Has anyone else noticed lately that senior executives from traditional media are starting to sound more and more like online media executives? Terms like “ROI” and “branded entertainment” are showing up in conversations and in panel discussions along with words like “accountability” and phrases like “behavioral targeting.”
It was no different at this week’s Second Annual Media Planning Conference at New York City’s Grand Hyatt. In spite of the weather here in New York, the event -- put on by Crain’s Television Week Magazine and sponsored by ESPN/ABC Sports and Si TV -- was well-attended, with only a few seats at the very front of the room left empty (strange how that proclivity for avoiding sitting in the front of the room carries itself well into our advancing years). The crowd was an enthusiastic collection of primarily traditional media people who still find some of the words and phrases mentioned above uncomfortable to use.
TelevisionWeek editor Alex Ben Block moderated the first panel of the morning-long conference, which covered communications planning. The panelists were Brad Adgate, SVP and Director of Research, Horizon Media; Esther Franklin, SVP and Director of Consumer Contact Planning, Starcom; and Margaret Lewis, Director of Communications Planning, Mediaedge:cia.
After the requisite introductions and summaries from each of the panelists as to what they do for their clients, discussion went straightaway to what constitutes communications planning and what kinds of challenges stand in the way of doing that effectively.
It appears that agencies have come to understand that advertising and marketing communications is no longer simply a creative and media consideration. A strict reading of an audience’s demographics -- and addressing those demographics with the standard application of mass media -- is no longer sufficient to satisfy what agencies are tasked with.
Esther Franklin pointed out that understanding consumers and how to remain connected with them is the overt charge of the agency. Though this should come as no surprise, the means by which this is being done now (and will be done in the future) may come as a surprise to those who have not spent as much time working in interactive media or with new, developing media technologies.
Brands need to stay more closely aligned with their customers through the application of new and better “framing strategies,” according to Franklin. “When artists paint a picture, they have something in mind that they want to convey out to the world. When an advertising message is created, how can we, as media entities, better leverage that message within the most appropriate framing strategy?”
It would seem that essentially these framing strategies consist of a closer examination of the media channels and the vehicles within those channels being used, and a greater understanding of what I like to call “adverbial usage” -- that is, the what, when, how and why of media choice and usage.
Given the seriously fragmented media environment, it is then incumbent upon agencies to help clients navigate the myriad media choices consumers can now make, and to demonstrate what is being accomplished with those media when used by an advertiser.
Margaret Lewis of Mediaedge:cia pointed out that in this era of greater demands for accountability from clients, agencies need to develop better means of determining media effect. A better job needs to be done of marketing mix analysis. When I first started in media a decade ago, we would talk with clients about their media mix, which, in theory, we designed to best accomplish a necessary communication delivery goal-set based on what was needed to achieve a simple but often-times meaningless objective like, say, “market share.”
To best work out these marketing mix analysis, Lewis thinks that a channel-neutral approach is best. Clients “understand the fragmentation of the marketplace and know that they have to change and what they want from us is to help them make that change,” she said. To talk simply about advertising “beyond TV” assumes that one is starting with TV. Although it is understood that consumers still spend a great deal of time with television, what we should be talking about is not just beyond TV but beyond media, she said.
Lewis mentioned direct response and experiential marketing as examples of this “beyond media” approach. Those of us in the internet media space can assume she’s talking about online as well.
Both Lewis and Franklin said that under any circumstance, clients are looking for greater accountability. What is it that advertising actually does to activate people to engage?
No one had a specific answer, but Brad Adgate of Horizon mentioned the kinds of things that he thinks will influence how agencies design comprehensive communications packages. The research available to marketers and advertisers now is certainly not enough upon which to base communications strategies.
“The gap is widening between what syndicated research is providing and what marketers and advertisers really want,” Adgate said. He also said he thinks that digital set top boxes, DVRs, and the internet will provide a whole new layer of data that can be used for research to tell us more about consumers’ behavior. With more people committing “multimedia tasking” it becomes more important for marketers and advertisers to understand each media’s role and how those roles play out together.
Adgate pointed out that he thinks behavioral targeting is going to be more important than demographic targeting. Culling the many media devices that most of us use in our day for the data those devices collect by virtue of their design will better enable marketers and advertisers to target audiences based on behavior.
Measurement is going to be indispensable for marketers and advertisers in constructing a communications strategy, but the metrics of old are no longer going to be those from which multimedia mix analysis and targeting are constructed. Metrics such as “usage” and “household rating” won’t mean anything in the near future. Nielsen, for instance, is going to have to get with some of the cable operators out there to find out what is really going on. Adgate suggested also that a “relevancy index” may be a good metric for assessing the value and effectiveness of some advertising.
Everyone agrees that the future is going to be one of multiple media engagements going on at once, as well as media in places not traditional. As brands find it harder to get a piece of their consumers’ time, opportunities that allow brands to get that time in other ways will become more widespread. Product placement and branded entertainment are going to become more prevalent. Out-of-home media is going to see more use; for example, screens in transit areas where ads can be shown. Emphasis will continue to be on visual engagement, and broadband is going to better enable the internet for image display advertising.
But in spite of innovating thinking, talking and planning, brand managers still have numerical mandates that must be met, and innovation is not an easy thing to get past someone tasked with hitting their numbers if there are well-established techniques for achieving those goals at their disposal.
Whether you are coming from a big agency or a small online shop, getting the right person to share your vision remains the biggest challenge to all.
Monday: The second panel of the day, which focused on ROI.
Jim Meskauskas has spent the last ten years working in media at advertising agencies, handling both online and traditional media accounts that ranged from Nestlé Beverage to Amazon.com to Schering-Plough. Most recently he was partner and Chief Strategic Officer with Underscore Marketing. He is also a principal and Vice President of Media with Pericles Consulting, an online political marketing agency, whose clients have included the Bush-Cheney 04 re-election campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Meskauskas spends much of his time working as a freelance writer covering the media and advertising industry. When not doing that, he's playing Xbox, watching movies, bidding on antiquarian books at eBay, or trying not to spend too much money at Zabar’s.
