The principles by which advertising media may be judged and valued have been described in Part I. The wide range of different media available has been outlined in Part II. Part III now describes the way in which media may be selected and combined to form a well-planned and effective campaign. In the field of commercial advertising, virtually every problem involved continuity of effort over a period, since the commercial activity of which it is part is continuous. Moreover few, if any, advertising operations can be satisfied with the use of a single medium; there are usually two or more to be woven together so that they reinforce each other. There is no doubt, as a result of practical experience, that the sequence of activities, the timing of each advertisement, and the combination of one type of medium with another, can materially affect the value obtained from a given programme and appropriation. The effect of the sales message on the public mind can take on an added urgency, and an extra importance, when a certain sequence or timing of media is arranged. On the other hand, a wrong combination of media, or an ill-spaced-sequence of advertisements can reduce the momentum of the public response, and thus lost the advertiser some of the value of his investment.
The media plan in an integral part of the whole advertising plan. The marketing objective, the advertising idea, the design of the advertisements and the choice of media must all be a single concept. Normally, it is the marketing policy and the advertising idea which govern the media plan; though there are times when the media factor can become paramount, and it is necessary to work backwards from the media to the advertising idea and indeed the marketing objective itself. This can happen when it is clear from a study of the competitive and other circumstances on which the campaign tactics depend, that an opportunity exists to dominate a certain type of medium, which competitors may have left inadequately covered; in such a case the advertising presentation and even the very marketing plans and method may be modified to fit the market opened up by the chosen medium.
Usually, however, the media selection depends on decisions reached by the marketing and advertising policy makers. They will have defined the type of campaign that is to be carried cut; they will have identified the particular groups and classes of the market which it is aimed to reach, the seasonal factors; the required character of impact on the retail trade and so on. It will be for the media planner to translate these requirements into the least expensive and most affective combination of advertising media to do the job laid down.
1. The product, its personal peaks, buying rhythm and similar details
2. The appropriation to be spent.
3. The period over which it has to be used.
4. The competitive position, and the media which competitors are using.
5. The market which is being aimed at, in terms of:
Geography
Sex
Age groups
Social class
Domestic factors (housewives, children, etc.)
Any special groups
Retail trades to be covered
6. The atmosphere required in the campaign, e.g.,
Prestige
Gay
Hard-selling, etc.
7. The objective and tactics of the compaign. These should be detailed in a short note.
Before discussing these headings in detail, it is useful to consider the organization into which the function of media planning fits. Ideally the planning of the campaign media should be in the hands of someone who has been present at the overall planning of the campaign objective. Only in this way can the intentions and aims of the policy be translated with a minimum loss of time and effort into a media plan. More over, the media possibilities must to some extent govern other aspects of the plan; for example, the size of space reqired by the creative side may not be available in the most econmic cedia, or the decision to use colour can take one of a number of alternative forms which can be finally determined only in the light of media considerations.
In some advertising units, however, the skill of media planning is not sufficiently understood and there may be a tendency to brief the person or persons responsible for schedule building in a cursory manner when all the other plans are already well in train. This is a great mistake because, even in the normal case, where the selection of media is merely following lines already laid down by advertising and marketing policy, there is a risk that some aspect of the intention will be overlooked or that some advantage will not be seized which might have been valuable; but in the exceptional case where the right choice of media might have been a master stroke, governing the whole campaign plan, the opportunity will have been lost.
Nevertheless, since under some systems the mistake is made, it should at least be arranged that those responsible for media planning receive the full information they need along the lines of the above list. Most advertising agencies have a requisition system for the art departments whereby the executive or other co-oreinating authority details what the advertising objective is, what layouts are needed, what spaces have to be filled, and so on. It is a sound arrangement to apply this system also to the medial department, and to use a requisition from in which the headings of the list of information suggested above form the basis of the instructions for a media plan. This should secure that the plan is as good as the media department can make it and meets the precise requirements of the policy.
Let us examine under each of the above headings what may be involved.
