Time to move on....No more "Spray & Pray",

I was inducted into media planning in 2002.

 

The media environment in India was just beginning to evolve into the era of new media. Digital as a media was negligible; Out-of-Home media was limited and traditional; Private FM Radio was just getting liberalized. Cable & Satellite TV was still growing and Print had started expanding by extending into new geographies and segments by way of new editions and supplements.

 

Advertising on TV was the success mantra given the extensive reach that TV offered at a very low cost compared to any other alternative.

FMCGs needed new consumers and repeat purchasers while most other categories were in a growth stage. Driving 'Presence' of the brand was the key objective and media planning science driven by the FMCG juggernauts was all about efficiency. In such a situation, the high-reach-cheap-cost nature of TV suited advertisers and brands were happy spraying their advertisements all over as long as the demographic (Gender, Age, SEC) was as per requirement. And, with a 'good' creative, I must say that most brands did very well for themselves.

 

Since, then a decade has passed by. Consumers have changed. Their needs and aspirations have evolved. In response to that the market has changed with the launch of many more brands and variants to appeal to the the new consumer nuances. The media landscape has changed too, giving much more control and information to the consumers.

 

The rising menace of advertisements and increasing control to the consumers led to Ad-avoidance reaching extreme heights, In such an environment, the effectiveness or results delivered by TV per rupee spent gradually but certainly deteriorated. And, I suppose this is what led to the now cliched term "Spray & Pray".

 

"Reaching" consumers used to be a challenge then but now excepting the hinterlands, I think one can safely say that these days given the high reach of various media.. reaching consumers is not really an issue. The issue is to 'Get Noticed' and to 'Endear' consumers.

 

Some brands have taken the path of "Getting Noticed" too seriously without worrying too much about the "Endear" part and are continuing on their tirade of "Even More Spray & Pray". It is this that is leading them to target higher and higher SOV (share of voice). This beahviour is a dis-service to the brands themselves and to the industry as a whole. It is this beahviour that I have already talked of in my post "Green Advertising is Responsible Advertising".

 

This "Spray & Pray" philosophy requires a focus on rates and CPRPs while, in today's scenario, it is the efficacy of advertising that is far more critical than its efficiency. Even more so when most efficiency parameters are based on 'limited research'.

 

We require a more acute focus on "endearing' consumers which requires one to answer questions related to the manner of advertising communication before we start talking of how much and at what cost. And, this manner of advertising needs us to understand the consumer in far more depth than just knowing the demographic. It requires an assessment of what role each media plays in the life of consumer and how each media can be used in tandem to create positive experiences for the consumer.

 

 

Nothing expresses this thought better than this video which I saw many years ago but, find it still very very relevant.  The Consumer has moved on.. it is time for advertisers also to move on...

 

No more "Spray & Pray".

Green Advertising is Responsible Advertising

We are all extremely vocal about the ill-effects of SPAM and as users of email and mobiles use all available SPAM-Blockers to save ourselves from this malady. However, do we realize that there is an immense amount of SPAM that we encounter daily in consumption of various media?

 

I am referring to the huge amount of advertising that we see all around in TV, Newspapers, Outdoors, Magazines, Radio, etc which we have not solicited but is being thrust upon us. Just think about the number of advertisements in a newspaper on a typical day.. the number of ads in TV and radio.. the number of ads on hoardings and various other outdoor formats on the way to office.. the number of brand messages you see on internet.. the number of promotional calls/ messages you get on your mobiles.. the amount of promotional material displayed across shops and malls...

 

We have become so accustomed to this Advertising SPAM that most of it has become a blind-spot and we don't even raise our voice against it. This excessive & unsolicited advertising is a form of pollution.

 

The TRAI through its recent Notification on Quality of Service has taken a tough stance against this pollution in TV advertising making way for a pollution-free television media. When, I say pollution-free - I am not suggesting that we should have no advertising; but, advertising within "tolerable limits".

