Recipe for a Media Plan

Of the things that I am passionate about - "media" is what I do professionally and "cooking" is another which I dabble in occasionally at home. There are a few more vocations that excite me but, today I am limiting the discussion to drawing some parallels between media and cooking :-).Lets talk a bit about the art of cooking first!!

The art of cooking is traditionally classified into different Cuisines which have evolved over generations. Each cuisine has its characteristic methods, cooking utensils/ tools, there are some characteristic ingredients and also a distinctive serving style. Then, there are different Chefs, each having their own signature style inspired from various cuisines; some play on dishes within a genre while some experiment across genres. The ingredients are universal and barring some limitations are available across borders to anyone who would want any ingredient. 

The success of a dish rests in the hands of the Chefs who have acute Knowledge of the cuisines, tools, ingredients and the cooking process or the recipe. They have trained over years and acquired Skills to craft the imagined dish using the tools/ ingredients. The dish to be cooked can only be imagined well if the Chef has a full appreciation of the wants and desires of the "Customers" to whom the dish is to be served. And finally, its the "Setting & Service" that makes the Experience worthwhile for the Customers.

The dish served is just not a "collection" of ingredients but ingredients - each treated in a specific manner; each ingredient fused into the dish at a different stage of the cooking process in a specific way that does best for the dish. A dish is only as good as the process of making the dish has been. Its the recipe that makes all the difference. It is the recipe that is guarded by chefs as that is proprietary.

It is the same for media planning too.

The ingredients for media planing - the creatives and the touch-points across media, are available for all to buy; but, what one does with these ingredients is the difference that makes a campaign successful or not. It is the process of making a plan that determines how good a plan is; it is the recipe of the plan that is the most important part of media planning.

Each Media agency has an underlying  philosophy that drives their thinking  and  that differentiates one agency from another. This philosophy gives a distinctive style to each agency just as each Cuisine has a distinctive style.

Each Agency has inherent knowledge and tools that are shared across the network and all planners are trained to adopt skills so that they can use this knowledge and tools proficiently in doing their daily business.

And, for using the knowledge and tools in the best way, the planners need to have a very sharp understanding of the ingredients (media touchpoints) and the customers taste (target group). 

So, a planner will be a Master-Planner only if, working on specific categories/ customers/ markets each planner develops ones own style of media planing within the recommended philosophy/ process of the media agency. 

Needless to say, a Master-Planner will always dish out media that makes a difference to the business of the clients.

Clients need to stop evaluating the ingredients of a media plan and start appreciating the recipe, knowledge, tools and skill set of the team that eventually make a plan successful. Yes, we do have to have an eye on the right side of the Menu, in view of our wallet but, the order has to be on the basis of which dish is the best.

Planning for the Multi-Screen Consumer

I joined the media industry in 2002, at a time when the TV screen was the mightiest. Cinema in India was at the early stages of evolution from low quality single-screens to the experience-rich multiplex phenomena targeting the affluent cinema-goers. Internet bandwidth was limited and multi-media experiences were a challenge on desktops and laptops. Mobile phones were in their infancy, as far as video was concerned. Tablets were non-existent. The Television was the king of screens and it was the medium of choice for the brand video message more popularly known as the TVC.

More than a decade has passed and the world has now changed. While, Television still continues to be the most wide-spread video screen but, in certain consumer segments its dominance is challenged by the other screens in the life of the consumers.

Cinema, Laptops, Tablets, Smartphones - all are pervasive enough with a certain skew towards the affluent, male, young, metro consumers. For these consumers their screen time is well spread between all these screens.

There is a continuing debate on the penetration and the time-spent of the consumers on these screens as viewed from different data sources but, their proliferation and the increasing share of time is undeniable.

The Cinema screen is a public screen; the Television is still a family screen though multiple TV sets at homes and digitization is tending it towards a more personal screen; Laptops/ Tablets/ Smartphones are clearly in the individual zone.The different nature of the screens makes them suitable for different content and experiences and hence, different levels of engagements with the consumers from the advertising perspective.

Advertising is fast adapting to this change in the media consumption behaviour of consumers. The primary use of digital media in advertising is around search and banner/ display advertising exploiting the power of digital to enable context. Though, not much share of wallet but, enough is also being done in engagement of the consumers using various digital and social platforms. However, Television and the TVC still rule.

