Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 7
Media Strategy
Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter you will be able to:
Chapter Overview
The media function, whether executed by an advertising agency, an independent media-buying
and planning firm, an unbundled media shop, or a company’s in-house media department, is
becoming increasingly complex. The demand for efficiency, effectiveness, and creativity in the
media-planning process has never been greater. The steady increase in the number of media and
promotional options and unprecedented audience fragmentation have combined to create both
excitement and uncertainty for advertisers and media executives.
Lecture Outline
1. Organization of the Media Function
A. Media/Communication Planner. The role of the media/communication planner is to
supervise all areas of the advertising campaign as it relates to the media function.
1) They are also marketing specialists who play a pivotal role in the advertising
process.
2) They must anticipate future trends in a rapidly changing environment and must
keep agency management and clients abreast of major changes.
B. Media Research. The media research department coordinates both primary and
secondary research data and functions as a support group for media planners.
1) It must gauge future media trends.
2) In some instances, this department estimates likely audiences for new magazines
or television programs.
C. Media Buying. The media-buying department executes the overall media plan.
1) Media buyers select and negotiate specific media placements and they are
responsible for monitoring postplacement executions.
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2) There may be separate groups or departments for each of the mass media
depending on the size of a media unit.
3) Recently, some media departments established units to research and buy Internet
advertising and/or construct client websites.
D. Few areas of marketing and advertising have experienced the change demonstrated by
media planning in the last decade.
1) The media function has been driven by changes in the number of media options,
increasing media expenditures, and the great financial risk associated with media
buying mistakes.
a. In 2008, total advertising expenditures were more than $396 billion.
b. The media planner of 2020 will be dealing with media outlets that probably
don’t exist today.
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4) Media planners are being asked to think of and evaluate new and different media
options to build additional, effective exposure to consumers.
5) Attention has turned to developing and evaluating entertainment and experience
marketing opportunities.
E. Engagement.
1) With the shrinking of television audiences and the proliferation of new media,
advertisers and media planners are becoming more interested in the concept of
engagement.
a. The ability of an advertising vehicle to deliver a receptive audience to the
advertising in it.
b. It is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding
context.
2) The commonality in these trends is that they demonstrate that media executives
must be analytical, creative, and strategic in their approach to the media process.
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E. Unbundling has given media executives a greater role in the overall planning of
advertising strategy.
F. Five areas of expertise for media/communication professionals:
1) Market analysts who can identify business and marketing growth opportunities,
2) Strategic insight planners who can develop consumer insights,
3) Communication/media planners who understand all forms of consumer
communication,
4) ROI analysts who a can set measurable objectives, evaluate results and make
recommendation to improve ROI, and
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3) Buyers and planners must keep their focus on the consumer, product, and benefit
rather than just reaching the greatest target audience at the lowest cost.
*
See the five-part media plan in this section for specific details and lists of the plan; specific units of the
plan are addressed in the following sections of this outline.
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a. PRIZM NE divides the population into 14 social groups and further subdivides
these large segments into 66 subcategories.
(1) The primary variables for determining these social groups are lifestyle
and income.
b. The value of these PRIZM groups is that these general categories can then be
matched with those products and media that members of that particular
group are most likely to use.
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C. In part, this cooperation has been necessitated by the convergence of media outlets,
new media technology, and greater opportunities for interactive approaches to
audiences.
4) Budget.
a. How much can be spent.
b. It is the major constraint of any advertising plan and the core consideration in
all media planning.
B. The value of each media vehicle should be measured according to three criteria:
1) The cost of the vehicle.
2) The number of target market members or the weighted target market quality of
the audience reached by the vehicle.
3) The effectiveness of the advertising exposures the vehicles deliver.
C. From a practical standpoint, the media planner has control over reach and frequency.
1) Reach, frequency, and continuity must be balanced against the demands of a fixed
budget.
2) The budget is a strategic decision largely determined by the client.
3) The media planner must also consider the balance between the least-expensive
media (efficiency) and those most able to communicate the core message and
reach the best prospects (effectiveness).
D. Reach Tactics.
1) Prime time television.
a. Reaches mass audiences, but may quickly exhaust budget.
2) Daily newspapers.
a. Cover approximately 50 million homes and reach 30 to 50 percent of most
markets.
3) Large circulation magazines.
a. A similar function as television, but reach smaller overall audiences.
E. Frequency Tactics.
1) Cable television.
a. Can be purchased at relatively low cost.
b. Tend to build frequency by reaching the same core viewers over a long
period.
2) Special-interest magazines.
a. Reach same audiences over several issues.
3) Radio.
a. Listeners tend to have one or two favorite stations and listen up to several
hours daily.
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F. The overriding motive of media planners is to achieve cost efficiency with media dollars,
although communicating effectively to the target audiences.
G. Planners must take care to precisely measure the value of a particular prospect,
medium, or message to the overall measure of advertising effectiveness.