 

It should be the endeavour and responsibility of every stakeholder in the advertising industry to sustain the media environment such that advertising and communication do not disrupt the experience of the consumers. Such, an approach to advertising and communication is what I call as "Green Advertising".

 

The popular adage in advertising of "Jo Dikta Hai woh Bikta hai" has been over abused and there has been an on-going match amongst advertisers to out-shout their competition resulting in ever-increasing "noise levels" in media. Every year, this focus on increasing "share of voice" calls for higher and higher investments which only benefit the media houses but, continue to increase the irritation and pollution in media for consumers. It is also to be noted that ultimately, it is the consumer that pays for all the advertising as these advertising monies form part of the cost of the product/ service.

 

The infatuation of advertisers with their logo has made them blind to any concern whether the consumer wants to see their logo or not. They have forgotten the classical truth that "Size does not matter". It is not the size of the logo that impresses the cosumer but what it does for them. In my post "The Creative is killing Creativity", I have already talked about the excessive want of the advertisers to tell their "Brand Story" often forgetting the story of the consumer in the process.

 

Brands that deliver their communnication in a Green manner ie in a manner such that they do call for the attention of the consumers but not at the cost of disrupting their experience but, instead enhance the experience - are the brands that will be truly valued, loved and patronized by the consumers.

 

Green Advertising requires that every communication idea be evaluated for (i) notice-ability, (ii) relevance and significance to the consumers life, (iii) the leave-behind value for the consumer on interaction, (iv) uniquness or relate-ability to the brand  on the one hand and (i) disruptiveness and (ii) cost of implementation on the other.

 

The reduction in advertising time on TV as a result of the TRAI notification should only worry advertisers who believe that the reduction of volume of advertising will erode their brand opportunity. Advertising in a commercial break is only one form of communication - that is one-way, passive, ridden with clutter, ad-avoidance and weakening credibility. A little peek into the life of the consumer shall reveal many more opportunities to enage with the consumers.

 

Green Advertising is the way ahead. Will we be proactive and adopt it across the media ecosystem or shall we wait for more notifications to come before we stop spamming our consumers.

 

Go Green!!

Client gets the work it deserves.

Media Agencies started as back-end print releasing departments of creative agencies many many years ago. The task of media releases was a menial task that the then industry leaders granted only 2.5% commission of the 15% that was available for the creative agencies.

As the media landscape has become more and more complex, the media agencies have risen to the challenge. Since then, the media agencies have evolved - upgraded their toolkit, added skill sets, increased the scope of services they can deliver and have come up as a formidable component of the advertising and communication industry.

 

Yes, the media agency still does media releases but a media release is just the tail end of all the valuable functions that a media agency performs.

 

No other entity has a better understanding of the media landscape of India. The largest media research agencies, the eminent consultancies, the rate-focused auditors, the tv-skewed creative agencies and the self-biased media houses - all barely skim the surface in understanding the media consumption patterns of today's consumer. A media agency is capable of a very clinical analysis of what media the consumer consumes and which touhpoints are best suited for brand communication.

 

Media Strategists today, are armed with databases and tools superior to what any other communication industry entity can either afford or has the commitment to develop. These tools enable media agencies to diagnose brand & consumer relationships and setup media tasks with great precision.

 

It is no longer about a TV or a Print Schedule but the design of the overall architechture of how the multiple media touchpoints included in a brand campaign are programmed to interact and influence the minds of consumers. Creativity is no longer the domain only of develpoing ad-creatives and is inherent in the methods by which media agencies design these media solutions for brand campaigns.

 

Overall, media agencies have skill sets and tools that are a fusion of consumer understanding, category & brand diagnosis, media understanding, creative solution design - all culminating into the function of preparing media-wise schedules (media plans), optimizing these plans to deliver cost-efficiency, releasing and monitoring each component of a brand campaign.

 

So much is available for a client when it signs on a media agency as an AOR. But, what a client is able to extract from the agency is directly related to the strength of their belief in what a media agency can/ should deliver; the focus of the senior management on working with the media agency as a partner; and an understanding of the overall deliverables that a media agency is capable of.