It is understandable for brands seeking mass audiences beyond the digital skewed demographics indicated above but, brands seeking the multi-screen consumers surely need to re-evaluate their approach to disseminating the TVC.

Its not about giving up the use of Television as a medium - it still has a high share of time-spent among all screens but, an optimized mix of the screens is likely to give much better cost per reach that just using Television.

There are a few arguments prevalent in the industry on this matter - the issue of the measurability of the digital screens and the veracity of the numbers available; the issue of the quality of exposure of the TVC on screens other than Television; and the final issue of the relative cost of exposure across different screens. All these arguments have reasonable answers for any serious investigator though many advertisers are still living in denial and continue to spend the advertising dollars on television without much deliberation.

The quality of exposure on Television itself is a mystery. However, advertisers have continued to spends millions despite the ambiguity. For those who really want an answer, the quality debate can easily be settled by some structured experiments. There are enough cases of success of internet video  and there is enough research availiable on the ROI of digital advertising. 

The question of  measurability is a more pertinent question as campaigns have to be continuously monitored and evaluated on deliveries and performance. We do have an issue of lack of comparable metrics across screens and the recently raging issue of false impressions on digital. But, for brands whose consumers spend most of the day on the computers and smartphones, these obstacles to arriving at a measure are surmountable. Media Agencies have invested in proprietary research and tools which allow overlaying the viewership data obtained from digital publishers with statistically derived models to enable a fair comparison with television exposures. An advertiser with an agency without such research and tools should be looking for a new one at the earliest.

Finally, the matter of pricing which, often dominates most media investment decisions. Hearsay, is that TV is the cheapest medium and digital is very expensive. I guess, that is what all media pricing reports indicate as most of such industry reports calculate numbers at the overall market/ audience level. At the least, each advertiser must do an evaluation on pricing for their specific brand target groups for their core markets and maybe, there is a surprise waiting for some. Pricing should not be looked at in the absolute as the cost per GRP or cost per exposure but, as the cost required to deliver the operating levels planned for a campaign. Advertisers will realize that often a mix of screens delivers a better overall cost of a plan than when using only a single media.

Its a new world and we need to keep re-evaluating best practices as consumers evolve. Needless to say, as we extend the TVC to multiple screens, there is also a re-learning required in creating TVCs that are suited for different screens. While, the above comparison advocated is just on the exposure-metrics - digital screens enable a lot more that just the exposure of the TVC and the advertisers would be benefited most if they exploit the strengths of each medium - beyond exposure.

The challenges in delivering the TVC to the desired audiences on digital will remain as deployment models are either not discriminating between audiences or are structured more for behavioural/ contextual targeting rather than demographic targeting as in Television. It remains to be seen which way the tide flows - whether Digital will evolve to enable demographic targeting or TV will get advanced enough soon to enable behavioural mapping of consumers. 

Overall, for advertising there are challenging years ahead as the consumers relationship with screens will be dynamic but, multi-screen advertising is certainly here to stay. Whether, advertising placement will remain an involved operation or will programmatic placements rule the future - the role of multiple screens will only increase.

The sooner advertisers re-evaluate their options and develop dynamic investment models - the better for the efficiency of their media investments.

The Power of Context of TV GRPs

Advertising on Television comes naturally to every advertiser. It must be a rare advertiser who has the money to do a TVC but doesn't. In this note though, I am not debating the merits or de-merits of TV advertising. I want to focus on those who do decide to advertise on TV - and how do they thereafter use the Television medium.

Now, there are various ways of interacting with target consumers on television, But, I am not going to discuss the possibilities and the pros and cons of the options. We will  just talk about the most widely used method  - of airing the Brand TVC in the commercial break. I believe that over 95% of the monies spent on TV advertising are on the TVC so, that is what we should try to unravel.

It starts with a client brief for airing the TVC and all sorts of action start at the media agency end to propose the operating levels, edits to be used, phasing of the edits, weeks on air, genre structure, etc etc. While, all of the above decisions have a rationale and a process - all science here is based on the aggregation of thousands of TVC exposures. 