5) In a steady schedule, awareness peaks fairly quickly (after about 20 weeks) and
afterward shows little if any increase.
a. The flighting schedule grows much more slowly, but because of budget
savings it is able to reach more prospects and, therefore, actually achieve
higher levels of brand awareness in the long term.
6) Regardless of the flighting schedule used, the following factors should be
considered before using the strategy.
a. Competitive spending.
b. Timing of flights.
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c. Advertising decay.
d. Secondary media.
7) Pulsing is a less extreme form of flighting.
a. It uses advertising more or less continuously but with peaks during certain
periods.
C. The Pressure of Competition.
1) Advertisers must constantly be aware of what the competition is doing in
advertising strategy, product development, pricing tactics, and other marketing
and promotional maneuvers.
2) The media planner must develop a campaign that distinguishes his or her
product/brand from the competition.
3) Rather than operating from a defensive mentality, advertisers should take
practical stance in determining what their marketing and advertising plans can
reasonably accomplish and how they meet the inroads of competing brands.
4) Advertising agencies bring an objective voice to the table—a key to success.
a. Companies sometimes unrealistically judge the value and quality of their
products.
5) Advertisers must undertake a thorough and candid appraisal of all aspects of the
competitive situation.
a. They may have to recognize that some market segments cannot be captured
regardless of the quality of the advertising.
b. A competitive analysis must also consider various media alternatives and
how they might be used to accomplish specific marketing goals.
D. The Budget.
1) If there is any advertising axiom, it is that no budget is ever large enough to
accomplish the task.
a. Because the allocation of dollars to media is by far the largest portion of the
advertising budget, it is the media planner who is expected to gain the
greatest cost efficiencies.
2) Advertisers and their agencies have reacted to the cost squeeze by instituting
more stringent cost controls on media costs and accountability for their
advertising dollars.
a. As media continues to fragment, advertisers will continue to look for
alternative, nontraditional methods of promotion to hold costs down.
b. As media continue to fragment, we will see advertisers experiment with
nontraditional media vehicles, some that did not exist only a few years ago.
3) In response to increases in advertising costs, advertisers are more precisely
defining their prospect to cut down on waste circulation and are negotiating more
aggressively with media for time and space.
4) The media schedule is normally summarized in a flowchart that presents the
overall media schedule as well as their audience estimates and costs.
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Review Questions
The fragmentation of media audiences has made it possible for companies to better
target specific market segments aligned with product benefits and attributes sought by
those consumers. Fragmentation, however, has also resulted in marketers having to seek
alternative media vehicles most appropriate to reach those target markets. This means
steering away from a few former mass media choices and employing a wider variety of
media outlets, some traditional and some non-traditional. This has increased the cost of
marketing communication and forced hard choices; when advertising budgets are
already viewed as inadequate. Fragmentation has resulted in advertisers demanding
more accountability of results of media choices.
2. In what significant ways has the responsibility of media planners changed during the
last decade?
The media planner’s role in mapping advertising strategy has turned to one of
coordination and involvement of a “creative team” approach in strategic planning. The
planner must seek input from a variety of sources to insure an objective look at planning
and to provide more creativity in the final campaign. Some of this input will come from
an agency’s staff of writers, artists, etc. But companies are not limited to full-service
agencies and may seek advice and counsel from specialists in areas such as Internet
promotion and Web site design, or internationalization of marketing approaches; an
approach referred to as unbundling of services.
Reach is the number of different people exposed to a single medium or, in the case of a
multimedia campaign, the entire media schedule. Frequency is the number of times that
an individual or household audience is exposed to the media schedule. Continuity is the
length of time over which a campaign will run or the length of time that reach and
frequency will be measured.
This is a method of allocating advertising budgets to those geographic areas that have
the greatest sales potential. Research has shown how marketers know where prospects
are located and how those consumers in different areas rate in terms of current and
future sales potential. It is evident in the marketers’ use of systems such as PRIZM,
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which divides the population into social groups, related to lifestyle and income. Zip
codes can be used to actually target campaigns geographically by city or by subdivisions
of municipalities.
Historically, the advertising process began with development of broad marketing and
advertising strategies, moved to creative execution, and finally to media placement,
which was often viewed as nothing more than a channel for creative messages. Today,
that notion is changing and one of the ways it’s changing is value-added opportunities,
or incentives offered by the media to advertisers to try to entice them to purchase more
advertising time or space in their media vehicles. Added value is a way to encourage
advertisers to spend more money while providing them with things that have worth to
the advertiser. The value-added opportunities can be anything from product placements,
event sponsorships, or mixed-media promotions to tickets to sporting events or remote
broadcasts. For the advertiser, value added opportunities provide them an extra benefit
for purchasing more time or space. For the media, it’s a way to increase their sales. Now
that value-added opportunities are an important part of the media buying and planning
process, it is necessary for both the creative and media teams to know what
opportunities are most desirable for a brand to pursue.
6. What effect has unbundling of media departments had on the media planning
process?
