Ch03 Media Management in advertising

03 FUNCTIONS OF MEDIA MANAGEMENT IN ADVERTISING Definitions The communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services is called advertising. Advertising is a paid communication through medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Variations include publicity, public relations, product placement, sponsorship, underwriting, and sales promotion. Advertising is bringing a product (or service) to the attention of potential and current customers. Advertising is focused on one particular product or service. Thus, an advertising plan for one product might be very different than that for another product. Advertising is typically done with signs, brochures, commercials, direct mailings or e-mail messages, personal contact, etc. Advertising is a form of communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain and use them. Many advertisements are also designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of brand image and brand loyalty. For these purposes advertisements often contain both factual information and persuasive messages. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet and billboards. Advertising is often placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a company. Media Planner It is a job title in an advertising agency or media planning and buying agency, responsible for selecting media for advertisement placement on behalf of their clients. The main aim of a Media Planner is to assist their client in achieving business objectives through their advertising budgets by recommending the best possible use of various media platforms available to advertisers. Their roles may include analyzing target audiences, keeping abreast of media developments, reading market trends and understanding motivations of consumers Traditionally, the role of the media planner was quite close to that of the Media Buyer, the obvious distinction being that the planner would devise a plan for advertising and the buyer would negotiate with the Media proprietor on things such as rates, copy deadlines, placement, merchandising, etc. The role of the modern media planner is more wide reaching however. Today many agencies are actually eschewing the job title of 'media planner' in favour of titles such as communications planner, brand planner or strategist. This reflects the shift away from 'traditional' media planning to a more holistic approach, with the planner now having to consider (as well as standard above-the-line channels such as TV, print, radio and outdoor) PR, below-the-line channels, in- store, digital media, product placement and other emerging communications channels all for the purpose of ensuring the client's advertising budget is well spent as well as adhering to the overall marketing strategy devised by marketing consultants or the client themselves. Their expanded job scope has thus made more demands of their time, placing them in immensely pressured situations matched by the states faced by their creative (copywriters and art directors) counterparts. An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients. Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to proadvertising campaign. Mobile Billboard Advertising Mobile Billboards are flat-panel campaign units in which their sole purpose is to carry advertisements along dedicated routes selected by clients prior to the start of a campaign. Mobile Billboard companies do Not typically carry third-party cargo or freight. Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including: Target advertising One day, and long term campaigns Convention Sporting events Store openings or other similar promotional events Big advertisements from smaller companies The same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as AIDS, political ideology, energy conservation. Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large audiences. "Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest - it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes with commercial enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public interest issues and initiatives. Types of advertising Media Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television ads, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human directional, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses or airplanes ("logo jets"), taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles, the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Another way to measure advertising effectiveness is known as ad tracking. This advertising research methodology measures shifts in target market perceptions about the brand and product or service. These shifts in perception are plotted against the consumers’ levels of exposure to the company’s advertisements and promotions. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising. Covert advertising Covert advertising is a unique kind of advertising in which a product or a particular brand is incorporated in some entertainment and media channels like movies, television shows or even sports. Covert advertising is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite brand. Television commercials Broadcast advertising is a very popular advertising medium that constitutes of several branches like television, radio or the Internet. Television advertisements have been very popular ever since they have been introduced. The cost of television advertising often depends on the duration of the advertisement, the time of broadcast The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. More controversially, virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none existing in real-life. Virtual product placement is also possible. Newer media and advertising approaches Increasingly, other media are overtaking television because of a shift towards consumer's usage of the internet as well as devices such as TiVo. Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives. E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as "spam". Measuring the impact of mass advertising The most common method for measuring the impact of mass media advertising is the use of the rating point (rp) or the more accurate target rating point (trp). These two measures refer to the percentage of the universe of the existing base of audience members that can be reached by the use of each media outlet in a particular moment in time. The difference between the two is that the rating point refers to the percentage to the entire universe while the target rating point refers to the percentage of a particular segment or target. Negative effects of advertising An extensively documented effect is the control and vetoing of free information by the advertisers. Any negative information on a company or its products or operations often results in pressures from the company to withdraw such information lines, threatening to cut their ads. This behavior makes the editors of the media self-censor content that might upset their ad payers. The bigger the companies are, the bigger their relation becomes, maximizing control over a single piece of information. Advertisers may try to minimize information about or from consumer groups, consumer-controlled purchasing initiatives (as joint purchase systems), or consumer-controlled quality information systems. Another indirect effect of advertising is to modify the nature of the communication media where it is shown. Media that get most of their revenues from publicity try to make their medium a good place for communicating ads before anything else. Global advertising Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global. For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximizing local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company’s speed of implementation. Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel. Trends With the dawn of the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Popup, Flash, banner, averaging, and email advertisements are now commonplace. Embedded advertising or in- film ad placements are happening on a larger scale now than ever before. Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them. Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of targeted ads. The functions Management in Advertising From the creation of advertisements we now move to another increasingly vital and creative area of the advertising profession. All your creativity would be useless, unless what you produce is seen or heard and acted upon. This can be guaranteed only by the most effective exposure in the media. Even creativity and planning and advertising campaigns can be determined to a considerable extent by the media used. There is today greater integration of the creative function with media planning. Today, the integral link between advertising research, creating advertising and media planning has become vital today because of the proliferation of the media, particularly the plethora of TV channels, and inter- and intra-media competition as also fierce competition between brands trying to capture a fast expanding market. These developments are making media planning a complex and difficult task, calling for a great deal of ingenuity, inventiveness, continuous monitoring of changes in consumer reactions to different media, analysis of utility of certain media and combining imagination with available data to ensure the most effective use of media in combination. Let us start with trying to understand what the media is expected to do. What is the media objective in general? It is to ensure the widest and the most effective exposure of the advertising message in such a way as to help influence purchase and reduce wastage, thereby getting the best value for every rupee spent. The aim is to select the most effective media to reach the core target. The options are many, of course, related to the product or service and the target audience. Should you use a single medium to saturation level? Should you combine different media or opt for a media-mix? If so, what would be the distribution of the different media? Then you would come to each medium-print, TV, radio, video, outdoor, direct mail, point of purchase material, shop window display and so on. Starting with the print medium, you have to decide whether you would confine yourself only to daily newspapers or use magazines as well. Then more questions arise: Which newspapers? The general daily or the financial dailies and which of those? Similar questions would have to be answered with regard to magazines. Then you would have to decide how much space to use and how frequently the position of the advertisement on the page of the daily, even the particular page on which the advertisement would appear. These questions are no longer simple. The number of newspapers seems to be increasing every day. Then there are multiple issues of the same daily newspaper. There are special regular weekly features or supplements. You have to choose between English and other Indian language dailies, both nationally and regionally. With so many readership options and newspapers and magazines catering to so many different tastes and requirements, there is a tremendous fragmentation or segmentation of readership. General magazines, as distinct from those aimed at specific readership. Contain a variety of articles. In positioning an advertisement one has to make a decision depending on the product or service and its core audience and the sections of the magazine that are likely to appeal to such an audience. It is a formidable task. Certainly with regard to the space to be used and even with frequency at times there has to be integration between the creative team and the media planner. How serious this problem of media selection and planning is, becomes evident' when we discuss the proliferation of TV channels. In the environment of increasing competition the combination of different media has assumed greater importance than ever before. Direct mail, such as Catalogues, leaflets, even audiotapes and videotapes, computer diskettes and telephone calls are becoming quite common. Even for consumer goods and consumer personal selling is backing durables multimedia advertising. Direct mail, which uses TV quiz or feedback postcards, not only communicates effectively with the target audience but also builds up a profile of potential consumers, people who have bothered to respond. This can be the beginning of a direct mail database, which has to be kept constantly updated. Outdoor advertising is also increasing in importance. Today one comes across even financial advertisements on hoardings. These conventional media advertisers have been using a whole range of non-conventional media, including cinema and video vans, cycles with audio-systems advertising a product The use of the media has become very complex. In general what combination of media or media-mix do you go in for and in what proportion? In TV what the combination of channels and mix is of programmed? How to select a combination that gives the best value