 

The media agencies have evolved over the past decade and are ready to deliver total communication solutions. The Client needs to review what he/ she is getting out of the media agency today and work towards getting more..getting more beyond implmentation planning & buying.

 

Ultimately, the Client will get what it demands (deserves).

Embedding Brand-Good into Media Plans

This is not a critique nor a judgement on any one. It is only some loud thinking on how the advertising/ media industry could become more effective in fulfilling their ultimate objective of doing good for their client brand.

Of course! there are hundreds of dimensions to the above thought but, in this article today I am only zooming in on "Focus on the Brand" in the context of traditional media planning.

A media plan is a optimistic mix of advertising space on various media/ vehicles to expose the provided creative to the desired (usually, demographically defined) target audience made with the primary objective of getting the mix at the cheapest.

As, those in the industry read through - it may be very easy to say we are not like that or we don't do this, etc but, the tougher and right thing would be to get out of denial mode and look to further improvement.

I am not saying, at all that the media plans today are not delivering on brand-good but, the point is are they delivering enough and can this be optimized further. Now, don't take the word "optimized" which I just used and say that for our plan we have already used an optimizer. The said optimizer is for arriving at the cheapest way to deliver the most exposure while, again I am talking of optimizing brand-good.

All media planners out there are doing a fabulous job delivering exposure. They are stuck between the advertiser/client who have their own visions of what their plan should be like (often based on past experience with as much subjectivity as exists in marketing) and most importantly at what cost that vision should be delivered and with the Media House/ Auditor/ Agency Seniors on the other side bringing in all kinds of "expectations" to vitiate the ideal planning process. The job of media planning for the person at the front becomes more of managing expectations rather than of delivering the right media plan. In such a scenario, it is often very likely that the media planner does not embed enough of the brand-good into the plan since he is playing the balancing act between the various actors sitting around the desk to approve the media plan.

Making a media plan is a process and in the process the Brand-Good has to form an important element. We have to make sure that during every stage of the planning process there is a barometer which checks if the brand-good has been maintained from the point we started making the plan right through to the end. And, this is all possible. The only thing that vitiates it is the distraction by various other short-sighted expectations some justified/ some totally unreasonable.

While, one - as a media planner can keep saying that it is all these distractions that spoil a media plan; it is the responsibility of media planners to first put their house in order. Before, one starts making a media plan how much thought is given to what is the brand-good that we are trying to deliver other than brand exposure? How much consideration is given to brand-good in selecting various elements of the plan or do we just choose media vehicles basis the exposure-cost analysis? Once when a plan is made does one really put a metric to the amount of brand-good that has been embedded into the plan? Finally, after the execution of the plan how much analytics is done to assess the brand-good delivered?

Here, I want to introduce the concept of Brand-Fidelity of media plans. A media plan that has low brand fidelity would have minimal or no brand-good embedded within it; while a media plan with high brand-fidelity would be totally focussed on delivering what the brand intended to achieve through the media plan.

Now, what is the brand-good that we need to deliver and how do we quantify and measure it are further challenges but, not impossibles to derive. A focused team, intent on building higg-fidelity media plans will surely find means and ways to idetntify, embedd and measure brand-good.

This is an urge to the industry to re-invent media planning in a way that at the end we have an applause and not questions about the relevance of advertising, Focus on Brand-Good in a way that cant be compromised for any other expectation.

Hindi Hinterland - The New Reality

[Published by MXM India in May 2012]

The change in society is expressed in three key dimensions which are Attitude, Affluence and Ambience. Of course, there is certainly an interaction between each of these as they are not independent of each other. And, in the past few years each of these have significantly changed for the Hindi Hinterland.

The Ambience, which is the infrastructure around, has made progress by leaps and bounds. One can always say that there is a lot to be done for amenities like roads, electricity, healthcare, communication, education, governance, commerce, but all these areas have seen improvement. Government initiatives as well as private enterprise have contributed to this change.