In the past, media departments were generally regarded as ancillary functions to the
creative departments. With the trend to unbundling, there is a new focus on the media
function. Unbundling has given media executives a greater role in the overall planning of
advertising strategy. It also has highlighted the importance of media as part of the
advertising mix. It is obvious that, in a world or fragmented audiences and niche media,
media decisions will continue to occupy a primary position in advertising planning.
Advertisers increasingly realize the wasted effort and money in delivering even the most
creative messages to the wrong audience.
As the media adapt to new technology and methods of planning, there are a number of
trends that set the tone for these changes and provide an assessment of the future of
media planning and buying. One of these is creativity. Clients are demanding more
creativity from their media planners. Media planners are being asked to think of and
evaluate new and different media options to build additional exposure to consumers in
effective and efficient ways. The reason for this is because the fragmentation of
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audiences and of media, the rise of advertising clutter and increased consumer control
over media content have created new challenges for the advertising industry with two
main issues at stake – access to consumers and creating engagement. To do this, media
planners needs to not only make creative use of media but also use innovative media to
present the message.
2. (*) One of the primary trends of the next five years will be media convergence. Find current
examples of convergence. How do these examples benefit consumers? How do they benefit
advertisers? Are there any disadvantages? What are they?
3. (**) Ask a media planner to come to class to discuss the day-to-day operations within an
agency media department, or within the marketing department of a local profit or not-for-profit
company. Ask him or her to comment on how their operations have changed during recent
years.
4. (**) Find a library that subscribes to the print edition of the trade journal Mediaweek. Look
through the four most recent issues. Make a list of all the advertisements for media (these are
placed by companies who are trying to persuade media planners to buy time or space). Place
each advertised media vehicle in a categorization scheme that you develop (such as network
television, cable television, magazine, etc.) and that adequately captures the range. For each
category and based on the advertising, summarize the argument in favor and the key benefits of
that medium.
5. (**) An emerging and increasingly important media purchase is branded search, in which
sponsored links to products related to the search appear on a page of Internet search results.
Research the pros and cons of branded search as a media purchase. What would its key
strengths be in a media plan? What kinds of strategic goals would it be best suited for? Is it best
regarded as a reach tactic or frequency tactic? Present your findings in a research paper and in a
presentation to the class.
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Internet Exercises
1. (*) Go to the Nielsen Wire blog at http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/. Pick an entry that
focuses on concerns of media planning. Write a three to five-page summary; present to the
class.
2. (**) Go to the website for MPG (www.mpgsite.com). MPG, a network within the media arm of
Havas (a worldwide communications company), offers a wide range of media services such as
media planning, buying, consulting, execution, and strategy. Explore the MPG website, making
note of the client section that includes case studies and examples of MPG’s work. Based on what
you see on the MPG website, write a paper that discusses the role of the media agency. Be sure
to include comments on the increasing importance of creativity and how media planning is now
part of the advertising mix. Use examples from MPG’s client work to support your paper.
• Who is the target audience? Define the target audience with as much specificity as
possible.
• Based on their current advertising, what creative and communication considerations are
reflected in their media plan? (For example, is there need for product demonstration?
Are there daypart and/or seasonal requirements?)
• What traditional media would you select, based on finding the target audience,
leveraging the appropriate qualitative factors of the media, and considering the
appropriate characteristics and functions of the media? Why?
• How would you schedule the advertising, considering the purchase cycle of the product?
2. (**) Conduct a survey in your class regarding its media use. Ask each student to list her or his
three most-used media choices in a) network television program, b) cable television channel, c)
magazines, d) newspapers, e) radio stations, f) online destinations, g) cell phone networks. Ask
them as well to estimate how much time per week they spend with each of their choices. Collect
and tally the responses, rank specific choices in each category by how many students report it,
and average the reported time spent on each. Report the results to the class. Research media
cost of one exposure for the top three specific media in each category.
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3. (***) At the beginning of the semester, each student selects a local profit or not-for-profit
organization. The student also contacts the individual responsible for media planning and
scheduling within that organization. After obtaining permission, students organize and conduct
four to five interviews (by appointment) with this marketing contact person during the course of
the semester. In the first interview(s) the student will investigate the nature of the business and
the products/services offered, its target market(s), its marketing objectives, and promotional
strategy; and make note of the degree of work done in-house with ad agencies, and/or
supplemented with work by specialty firms. The student will submit to the instructor a brief
summary (2–3 pages) of his or her findings for review to determine the project’s suitability and
to add comments. The remaining interviews will be used over the semester to determine the
actual business practices regarding the planning, selection, and scheduling of media; applying
the media strategy concepts discussed in this chapter. A second paper will be written (5–10
pages), which summarizes the student’s findings. Combined with the first paper, this project will
be turned in to the instructor for grading, and a copy given to the marketing contact person of
the participating organization. Grades will be assigned by both the instructor and the contact
person. The final grade will be averaged and weighted as the instructor feels appropriate.
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