for money in reaching the target? In TV it is the question of a target specific programmed with a highly fragmented and shifting viewer ship. How does one focus on markets of importance? The task is precise, and involves the adoption of a more strict but flexible media strategy. The problems faced can be identified as follows: managing the media explosion; matching media to consumer segments with increasing audience fragmentation and declining media loyalties; increasing competition among brands; cost inflation; inter-media competition; cost-effect media use avoiding wastage; focusing on core consumers and standing out in the clutter; increased audience; monitoring changes in readership and viewer ship patterns of the potential consumers; and managing both information and lack of it. Obviously research has an important bearing on media planning and implementation. The media scenario has become so complex that the information for media selection and planning is specific to the target, for a sophisticated segmentation of the media in relation to a segmented target, a specific combination, distribution and spacing of advertisements in the media. It is in this context that advertising research takes on a new dimension. By itself it covers a wide field: consumer motivation, pre-testing and post-testing the copy and the advertisement not merely for the Credibility and persuasiveness of the message but also compatibility with the medium to reach the specific target audience. It also includes research about the different media categories, competitive advertising both in terms of the advertisements and the media used. There is also the research that follows the release of the advertising campaign: recall of the advertisements, comprehension, and impact and so on. These are related to the media used to check their effectiveness, apart from media research to locate target groups in relation to particular media, categories, and balance the reach in relation to the costs involved. Media research permits not only monitor of competitive spending and media strategy, but also monthly variations in brand awareness and brand preferences of consumers in relation to the particular media used. It also helps decide media strategy and tactics of concentrating regionally or nationally, using a single medium or a media mix, how and in what frequency and combination the media-mix is to be operated-concentrated short bursts of advertising with long gaps or a regular release and so on. Today a certain amount of media information is readily available. Certain publications provide 'reading and noting' studies to identify positions, which attract greater attention From all the data available, the media planner would have to work out a consumer profile, not merely in demographic terms, but also as to the identification of the decision-maker, purchase rhythm or frequency of purchase, quantity bought at a time, external influence on purchase decisions; the source of purchase-facilities available, such as credit and exclusive brand 'franchise or rights to sell a particular brand; user recommendation; media habits of decision-makers; advertisement recall as compared with other brands and may be, even other consumer products of different brands and even the media which noticed. The totality of such recall of advertisements, seen or heard, of all the products concerned and their respective brands in relation to media would provide some idea of the contribution of each medium. On the basis of the marketing communication objectives and the analysis of the research data regarding the consumer profile and the related media -mix, the media planner would have to decide on what are called the primary and the secondary media. The primary medium would be selected on the consideration of securing the most powerful impact on the target audience, of the most important source of information for the target audience about the product or service to be purchased and of the most decisive influence on, the decision to purchase. Furthermore, it must be seen and advertisements in it recalled by the majority of the target audience. And the wastage should be minimum. In the case of satellite TV channels one must also take into consideration a spillover into the neighboring countries, especially in the context of the increasing orientation on exports these days. The media planner would give the greatest weight to the primary medium and use other media to provide back up; help further persuade the consumer to act on the motivation already triggered by the primary medium. Such media would be considered as secondary media. Obviously the primary medium and the secondary medium would vary from product groups to product groups. In general one might say that consumer goods would possibly require an even spread over the entire media spectrum. For industrial products, one might even consider direct mail including leaflets and catalogues as the primary medium backed by the press, particularly the financial press. TV would be a secondary medium. Computers have already become a useful instrument of media research and planning. The technology and the accompanying information explosion have to be tuned to the rapidly growing needs of marketing communication. Specialized institutions and trained personnel to man such institutions are needed. The existing institutional arrangements are unable to cope with the demands made on media planning and buying. The attention to the media is not left totally to the advertising agency. Even the advertisers are entrusting the responsibility of media co-ordination to their product or brand managers. The total demands of media space or time and the media combinations are sometimes pooled together for the most effective utilization of the money spent by a marketing organization with multiple brands. The usual organization is of a media director with a media planner and a number of assistants involved both in planning and its operation in terms of scheduling the advertisements in different media, booking time or space, ensuring dispatch of material and checking the fulfillment of the contracts entered into by the media owners with the agency and finally, billing clients. The size of the department depends on the size of the operations. The potential has developed for the emergence of independent media buying agencies as in the advanced market economies. This is seen as a threat to the advertising agencies. Hence, those who have a large business are setting up subsidiary media-buying agencies.