Affluence is on the rise. The average monthly household income has improved (as measured by the IRS database). The access to durables has improved and in most categories not only does this market constitute a large share of sales but is also a high growth market for the future. Automobiles, Entertainment Electronics, Household & Kitchen Durables are all expanding into these markets. For FMCGs, these markets were always an important geography, though only for the essentials, but now the market is also growing for the premium segments. Services, which focused only on metros a decade ago, are all vying for the masses in the Hindi Hinterland today.

The change in Attitude of the consumers is of utmost importance. Increased urbanization, higher exposure to urban lifestyles and high aspirations are fuelling consumer demand. The attitude towards social equality, gender issues, education, personal lifestyles, technology adoption, and so on are all tending to match up with consumers in the other geographies. For Telecom, the Hindi Hinterland is a gold mine. The growth rates in these markets are enormous and cell phones are changing the very basics of media reach.

Illiteracy has decreased by 15 per cent and 18 per cent in the rural and urban areas respectively in the last 5 years. The readership of publications (mostly dailies) has grown manifold in the last decade and continues to be an area of growth in the future.

Television ownership has grown at a CAGR of 10.3 per cent over the past 5 years and viewership is increasing exponentially. Hindi news channels, Hindi movies and GECs are fast growing; regional content on TV too has seen significant growth. The DTH growth story has started from these markets and now is making its presence felt in the larger cities. Despite, the growth in media reach over the past decade, it is still a challenge to do justice to these markets in the current media context.

Hence, the key challenges are:

•TG Isolation: To manage sufficient reach, most often the largest reach media needs to be utilized and that reaches across target groups. There is, therefore, a lot of spillover resulting in wastage of media monies.

•Geographical Isolation: As soon as one uses the national Hindi media beyond the regional media the spillover into national markets is inevitable.

•Message Localization: Most campaigns use the creative made for large urban markets which has a challenge to connect with the consumer in the Hindi Hinterland.

•Cost per Reach: As local media becomes important for coverage in the market; the comparative cost of reach is a challenge.

Overcoming any of the above challenges is not easy as most of these are issues are related to the structure of the markets and the media industry. However, the following best practices can help the custodians of communication for these markets:

•Do not look at each media in isolation. Use a multi-media approach to target specific market and TG. This will help in controlling spillover.

•Take advantage of localization and extension of campaigns in partnership with the media. Integrate the creative into local contact opportunities and even activation.

•Make extensive use of local representatives to understand the media preferences.

Know Your Customer (KYC)

KYC is a very talked about term theses days amongst most sales oriented organizations. In fact, among some domains (Telecom, Finance, etc) this is actually being enforced by the regulatory authorities. However, this is one aspect that agencies have to take up on a war footing.

No, no.. I dont mean to say that agencies dont know their customer.. it is a bit deeper than that..

It is one thing to know the people who "man" the various stations/ offices but quite another to know the business that they are in. And, that is what I mean that agencies need to understand the business because, it is the business or the brand who is the Customer for the agency.

Yes, no one will admit that they dont understand the business of their Client; but, conversely if I were to ask the Clients if they think that the people at their agency understand their business - the answer may not be a very sweet one. So, lets accept it - we know very little about our clients businesses.

And, this I believe is at the core of the usually publicized commoditization of agency deliverables.

In the absence of suitable knowledge about the business, the communication recommendations from the media as well as the creative agency would be limited to some very superficial idea about how their inputs and efforts would affect the business. The dialogue between the agency and the client is limited to only "media language" and does not graduate to "business talk" that really matters to the client. Unless, the Client appreciates our knowledge and understanding of his business - he/ she wont really give any weightage to any inputs in the realm of strategy.

Doing a campaign is a very transactional thing and we do these by the score - however, strategy is something which is very integral and cannot be done on the basis of the media knowledge only.

