978-0133506884 Chapter 11 Lecture Note Part 2

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WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MEDIA STRATEGY?

Media is often the largest single cost item in a marketing communication budget,

especially for consumer goods and services.

The Media Plan

The challenge that marketing communicators face is how to manage all of the

media opportunities and yet maximize the efficiency of budgets that are inevitably

too small to do everything the firm would like to do to reach every current and

potential customer. All of these decisions come together in a media plan, which

identifies the best media to use to deliver an advertising message efficiently to a

target audience.

Principle: The goal of media planning is to maximize impact while minimizing

cost.

The media plan is a subsection within a marcom plan and has its own objectives,

strategies, and tactics. It is also developed in tandem with message planning, the

topic of Chapter 8. Figure 11.3 illustrates these relationships.

Key Strategic Media Concepts

This section is about the language of media. Basic concepts in media strategy and

planning include:

Media Mix

In most cases a media plan will outline a set of media, and

therefore is a media mix. This media mix is the way various

types of media are strategically combined to create a certain

kind of impact. Because of the breadth of IMC plans, the

term multiplatform has become popular to describe

multichannel and multi-marketing communication areas.

In IMC plans you will find, in addition to traditional measured media advertising, a variety of

other tools being used, such as events, social media (such as Facebook and Twitter), branded

entertainment (such as films or video games in which the brand is the hero), product placement,

and guerilla marketing.

Targets and Audiences

One of the biggest challenges in developing a media plan is matching the

advertiser’s target audience with the audience of a particular medium. An

important principle to remember is: Media planners match the target audience

with the audience of a particular medium.

Media audiences are grouped into four useful categories by generation. Dramatic

differences are seen in the media experiences of these groups:

Traditionalists grew up with newspapers, magazines, and radio, with little or

no television, no cell phones, computers, or Internet.

Baby Boomers, who are in their 50s and 60s, always had those three types of

media. They also grew up with television, but still no cell phones, computers,

or Internet.

GenXers, who are now in their 30s and 40s, grew up not only with the media

of the preceding generations, but also with tape recorders, portable radios,

video games, VCRs, and cable TV, but still no cell phones, computers or

Internet.

GenYers, who are 20-somethings, had all of the above media. In addition,

they grew up with the computer, as well as satellite TV, the Internet, CDs, and

cell phones.

Millennials, the most recent generation, have grown up with DVDs, TiVo,

satellite radio, iPods, smart phones, most recently, the introduction of

Facebook, and Twitter.

Diego Contreras in this chapter’s The Inside Story feature discusses his work as

art director on a YouTube video for the Converse brand. The media planners’

challenge is to know which media best reach which audiences, whatever their

ages.

The Basis of the Buy

Decisions about which media to use are based on the profile of the audience that

reads, views, listens, or visits a medium. Media planners use a variety of terms to

identify and measure audiences, some of which are explained below.

Exposure

Media effects all begin with exposure. We know from the discussion in Chapter 4 that the first

step in making an impact is perception. You have to be exposed to a message before any other

effect is possible. Exposure is similar to circulation for television in that it’s a rough estimate of

the number of households watching a program. However, just because the television is on doesn’t

mean you are paying any attention to the program, let alone the advertising that surrounds it.

Media exposure is related to the idea of corporate and consumer control of media. Companies

may control the media buy, but they do not control what their target sees. In this cluttered media

environment, consumers control what they read and watch, and media analysts recognize that with

the hundreds, maybe thousands, of media choices, control of media exposure now lies with the

consumer.

 Exposure, in other words, doesn’t equate to readership or viewership. At the most basic level,

however, media planners estimate the number of exposures delivered by a media mix.

Principle: Exposure does not equate to readership or viewership; just because the

television is on does not mean anyone is paying attention to it.

Circulation

Impressions are different from circulation, because impressions (at least in print)

estimate the readership or rather the opportunity to be exposed (delivery to the

household or a newsstand purchase), rather than just the circulation, which refers

to copies sold.

Impressions

An impression is one person’s opportunity to be exposed one time to an ad in a specific

vehicle. Impressions can be added up as a measure of the size of the audience either for

one medium or for a combination of vehicles in a media mix.

Gross Impressions

Circulation does not tell you much about the actual exposure of a print ad. For

example, a magazine may have a circulation of 1 million, but it might be read on

average by 2.5 people per issue. This means impressions for that issue would be

2.5 million. If the ad ran in three consecutive issues, then the estimate of total

impressions, called gross impressions, would be 7.5 million.

