media plan’s effectiveness delivering and converting customers. As a result we performed a complete audit of their media plans and research over three years, the creative messages they carried and the resultant sales figures. When we were done, we all had a pretty good idea of what worked and what did not, in very concrete terms. This led to productive strategic changes in the present and future.

Every advertiser has the ability to do this kind of work, because every brand has a recorded history. Oftentimes, the only thing that is missing is the independent professional eye to know what to look for. As our technology and capacity for measuring effectiveness gets even better, we anticipate that media plans will be held up to a new standard and that media efficiency, while still important, will take a backseat to media effectiveness.