Chapter

9
Planning 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 use
Calculate 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/ Sonys 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
Sonys 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 Advertising
The challenge
Increasing
media
options
Increasing
audience
fragmentatio
n
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
mediums 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 mediums
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 Planning
Effective
reach
Effective
frequency
Advertising
response curve
Recency 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
Factors that Influence Media Strategy
Decisions
Brand
Development
Index
BDI
Percent of the brands total U.S.
Sales in the area
Percent of total U.S.
population in the area
Percent of the product categorys
total U.S. Sales in the area
Percent of total U.S.
population in the area
Category
Development
Index
CDI
Scope of the media plan
Sales potential of different markets
Factors that Influence Media Strategy
Decisions
Scope of the media plan
Sales potential of different markets
Competitive strategies and budget
considerations
Media availability and economics: The
global marketers headache
Nature of the medium and the mood of
the message
Factors that Influence Media Strategy
Decisions
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
Characteristics of
media audiences
Exposure, attention, motivation
value of media vehicles
Cost efficiency of
media vehicles
CPM
CPP
Media Tactics: Selecting and Scheduling
Media Vehicles
Criteria for selecting individual media vehicles
Economics of foreign media
Synergy of mixed media
Mixed media
approach
Media Tactics: Selecting and Scheduling
Media Vehicles
Methods for scheduling media
Continuous
Flighting
Pulsing
Computers in Media Selection and
Scheduling