Similarly, the number of viewers watching a program might be greater than the

number of households reached since there may be more than one viewer

watching and the commercial may be repeated several times in a program. Media

planners add up all of those watching and multiply that times the numbers of

placements to estimate gross impressions for TV.

Ratings

Gross impression figures become very large and difficult to work with, which is

why television and radio industries use ratings (percentage of exposure), which

is an easier measurement to work with because it converts the raw figure to a

percentage of households. When you read about a television show having a

rating of 20.0 that means 20 percent, or one fifth of all of the households with

television were tuned in to that program. Planners describe this program as

having 20 rating points.

A better estimate of impressions might be found in a program’s share of

audience, which refers to the percent of viewers based on the number of sets

turned on. The share figure is always larger than the rating, since the base is

smaller.

Reach and Frequency

The goal of most media plans is to reach as many people in the target audience as

often as the budget allows. Reach is the percentage of the media audience

exposed at least once to the advertiser’s message during a specific time frame.

Equally as important as reach is frequency, which refers to the number of times a

person is exposed to the advertisement. There’s a rule of thumb that you have to

hear or see something three times before it makes an impact, which is why

frequency of repetition is so important in many advertising campaigns. Different

media have different patterns of frequency.

An important principle to remember is: The goal of most media plans is to reach

as many people in the target audience as often as the budget allows. Most media

plans state both reach and frequency objectives and the media mix is designed to

accomplish both of those goals.

Intrusiveness

Intrusiveness, the ability of a medium to grab attention by being disruptive or

unexpected, is the primary strategy for countering clutter. Because of the high

level of commercial message clutter, companies in the past have valued all the

help they can get in attracting attention to their messages.

Media, as well as messages, vary in their degree of intrusiveness. The most

intrusive medium is personal selling because the sales representative’s presence

demands attention. The least intrusive media are print because users choose when

and to what extent to use them. If a message is too disruptive or irritating, it may

not help build a positive brand relationship.

Principle: The more intrusive a medium, the more it can be personalized, but the

more costly it is to use.

There are ways to minimize intrusiveness. One is to choose media whose target

audience is intrinsically interested in the product category. To have visibility

without being intrusive is one of the reasons why product placements at events are

popular. Another way is by giving customers the option to opt-in or opt-out when

receiving brand information digitally.

CHANGING PATTERNS OF MEDIA USE

Marketing communication media are in an incredible state of flux, partially

because of the introduction of the computer and the Internet but also because of

the way people choose to spend their time.

Consumer Use of Media

Consumer use of media is changing as technology changes. It used to be that most

Americans were involved with three television networks, a newspaper, and one or

two magazines. The modern media landscape includes up to 200 television

channels in some markets, a huge number of special interest publications, millions

of websites, and new electronic media such as Kindles, iPads, and Twitter. Here

are some other trends:

Consumer Control. Consumers are much more in control of their own media

and designing their own media landscapes, from video games to Twitter. The

people formerly known as “audiences” are creating their own content, a

practice referred to as consumer-generated content, such as homemade videos

and commercials seen on YouTube and personalized audio listening on their

iPods and other MP3 players. Entertainment is as much a driving force for

modern digital media as news was for traditional media.

Media Driven Lives. A major change in media use is the increase in

media-driven lives and media multi-tasking. In their youthful days, the lives

of traditionalists and baby boomers were dominated by work and family

activities. In contrast, more recent generations spend more time with media of

all kinds, and those channels are more intertwined with their family, work, and

leisure time.

Media Multitasking. People not only spend more time with media but also use

more than one medium at a time. David Rittenhouse, a member of this book’s

advisory board, explains the importance of multi-screen viewing in the A

Matter of Practice feature in this chapter.

Social Media. Traditionally most media involved a solitary experience –

reading a paper or listening to the radio, for example, but this has truly been

transformed by social media. The immediacy and intimacy of a phone

conversation has exploded into millions of interactions via Twitter. (Think

about this: If you send one million tweets, are you broadcasting? Since you

probably do not know those one million recipients, has Twitter become a form

of mass media?)

Probably the biggest change is found in the increase in interactive media. We’ve

always had interactivity in personal selling and direct marketing by telephone,

but technology changes have forced traditional media to change their forms.

Social media have opened up entirely new dimensions of interactivity that

challenge brand stewards to keep up with their possibilities.