1. The product. There are certain factors about the consumer buying of the product which affect the planning of the media schedule. One is clearly the seasonal factor in sales. Many products have seasonal fluctuations: some sell best in winter, others in summer; some have peak sales just before the bank holidays, other have a grand peak at Christmas; some, such as patent medicines of various kinds, sell heavily during the epidemic season of February; others during May perods and fine weather, for example, sun-tan products. It may be said that those facts are known as soon as the product is stated, but that is not always the case; in any event there is no need to leave it to chance whether the media department is fully informed.
Another factor of importance, particularly n deciding the frequency of insertions is the buying rhythm of the product. Certain types of product, such as groceries, are bought weekly, and the week’s buying is usually concentrated into Friday afternoon and Saturday morning when the paypacket comes home. A study of sales in both grocers and chemists shops indicates how they peak towards the week-end and tend to fall off on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Other requirements, such as holidays or men’s suits, are usually bought once a year; others again at regular intervals of a few months. Products which are bought once in many years, such as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, television sets, will need to be dealt with on entirely different lines, as regards the sequence of advertising, from products of regular sale.
2. The appropriation. The decision as to what the appropriation of a campaign should be is not usually within the competence of media planning. It often happens, however, that a media viewpoint will contribute to the decision. One of the basic methods of approach to deciding the correct budget is how much will be needed to “do the job” (as opposed to complementary methods which calculate how much appropriation an estimated sale of the product will yield); and the media department’s views on the budget required to achieve a set objective are likely to be very relevant.
Once the budget is decided, the issue for the media plan is simple, though it will be important to be clear whether allowance has been made elsewhere for art, mechanical, printing and other ancillary costs. Sometimes also it is desirable to leave a small general resource of say 5% of the total for “contingencies.” Such contingencies may be the possibility of picking up specially valuable positons suddenly coming an offer or taking topical advertisements when occasion arises; or strengthening some aspect of the compaign in light of tactical developments. On the other hadn, the contingency resere carries a risk that it will either be hoarded until it is too late to spend it to best effect, or that it will be frittered away on relatively valueless advertively valueless advertising coaxed out of interested parties on a personal “blackmail” basis. A reserve is a good principle only if it is under the sound firm control of someone who knows the basic intention of the whole plan.
3. The Period: The period for which the budget has to provide is not necessarily the same as the period over which the advertising will run. The seasonal factor in the product, or the tactical situation vis-à-vis competitors, may make it essential to spend the whole budget over a shorter period, leaving some part of the year uncoverd. For example, if a product has a strong winter peak, the year’s budget will probably be largely spent early in the peak period; which may be no more than four to six months. Or again, it may be considered best to concentrates the whole year’s bedget within a three to six months period in order to achieve parity at least during that period with competitors who have much more to spend. This kind of decision is more within the sphere of the overall campaign plan than of the media plan, though the later must contribute the facts on which the wider decision is reached.
4. Competitive Spending. One of the necessary factors in the campaign and thereafter the media plan is consideration of what competitors are doing:
What media they are using;
What sizes and positions they are working on;
What they are spending;
What apparent tactics the competitive campaigns are adopting.
Largely this job can only be done by day to day perusal of the newspapers and magazines, and by observation of outdoor media, cinemas, radio, display material, etc. Such constant awareness of what is going on in the advertising world is an essential part of advertising practice.
The information, however, can be supplemented by the expediture figures given in the Statistical Peview, which have proved to be sound and accurate; and also by the service of the Legion Publishing Company which for a fee will give details of the publication media and space sizes used, and of the detailed costs of any product. Someone would be doing a considerable service to advertising if they would devise a reliable means for giving the same kind of information for posters and cinema media. For radio, the Radio Luxembourgh programme sheets give information from which a close estimate of expenditure can be calculated.
5. Definition of the market. This is perhaps the most important factor in media planning, and yet one which it is most difficult to provide in many cases with the necessary precision.
Where the aim of the advertising is clearly defined section of the community, such as doctors, or architects or yachtsmen or people who are deaf, the case is simple, though the media decisions are not always so straightforward. But the big advertising decisions concern the mass markets, in which neither the market difinition nor the corresponding media selection can hope to be so precise.
