8, planning media strategy finding links to the market

Chapter9Planning Media Strategy:

Finding Links to the Market

Shows how communications media help advertisers achieve marketing and advertising objectives

Objectives

Describe how a media plan helps accomplish advertising objectives

Explain the importance of creativity in media

planning

Define reach and frequency and the

controversy surrounding effective frequency

Discuss how reach, frequency, and continuity

are related

Name secondary research sources and

describe their useCalculate gross rating

points and CPM

Describe how share-of-market/share-of-voice budgeting can be used

Describe the different advertising schedules

and their purposes

The Media Edge/ Sony’s Street Style Headphones

The story of how The Media Edge devised an ingenious street-level guerilla marketing campaign with a most unusual media plan for the introduction of Sony’s Street Style Headphones.

Formed in 1994, The Media Edge has grown phenomenally fast and is now one of the largest media buying firms in the world, billing over $10 billion annually.

Media Planning

Integrating Science with Creativity in Advertising . The purpose of media planning is to conceive, analyze, and select channels of communication that will direct advertising messages to the right people in the right place at the right time. It involves many decisions:

1. Where should one advertise?

2. Which media vehicles should be used?

3. When during the year should the advertising be concentrated?

4. How often should we run the advertising?

5. What are the opportunities for integrating our media advertising with other communication tools?

The Challenge

As the complexity of the field increases, media decisions become more critical and clients more demanding.

Much media buying has been unbundled from other agency services.

Advertisers want agencies to be more than efficient. They want accountability, as well as creative and well-

negotiated buys.

Media Planning: Integrating Science with Creativity in

AdvertisingThe challenge

Increasing media options

Increasing audience

fragmentation

Increasing costs

Increasing complexity in

media

Increasing competition

Increasing Media Options

1. Today, there are more media to choose from, and each offers more choices. TV is now fragmented into network, syndicated, and local television, as well as network and local cable.

2. National magazines publish for particular regions or demographic groups.

3. Nontraditional media (videotapes, movie advertising, computer on-line services, electronic kiosks, and even shopping carts) expand the menu of choices.

4. Specialized communications (direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations activities, and personal selling) are “below-the-line” activities that represent the fastest growing segments at some of the large agency holding companies, like WPP and Interpublic.

5. The “media menu” needs to include everything that carries a message to and/or from customers and other stakeholders. The proliferation of toll-free phone numbers, faxes, the Internet, and company Web sites, make customers feedback easier and more immediate.

Increasing Fragmentation of the Audience

Consumers are selective in choosing what particular articles to read, which cable or network TV shows to watch, and what radio programs to listen to.

Increasing Costs

The cost of exposing 1,000 people (CPM-cost per thousand) to each of the major media rose faster than inflation.

People can cope with only so many messages, so media have to restrict the number of ads they sell. Shows with big audiences are at a premium today.

Increasing Complexity in Media Buying and Selling

Now, media buys are more complex than ever. Media companies put together massive multimedia

packages, which they sell as "value added programs” designed to add value to traditional media placements.

Media planners face growing pressure to learn how to evaluate and execute these complex deals. “Partnerships” add to complexity. The trend toward integrating marketing communications and relationship marketing is creating a new breed of media planner — younger, computer literate, and schooled in marketing disciplines beyond traditional media. A good media specialist must be an “advertising generalist.”

Increasing competition

Independent media- buying services have grown dramatically in the last decade, attracting some of the best and brightest talent in the business to compete with agencies for what was once their private domain.

During the 90s, the large agency holding companies started buying up the independents.

Now all the large ones are back under agency control, albeit at arms length.

Role of Media in the Marketing Framework

Situation analysis

Marketing plan

Situation analysis

Setting media objectives

Determining media strategy

Selecting media classes

Selecting media within classes

Media use decisions: broadcast

Media use decisions: print

Media use decisions: other

media

Defining Media Objectives

Audience objectives

Media vehicles

Message distribution objectives

Circulation

Readers per copy (RPC)

Message weight

Advertising impression

Opportunity to see (OTS)

Gross impressions

Rating

Television households (TVHH)

Gross rating points (GRPs)

Audience size and message weight

Defining Media Objectives

Audience accumulation and reach

Exposure frequency

Continuity

Message distribution objectives

Audience size and message weight

Audience Objectives

Audience objectives define the specific types of people the advertiser wants to reach.

Top-down planners use geodemographic classifications to define their target audience. a. The target audience may not be actual users of the product. Advertisers

may have to advertise to the trade (as well to the customers) to convince retailers their media buys will result in more sales.

b. Planners rely largely on secondary research. Planners select media vehicles, particular magazines, or broadcast programs

according to how well they "deliver" or expose the message to the desired target audience.

Advertisers using the integrated marketing communications (IMC) planning model start by segmenting their target audiences according to brand-purchasing behavior and then ranking them by profit to the brand. Communication objectives are then stated in terms of reinforcing or modifying customer purchasing behavior or creating a perceptual change about the brand over time.