But, it is a chicken and egg story. Unless, we understand the business, the client wont involve us in the strategic process and unless we get involved in the strategic process - we wont really be able to understand the business. Anyways, the onus for change is on the agency - unless, the agency is happy just delivering vanilla media campaigns and over a period of time getting more and more marginalized and commoditized.

So, the new mantra of "KYC" has to be taken up by the agencies in earnest and impute the learnings into the process of media solution design. This stance of KYC would need re-orientation of skillsets and resources so that the focus is on the strategic and not just the transactional deliveries.

Lastly, I would say that the ultimate beneficiaries of an agency that understands their business - shall be the clients themselves. Hence, the Clients must encourage this shift and not keep the agency at arms-length when it comes to sharing knowledge and information about their business.

Only, an agency that knows your business can grow your business!!

Stop Over-Simplification of Media

While, the core thought of this article about 'over-simplification' may apply to the overall domain of marketing, but I am using the setting of media planning to construct the view.

Lets, first see what is the task or challenge that the media agencies take up in their business.

Every advertiser expects the media planning agency to deliver performance for its business metrics. That is to say that - once a media plan is executed the brand manager expects sales to happen.

Enough has been said about the increasing complexity of the market, the increasingly unpredictable and demanding consumer and the decreasing strength of brands. In such a scenario, the factors that lead to sales success are many. The classical models of marketing have now been replaced by far more dynamic models and media is only one of the many factors that influence sales. Hence, this is not a simple or easy expectation at all.

Even a little bit of analytics will reveal that media has only got limited leverage to drive sales and this leverage varies for different categories and brands. However, there are other interim metrics leading to sales, such as brand recall, brand perception, brand enquiry, brand interactions, etc for which media can be held accountable for. There are so many marketing models and methods that help understand what a brand needs to deliver in media. None of these methods are simple.

Looking at 'media' in isolation and expecting it to deliver sales is a naive simplification.

Media Planning is an intricate science. It deals with engaging extremely incredulous and volatile consumers to convince them of the merits of one of the score of brands that are available to them and possibly get them to move closer to buying the brand. In short, it deals with the wants and desires of people which can never be a simple subject to address.

However, somewhere along the way in the past agencies have made advertises believe that this complex task can be broken up into two simple steps - (i) design the message and (ii) deliver the message to the desired consumer segment.

Here, I will not comment on designing the message since I have already touched upon that in my earlier post titled "Creative is killing Creativity". Lets look at the inherent simplification that has been cultivated in delivering the message.

The first simplification was to strip each medium of its "qualitative" values and believe that each vehicle in a medium and across mediums can be represented by the measure of only "quantity".

This made it very easy to measure media and trade media. One was only bothered about the count or reach as we call it. Research agencies made a killing setting up mammoth research projects measuring this lowest common denominator across media. Yes, there was a qualitative aspect but that was left to interpretation and application by the media planners. Now, we have the media planing community largely addicted and servile to these quantitative research databases totally oblivious to the qualitative value of the media they recommend. 

The second simplification was to believe that consumer minds can be affected just by managing the volume of this media measure.

The GRP was conceived - which is another simplification of the arithmetic that goes into making a media schedule and this GRP became the volume measure of  voice of the brand. Due to its simplicity, clients took to GRPs easily and it soon became a strong trading currency for media. Today, everything that is done is to create, deliver, manage, buy, sell - this GRP. This GRP comes in various reach and frequency packs and is available across media. This GRP has become the magic wand with which the client and the agency attempt to deliver market shares.

The simplification is also evident in the remuneration structure that is prevalent in the industry. Everything that is done in communication is measured in terms of the traded value of media bought and the agencies are paid as a percentage of that. Since, actually estimating the real value contributed by media is difficult - so a percentage of spends keeps it simple.

I guess, the whole media eco-system looks at the issues too simplistically and that is why "value-creation" is reducing day by day and leading to commoditization of media, media schedules, media talent and of media agencies. The advertisers will continue to simplify, but if, the media and advertising domain wants to enhance its value they will have to do away with this over-simplification. After all, Value is in the details.