As it turns out, planning ahead may be counter-intuitive to your brand's ultimate strategy and efficiency goals. Goodway 2.0's president explains how to work around these potential pitfalls.
Quick show of hands: How many of you use an annual marketing calendar, and maybe even break it up into six to eight periods/flights? Odds are most everyone can raise their hand to that. But does a national sandwich shop promoting a meatball sub during a six-week window in March/April make business sense, or does it just fit on a flowchart?
There are three main reasons agencies and advertisers use annual planning. First, the broadcast market works on the upfront system. This would be a difficult force to try and defy. Second, lining up a marketing plan along the client’s fiscal year makes the challenges ahead easily mentally compartmentalized. Finally -- and maybe this is a tad taboo to say out loud -- is that it’s a way to get everyone focused on the same goal for multiple months and celebrate when something this monumental has been completed.
The problem is that what seems organized and efficient for marketers does not necessarily line up with consumer media consumption or usage patterns. Think about planning a six-week flight for a soap brand? Personally, I use soap each and every day.
Does online really change this, or is “Will online kill the annual plan?” just another catchy title? Imagine this. It’s August, 2004 and you’re targeting the teen market (pick your product). You’re laying out the 2005 plan and dedicating a portion to online. Some sites work better than others, and while a new site called MySpace has been mentioned in some circles, traffic is still very low and it’s still a niche. By August, 2005, however, the search term “MySpace” will have more activity than the term “movies,” at which time dollars need to be re-planned. So, why call it an annual plan if it’s not an annual plan?
This MySpace example is extreme, although real. Media is fragmenting faster than ever, and we shouldn’t be naïve enough to believe this won’t happen to us again. How many of us had mobile, in-game, or RSS on our radars a year or two ago? The consumer doesn’t wait until our next marketing window to use new technology, so we need be able to adapt at the same pace they do. The good news is that we don’t need to throw out the current system, it just needs to be modified. Here are some simple steps to implementing a workable system that balances the need for planning with the need to avoid total chaos.
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