Media Directors Inc. Total Media Practice

Media Directors Inc. has structured its Media Practice to make sure that advertisers get the highest return on their marketing investment at many levels. For every hundred dollars in sales, the average marketer spends a little over $5 in media advertising. Of that $5, anywhere from .10-75 cents goes to the agency to create ads and/or plans and buys media. Each of these three levels is very important and addressed by the Practice.

Advertising and Brand Equity ROI

Every advertiser we know would like to increase their sales without spending another penny on advertising. This Practice Area employs a model, the Total Advertising Investment Model (TAIM), which allows marketers to explore strategic changes that will accomplish just that result. The model, because it takes advantage of work done by multi-media modelers and then expands it to cover not just immediate sales, but the media and message effect on brand equity as well, is very new and the only one of its kind. While multi-media modeling is a revolutionary tool, it disregards the effects media and messages have on brand equity, which in turn affect future sales. To ignore this aspect of marketing is to essentially discount more than half the value of the advertising. Because this Practice Area addresses sales and sales for major marketers are in the billions, the incremental revenue gained using TAIM can exceed tens even a hundred million dollars.

The Media Audit Practice

The time for Media Audits is now. Given the economic pressures, press for profits and corporate financial oversight, the incredibly expensive prices charged by the media and the need to control the return on investment, it is essential that marketers audit their media buys. Since most major advertisers no longer use more than one buying agent, they have consolidated their media in an attempt to maximize their "clout". However, in the process, they have relinquished a built-in system of checks and balances, by no longer having two or more suppliers to compare against one another. The need for an independent, unbiased third party audit has never been greater.

The audit relates to Television. Over $9 billion dollars was spent in a few short weeks during the 2003 upfront buying season and none of the participating advertisers could really know if they got what they paid for or how they stacked up against the market. The TV Audit Model compares what was purchased at the time of negotiation to what eventually ran. Because the networks always make changes to schedules as the year progresses, the two are seldom if ever the same. This answers the question did I get what I paid for?

Media Resource Management Area

This area concentrates on the marketers' relationship with their agency. It too is divided into two sectors.

The Relationship Management sector drills into the process by which work gets done between the advertiser and the agency. This starts with a scope of work, includes a history of successes and failures, uncovered through a series of diagnostic interviews, inspected the management of resources, both people and services at both ends and recommends improvements to insure that the relationship can continue in the most productive area. While this area seems to represent the least amount of money at stake (the,10-.75 cents) it is the all important engine that drives the entire advertising process. It must work smoothly.

The other sector of this Practice Area related to Resource Compensation. Here the elements examined in the first sector are brought to bear and compared with benchmarks. The joining of the benchmarks with the Resource Compensation Model provides a firm basis for the re-negotiation of agency contracts, which most often lead to a lower fee ad increased productivity.

Summary

The three Media Practice Areas comprehensively cover the various aspects of return on investment in the media field. For further information, including presentations and proposals on any or all of the Practice Areas call Media Directors Inc.

Media Directors Ink: Nov. - Dec. 2003