Alternative Media Forms

We use the term nontraditional media to refer to media forms and forms of

contact other than traditional advertising media. The point is that there are other

ways to present promotional messages besides traditional marketing

communication. Melissa Lerner, a specialist in new media planning at a

pioneering out-of-home media company, describes nontraditional media in the A

Matter of Principle feature as a creative opportunity for innovative thinkers.

The search for nontraditional media—that is, new ways to reach target audiences

—is particularly important for advertisers trying to reach the elusive youth

market, since teens are often the first to experiment with new media forms. In

some ways, this search for innovative ways to deliver messages is just as creative

as the message concepts developed on the creative side of advertising. That’s why

one of the principles of this book is that the media side can be just as creative as

the creative side of advertising.

Product Placement

For years we have been exposed to product placement, in which a brand appears in a television

program, movie, or even in print as a prop. With product placement, a company pays to have

verbal or visual brand exposure in a movie or television program.

Product placement has become important because it isn’t as intrusive as conventional advertising,

and audiences can’t zap the ads as they can for television advertising using the remote control or a

DVR. At the same time, it may make the product a star—or at least be associated with a star.

Television programs have also gotten into the product placement game.

The greatest advantage of product placement is that it demonstrates product use in a natural setting

(depending on the movie) by people who are celebrities. It’s unexpected and if it’s a subtle use,

may catch the audience when their resistance to advertising messages is dialed down. It’s also

good for engaging the affections of other stakeholders, such as employees and dealers, particularly

if the placement is supported with its own campaign.

The biggest problem is that the placement may not be noticed. There is so much going on in most

movies that unless you can overtly call attention to the product, its appearance may not register. A

more serious problem occurs when there is not a match between the product and the movie or its

audience. Another concern is that advertisers have no idea whether the movie will be a success or

failure as they negotiate a contract for the placement. If the movie is a dud, what does that do to

the brand’s image?

Another problem is an ethical one—when is a product placement inappropriate? For example,

some pharmaceutical marketers have found that a product “plug” can be a way around the FDA’s

requirements on the disclosure of side effects. Public policy critics warn that it’s not just drugs; the

problem exists for weapons, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, among other product categories that

raise social concerns. Product placement has been called “stealth advertising,” by the Writers

Guild of America who argued that “millions of viewers are sometimes being sold products without

their knowledge … and sold in violation of governmental regulations.”

Branded Entertainment

Similar to product placement, the use of the media of entertainment to engage consumers with

brands is referred to as advertainment or branded entertainment. In some cases, companies

may produce films for the Internet where the brand is integrated into the storyline.

An example of branded entertainment is described in the Inside Story feature in this chapter,

which explains how an animated program was created for the male grooming brand Axe. The

integrated launch campaign was a 360-degree promotional effort, and the show included the

following: launch parties, a dedicated website, text messaging, interactive billboards, in-store

video trailers, and a sweepstakes.

Search and Mobile Marketing

Because approximately 97% of consumers use computers to search for product and store

information, marketing strategies are designed to assist in this process. Mobile search using cell

phones is one of the fastest growing media forms.

For many companies this means their communication programs have added responding, as well as

targeting, to their brand communication strategies. Another new practice that responds to this

increase in consumer control over the contact point is search marketing, which refers to the

placement of online ads near topics of interest that people search on their computers, tablets, or

smart phones. Search engine advertising is driven by the key words that consumers use in their

search for information or entertainment.

Mobile marketing is an exciting new platform for location-based messages that, among other

uses, can reach consumers with a promotional message when they are in the neighborhood of a

store.

Word of Mouth

Since we recognize the power of personal communication in decision making, creative folks are

challenged to come up with exciting new ways to generate buzz and convey brand messages

through word of mouth. Buzz is important because it means people are talking about a brand, and

when it gets passed rapidly through a network of friends, we call that viral communication. This

buzz may be the most important factor in consumer decision making because the

recommendations of others are more persuasive than any advertisement.

Guerilla Marketing

Exciting and involving personal experiences are designed to reach people on the

street and in public places through a practice known as guerilla marketing, a

really hot area of alternative marketing communication. This place-based strategy

creates unexpected personal encounters with a brand, such as painted messages on

streets or costumed brand characters parading across a busy intersection. Effective

guerilla marketing uses surprise and curiosity to catch attention and create

excitement as well as buzz about a brand.

The idea is to use creative ways to reach people where they live, work, and walk

to create a personal connection and a high level of impact. If it works, the

encounter gets talked about, creating a buzz moment. Guerilla marketing is so

much fun that it inspires creative people to come up with great ideas.

END-OF-CHAPTER SUPPORT