In some cases there may be consumer research or other exact product knowledge which can settle conclusively who buys the product and who decides that it shall be bought (not always the same thing), and where this information is available a media plan can be tailored within the limits of precision afforded by media to reach the required section of the community with the minimum of waste.
There are indeed many advertisers who have made a great deal of sales progress with only the wildest guesses at the exact nature of their market and who rather resent attempts to define their targets more exactly. For years the tools of measuring both market and media were virtually non-existent, or at best intuitive and empirical; yet many great businesses were built up on the basis of advertising at that time. The explanation was partly that the judgment and intuition employed by clever men are no mean assets, and partly that the marketing conditions made it possible to waste a great deal of the effect of advertising and still reap an adequate reward. It would probably not be denied, however, that if intuition and judgment can be suppliemented by more exact measurements, and if the element of waste can be eliminated to a greater or lesser degree, it is highly important that new methods should be introduced, especially when more intensive competition makes it necessary to work within finer margins.
The usual method adopted for defining the market is through the conventions of group classifications adopted by the market research techniques: that is the age, sex, socio-economic, and other obvious groupings including geographical and similar factors. Media research, by adopting the same conventions, has permitted the specification to be satisfied in the same terms as those in which it is drawn up. It must be readily agreed that the conventions are neither precise enough, nor convenient enough, to offer more than a general correlation of media potential with market requirements. It is easy enough by consumer research methods to define the market target in all sorts of other terms, but if the media are not also defined in the same terms, the additional data can be of little assistance in media planning. For example, research may ascertain that a product is bought largely by hypochondriacs, or women with fair hair, or men who tend to worry about their old age; and these facts may be helpful in deciding the form of product or the advertising appeal. But such definitions cannot help in media selection because the media coverage has not been analysed in the same terms (even if it could be). A product which is only of interest to people with false teeth, or babies under one year old, may be broadly correlated with media along the lines of age-grouping of readership or certain types of editorial content, and therefore the information is important to the media department; but the correction may be so broad that the precision of media selection can go little further than intuitive methods could anyway achieve. The so-called Readership Survey offer some guidance, but only within the limits of one type of medium.
The real problem is that so many product needs are determined by attitudes rather than identificable physical factors such as age or geography, and these attitudes out across the physical groupings.
Though one may stress the weaknesses of the available resources for measuring markets and media, the fact still remains that, for many products, it is possible within rather broad limits to select from the many media abailable those which are likely to be more appropriate or more economical and involve less waste than others. For this reason the definition of the market to be aimed at is an important prerequisite of media planning. The process has not yet the precision of firing a bullet at a bulls-eye; but, even when scattering a charge of buckshot at a widespread tartet, it is still important to aim the charge into the center of the target.
Sometimes the definition of the market can be narrowed down by geography or type of interest or some other factor, in such a way as to justify using local or specialist papers, or direct mail, or some other more limited medium instead of, or in addition to, general media. Certainly in all cased the retail trade concerned should be stated in the raquisition so that a decision on the use of trade papers may be taken.
6. Atmosphere. This is a factor which needs particularly to be specified in giving the media department its brief. Is the campaign aiming at reputation or quick sales? Is the reaction of Throgmorton Street as important as that of the housewives of Huddersfiedl? Does the advertiser value his prestige to the extent of pulling some punches even if it means losing marginally on sales? Does the marketing and advertising policy carry with it some atmospheric element glamour, gaiety, humour, colour, or seriousness, or sporting interest, or anything else – which could be translated into choice of publication, or other means of advertising, or into special selection of positions within the medium as a whole? Is the atmosphere of the campaign such as will require very good printing on very glossy paper? It is not only that an understanding of the atmosphere required in the campaign can help in selecting suitable media; it is also that this understanding can avoid the risk that impressions successfully achieved in the marketing policy and the creative work are not cancelled out by the use of media which spoil the atmosphere and nullify the carefully constructed appeal.
