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 The classical models of marketing have now been replaced by far more dynamic models and media is only one of the many factors that influence sales.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.
  

Share-of-Voice to Share-of-Voices

Traditional brand advertising has often taken recourse to strengthening the Share of Voice (SOV) of the brand in the category. Let us delve deeper into this concept here, in the context of TV advertising as an example.

So, if there are 10 brands in a category and if a certain brand advertising is seen the most then that brand is said to have the highest share of voice. Of course! there are very clear formulae based on the extensive TAM data (in case of TV) that allows one to estimate the share of voice of each brand. An estimation of GRP is essential to arrive at the SOV estimate.

Various research studies over the past have clearly established a relationship between the share of voice and Market Share and the SOV:SOM method of advertising planning is extensively adopted. In the absence of Share of Voice data; the Share of Expenditure (SOE) data too is often used for similar purpose.

Let us understand "Share of Voice" and its context a bit more.

• Traditional advertising mainly had only the brands talking about themselves and hence the sources of "voice" were limited. So, in this case we may say that since there were 10 brands - there were 10  primary sources of  Voice.
• The voice is alien or distant for every consumer. so, there was no effort to measure the "influencing power" of the voice.
• So "Share of Voice" is a "volume measure" ie it just measures the amount of advertising. So, in a volume measure the nature or the strength of the voice is not reflected.
• However, it is not a "supply measure" as "secondage of advertising" but is a "consumer side measure" since, it depicts the "amount of advertising seen". Note, that purposely I have not called it a "demand side measure" since there really is no demand for advertising - it is often thrust upon consumers. Anyways, here let us not get into whether the advertising is really wanted or seen, given the high extent of ad-avoidance behaviour which is rampant.  
• The metric of voice in each media is different and hence complex statistical techniques are required to aggregate share of voice across different media. For those who know GRP would be aware how mysterious GRPs are and how erroneous can it be to aggregate GRPs across media. 

But, the media landscape has evolved so much since the time the science of SOV:SOM based planning was scripted. The emergence of social media has started diluting the control of the brands over their advertising. The changes that have been seen are certainly here to stay and will only get more acute with the accelerated growth of digital media in the country. In such a scenario, we need to look at the principles of Share of Voice - afresh.

• If there are 10 brands in the category today, are their only 10 sources of brand messages. NO. The number of sources of brand messages today are innumerable. Hence,. there are a multitude of voices.
• Each consumer has a unique relationship with at least one of these innumerable voices and hence each voice has a definitive "influencing power" over another consumer.
• Hence, it is not the volume of voice but the number of voices which is more important.
• With the transfer of power moving from the transmitter of messages to the reciever - an exposure to a message is subject to desire and demand by the consumer. Hence, the measure of number of voices seen/ heard can be termed as a "demand side measure"
• Number of voices is a count measure and is additive across media formats - though yes, given the unique influencing power of each voice we would still need recourse to complex statistical methods to arrive at a relationship between these different voices and brand success.

Yes, I admit my thoughts are still evolving on this subject and many arguments are possible on what will happen next. However, one thing is certain that "Share of Voice' based planning as it exists today has to re-invent itself and maybe change itself to "Share of Voices" based planning.

In effect, the media plans should not be targeted to generate the highest "Share of Voice" but rather structured to activate more and more consumers to raise their voice for the brand to maximize the "Share of Voices" for the brand.

Shouting by yourself is easy but getting others to canvass for you requires winning their love and respect. That is the real challenge that the brands have to confront. If a brand wins my heart - I will always raise my voice for it.