Media research costs often limit the amount of data marketers would like to see.

Distribution objectives

define where, when, and how often advertising should appear. To answer these questions, a media planner must understand the following:

1. Audience size and message weight a. Audience size — simply the number of people in the

medium’s audience. In print media, for example, Audit Bureau of Circulation actually count and verify the number of subscribers (circulation) and multiply by the number of readers per copy (RPC) to determine total audience.

b. Message weight — media planners often define media objective by the schedule's message weight, the total size of the audience for a set of ads or an entire campaign. Message weight can be expressed as:

ABB

Advertising impression: possible exposure of the advertising message to one audience member, sometimes called an opportunity to see (OTS).

Gross Impressions: the total number of potential exposures (audience size by the number of times the ad message is used during a period).

As gross impressions are often expressed in millions and are awkward to handle, media planners prefer to use percentages — or a rating, for example, a rating of TV households is the percentage of homes exposed to an ad medium. A rating of 20=20% of the households with TV sets; television households, or (TVHH).

Gross Rating Points (GRPs) — the total weight of a specific media schedule, computed by multiplying the reach, expressed as a percentage of the population, by the average frequency. GRP unit costs decrease the more GRPs are bought. Exhibit 9-8 Gross rating points analysis for Alpha brand in the second quarter, 2003

Audience Accumulation and Reach

Reach refers to the number of different people or households exposed at least once to an ad or campaign during a given period of time, usually four weeks.

This number, however, does not take into account the quality of the exposure.

The term “effective reach” describes the quality of exposure. It measures the number of percentage of the audience who receive enough exposures for the message to have the desired effect.

Accumulating reach is done two ways: same media over time or combining media vehicles.

Effective Frequency

Effective Frequency is the average number of times a person must see or hear a message before it becomes effective (between a minimum level that achieves awareness and a maximum level that becomes overexposure that leads to “wear out” and irritates customers).

Controversy over “learning” versus “reminding” and that conventional media planning is built on “media vehicle exposure” (the number of people in a medium’s audience) when it should relate to “advertising message exposure.”

Advertising response curve

A curve indicating responses to advertising in relation to frequency. Studies show that incremental response to advertising actually diminishes — rather than builds — with repeated exposures.

Recency planning

Recency planning is based on the belief that most advertising works by influencing the brand choice of consumers who are actually ready to buy.

This would suggest that continuity is the most important objective.

Optimizing Reach, Frequency, and Continuity: The Art of Media

PlanningEffective

reach

Effectivereach

Effectivefrequency

Effectivefrequency

Advertisingresponse curve

Advertisingresponse curve

Recency planningRecency planning

Developing a Media Strategy: The Media Mix

Markets

Money

Media

Mechanics

Methodology

Five Ms

Five Ms

Elements of the Media Mix: The Five Ms (p. 285). Media planners use the Five Ms (5Ms) of the media mix (markets, money, media, mechanics, and methodology) to develop an effective media strategy.

1. Markets refer to the various targets of a media plan: trade and consumer audiences; global, national, or regional audiences; or certain ethnic or socioeconomic groups.

2. Money — using intuition, marketing savvy, and analytical skill, the media planner determines how much money to budget and where to allocate funds: how much for print, TV, etc.

3. Media includes all communications vehicles available to a marketer, such as radio, TV, newspaper, magazines, etc.

4. Mechanics includes the complex mechanics (time and size units, etc.) of advertising media and messages. IMC planners may also deal with the mechanics of nontraditional media: everything from shopping bags to multimedia kiosks to the Internet.

Methodology refers to the overall strategy of selecting and scheduling media vehicles to achieve the desired reach, frequency and continuity objectives

Factors that Influence Media Strategy Decisions

Scope of the media plan

Domestic markets

Local plan

Regional plan

National plan

International markets


Brand Development

IndexBDI

Percent of the brand’s total U.S. Sales in the area

Percent of total U.S. population in the area

Percent of the product category’s total U.S. Sales in the area

Percent of total U.S. population in the area

Category Development

IndexCDI


Sales potential of different markets



Sales potential of different markets

Competitive strategies and budget considerations

Media availability and economics: The global marketer’s headache

Nature of the medium and the mood of the message


Message size, length, and position considerations

Buyer purchase patterns

Media Tactics: Selecting and Scheduling Media Vehicles

Criteria for selecting individual media vehicles

Overall campaign objectives and

strategy

Overall campaign objectives and

strategy

Characteristics of media audiences

Characteristics of media audiences

Exposure, attention, motivation value of media vehicles

Exposure, attention, motivation value of media vehicles

Cost efficiency of media vehicles

Cost efficiency of media vehicles

CPM

CPP


Criteria for selecting individual media vehicles

Economics of foreign media

Synergy of mixed media

Mixed media approach

Mixed media approach


Methods for scheduling media

Continuous

Flighting

Pulsing

Computers in Media Selection and Scheduling