7. The objective and tactics of the campaign. Almost every advertising campaign has a different character from every other. Something in the tactical circumstances, in the relationship of the budget to the job to be done, in the special type of product, or hundreds of other aspects of the policy behind the scheme gives the campaign its own particular character and intentions. To the writer the chances of one schedule doing equally well for two advertisers seem very remote.
The factors on which the media planners must be thoroughly briefed are, for example:
Whether strong impact is important.
Whether maximum repetition is more necessary than size.
Whether there is a fundamentally new idea to promote, such as might require editorial activities.
How important is the effect on the retail trade in this campaign.
Whether the need is to get direct sales response or rather to build a long-term confidence,
And so on….
It is too easy, and too frequently ancountered a mistake, to talk about “doing a campaign” for such-and-such a toothpaste, or soap, or some other apparently straightforward commodity. In practie, the precise stage of marketing development of the product and the exact nature of the competitive position, will create variations in the tactics required to deal with apparently simila.
In this respect it is usually the overall campaign plane, of which the media recommendations are only one aspect, that will determine the matter. The copy and campaign idea and presentation will reflect the reuired tactics at least as much as the media selection. Nevertheless, it is sometimes forgotten that media selection too is capable of taking a wide variety of different forms according to the particular objective to be achieved.
For example, in advertising a tore, the difference between selling particular spearhead lines from time to time, and building up a reputation for the store as a shopping centere, makes a world of difference not only in the presentation but also in the media planning of the advertising campaign.
Or again, in selling a straightforward mass-appeal consumer grocery, the differences between
getting as many people as possible to try it for the first time remaining the mass housewife population of a well known name, so that it will recur to them with confidence at the time of purchase inspiring confidence in the retail trade so as to make easy the job of widening distribution – ensuring continuity of purchase of a particular brand in a rather changeable market –
reviving an established housewives to fellow as solidly as the last generation in a well-worn household practice –
creating a belief in utmost value for money –
or a dozen other possible variations of advertising intention –
will involve differences in media selection as regards type of media, or size of spece, or position, or frequency, or some other factor, such as will materially affect the whole plan.
If the best way into a particular market, against eneterenched competition, is through a particular type of buyer, or a particular atmosphere of appeal, or through promoting a new habit (which might be better done by editorial publicity than by staraight paid-for advertising), or by a special class of distributive outlet, or by some other variation from the normal, the supporting advertising will then assume an appropriate form and the media plan will fall into line.
The objective of stimulating direct replies, as for example in mail order projects, or immediate action in the shops, will call for entirely different media treatment from that of creating a long-term confidence perhaps for a product which is only bought twice in a lifetime and lasts for twenty years.
The writer recently had to consider a case in which the sales manager of the advertising company was pressing for the use of local provincial evening papers on the ground that the local retailers thought well often and would, therefore, be more ready to take the product into stock. An opposite point of view expressed by the financial director of the company was that, since the ability of the company to raise money in the City of London had to be borne in mind, it was valuable to build up prestige in national newspapers and especially in the class of papers read by the city magnates. An orthodox advertising point of view – a third consideration –was that since the product was an ordinary household commodity bought by housewives, and had at least a fair distribution throughout the country, the most econ9omical advertising medium would be national press and magazines and perhaps posters. Here is an example of a clash of obuetives; until there can be a final definition of the tactical objective of the campaign it is not possible to make the media plan fully efficient and economic.
It is perhaps necessary to add to this section that the conflict of interests, of which the instance just quoted is an example, is by no means easy to solve. A clearly charted course for the campaign, however desirable, may never emerge from the cross-currents of competing interests in the advertisor’s board-room. The media plan can be no batter than the general campaign plan allows it to be. It happens only too often that there is no one person on a controlling board or committee, strong enough to fix a steady course and lay down the exact objective and tactics for the advertising. But there will be no arguments among these with advertising experience that this lack of clarity of objective is one of the greatest dangers in advertising planning, and in no department of the campaign will it have such wasteful effects as in the media plan.
This then is the information on which the campaign plan will be built; the next chapter describes some of the principles which may be applied in campaign planning.
Source : the Selection of Advertising Media by J.N.Hobson, M.A., F.I.P.A.