The TV Spot
Each insertion of the TVC is termed as a "spot". Each spot has views, termed as "impressions". The number of impressions depend on the number of people watching that channel at that point of time. These impressions expressed as a percentage of the total size of the target group are termed as the "rating or TVR" of the spot (simplistic view). So, there are multiple spots in a campaign, each resulting into impressions and delivering some TVRs and the sum total of these TVRs are what we call the GRPs (Gross Rating Points). As these GRPs accumulate over the campaign period, depending on the unique number of people who have seen the TVC and how many times each has seen the TVC, we derive the reach and frequency of the campaign. The rate at which a campaign reaches new people gives us what we call the reach build-up curve for the campaign.   

You see that in all of the measures above, there is no qualitative value attached to an exposure. Each exposure is like a grain of sand - each one same as the other. And, that is what I think needs to be fundamentally understood and realized before we start debating on the operating levels of any campaign.

The Right GRP
And, this is where the dilemma lies as there are different schools of thought about this. On the one hand, is the belief that each exposure is the same while, on the other hand the difference of each exposure is appreciated. 

For those who believe in the former, life is easy and it is all simple arithmetic to build a campaign - the objective often being to get the maximum GRPs or Reach@Frequency in the minimum cost. They are ignore to the nature of the GRPs as long as the aggregate of the GRPs delivers to them their campaign operating levels. In achieving the cheapest - their is a conscious disregard to an extent to spillovers, extent of over/under exposures, market intricacies, etc.

If we look at the school of thought that recognizes the difference in the GRPs - their life is certainly more complex.  The value delivered by each exposure depends on various dimensions of the exposure, such as the nature of programming, time of day, day of week, etc. These dimensions provide what we call "Context" for the exposure.

Understanding Context
The deliverable that we want from a TVC exposure is that it should be seen by the desired people and that these people should understand the messaging. So, the selection of the context should be based on whether it targets the right kind of people required for the brand in the right state of mind. The premise being that if the viewers are engaged in the context, they will also be engaged in the advertising and hence the probability for them to notice the TVC and to understand the TVC will be higher as against an exposure in a context which is not of high interest to them. Just like "a picture is worth a thousand words" - the right context is worth a whole lot of non-contextual GRPs.

Of course! there is always the pricing argument as most often than not, getting the right context is a compromise between cost, reach and quality.

The Measurement Challenge
But, all such discussions are limited by the nature of the syndicated TV measurement study which only provides data on the demographic audience so, one really does not know the equation between cost, reach and quality for the right brand audience. So, for an advertiser to have the right media plan one has to resort to planning metrics beyond what are provided by the syndicated TV measurement system.

The current TV system never advocated absolute reliance on its metrics for constructing the TV plan. All it provides are measures that are an aid to creating and measuring the TV plan deliveries, and on limited dimensions. These dimensions are adequate for trading of TV GRPs as the currency. However, it would be an injustice to media planing to rely just on this data for arriving at the construct of the plan.

Thus, the plan is only as good as the logic for its construct. And, once we have the construct one needs to translate this construct into a plan based on the limited dimensions available in the TV planning system. While, many attempt to do this but, in an effort to optimize investments in the TV planning system they often loose the construct of the media plan.

To illustrate - do we optimize on reach for the demographic audience as available in the measurement system or do we build in a factor of the reach among the real brand audience? Do we evaluate the efficiency of the plan on the cost per rating in the demographic audience or the cost per rating in the desired audience?  

Optimizing the Construct
The plan optimization needs to go beyond the TV measurement system to draw a balance between - total plan GRPs, total cost of the plan, cost per desired audience (not just the demographic audience) of the plan, reach and reach build-up in the desired audience, the engagement score of the plan, spillover in terms of audience & over-exposure, etc.

Unless, we build beyond the demographic measurement, we may be very happy with the plan deliveries but, what the campaign delivers for business is quite another matter - often not measured, if measured not calibrated and if calibrated, often based on the same belief of sameness of GRPs. Those who have been able to unravel the power of the context of TV GRPs are the ones who will get the most out of TV advertising.

The rest will keep rolling the drum without achieving the real objectives of the brand.. at least not in the most efficient way.