Media Plan

Problem: Media plan 


Learning objectives (LO):

1. Different channels that can be used in your media plan 

2. How should you conduct research (what to research?)

• Media habits in Russia

3. Paid-owned-earned

4. Roles of different agencies

1. Different channels that can be used in your media plan 

In tandem with the evolution in information and communications technology (ICT), consumer purchasing behavior and corporate advertising strategies have also changed. Consumers are now able to gather information through various media channels at each stage of the purchase decision-making process (need recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior). Accordingly, companies must determine the appropriate media channels through which to promote their products in order to reach target consumers. Different media channels will generate different marketing and communication results (Chen and Hsieh, 2012).






Source: JongRoul Woo , Joongha Ahn , Jongsu Lee , Yoonmo Koo , (2015) "Media channels and consumer purchasing decisions", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 Iss: 8, pp.1510 - 1528

This is evidenced by global corporations’ advertising expenditures: in 2012 alone, these totaled USD 492 billion (Zenith Optimedia, 2013). In addition to changing the amount spent on advertising, companies have gradually changed their marketing approaches. While print media advertising expenditures decreased by 3 percent per year from 2009 to 2012, spending on internet media grew by 18 percent annually over the same time period (Zenith Optimedia, 2013). Many companies have begun using a cross-media advertising strategy, using multiple media channels to market their products. This approach has proven more effective than using any one media channel (Naik and Raman, 2003). Because a consumer’s choice of media channel for obtaining product information varies depending on the product category and the consumer’s personal characteristics (Bhatnagar and Ghose, 2004; Konuş et al., 2008), companies can take advantage of these factors to develop an appropriate media mix. However, there is little known about the specific factors that influence consumers’ choices of media channels for product information. Accordingly, companies develop a media mix for their product based on marketing experts’ experience and intuition, and largely fail to optimize their marketing performance.

2. How should you conduct research (what to research?)

Source: JongRoul Woo , Joongha Ahn , Jongsu Lee , Yoonmo Koo , (2015) "Media channels and consumer purchasing decisions", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 Iss: 8, pp.1510 - 1528

Recent empirical analyses related to media planning fall into two categories: analyses of cross-media channel synergy and analyses of consumers’ choices of various media. Cross-media channel synergy is crucial to understand because firms typically develop media strategies under the assumption that there are synergistic effects among media channels. For example, Naik and Raman (2003) showed that advertising strategies utilizing both TV and print media can positively affect a company’s sales. In contrast, Dijkstra et al. (2005) found that, while strategies employing multiple media types might be as effective as either TV or print advertising alone, the use of too many media channels may negatively affect consumer attention and advertising effectiveness. Naik and Peters (2009) proposed a model of online and offline advertising to detect within-media and cross-media synergies. Their analysis provided evidence of the within- and cross-media synergistic effects of offline (TV, print, and radio) and online (banners and search) media, demonstrating that these effects influence how consumers value different product brands. Voorveld’s (2011) experiment analysis indicated that combining online and radio advertising resulted in more positive affective and behavioral responses than using only one medium. Moreover, Lim et al. (2015) demonstrated synergistic effects among TV, mobile TV, and internet advertising. While these studies suggest that cross-media synergies exist, researchers have not yet provided sufficient detail to inform real-world media planning strategies.
Effectively planning a media strategy requires understanding not only the cross-media synergistic effects of various channels but also consumer media choices. There is a significant body of literature showing that these are related to consumer characteristics as well as those of the media. Using a model of consumer TV-viewing habits, Rust and Alpert (1984), Rust et al. (1992) and Shachar and Emerson (2000) showed that viewers’ preferences for program types vary depending on their demographic characteristics. Moreover, Tavakoli and Cave (1996) used discrete choice modeling to demonstrate that program content significantly affects consumers’ viewing patterns. Similarly, Wendel and Dellaert (2005) developed a model explaining consumers’ media channel choices as a function of the situation specific to the time and place of usage and the perceived benefits offered by the channels, such as being trustworthy, detailed, time saving, easy to access, personal, stimulating, and informative. This research demonstrated that both the perceived benefits and the usage situation influence consumers’ choice of the media channels they use to obtain product information. Lin et al. (2013) developed a model to predict consumers’ use of multiple media types (print, TV, radio, and internet) within a short time period. Their results suggested that consumers who relied heavily on computers for information were less likely to also use traditional forms of media. Moreover, Woo et al. (2014) econometrically analyzed the effects of the internet and smartphones on consumer media use and found that the advent of the internet has negatively influenced consumers’ use of print, radio, and TV, though the arrival of mobile internet increased their use of TV. Although these studies have facilitated identification of the media channel preferences of a given consumer, they have not clarified which media channels actually affect that consumer’s product purchase decisions.

Example of a survey:

We applied this model to data provided by Media and Consumer Research (MCR), a large-scale marketing research project conducted by the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation (KOBACO) to identify patterns in consumers’ media usage and purchasing behaviors. The survey consisted of face-to-face interviews with 6,000 respondents (aged 13-64) in 41 South Korean cities in October and November 2011. To obtain a representative sample of the entire South Korean population[1], KOBACO used purposive quota sampling to identify respondents according to geographic region, gender, age, and income. The MCR data includes consumers’ demographic information, lifestyle factors, and media usage behavior as well as purchasing behavior in various product categories. Table I provides descriptive statistics of the sample, and Figure 1 summarizes the contact ratios (i.e. the proportion of people who use a specified medium more than once a week) for ten significant media channels.

We analyzed consumers’ information search behavior for nine different product categories: milk, instant noodles, shampoo, mobile phones, TVs, cars, mobile communication services, credit card services, and life insurance. To address the specific goals of the study, we used participants’ responses to the question: “What kinds of media channels for product information influenced you to make a purchase decision?” As independent variables in our analysis, we used socio-demographic characteristics, including age, gender, education level, and household income, as well as lifestyle variables related to early-adoption, brand-loving, and impulse-buying tendencies.

Russia's largest media

http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-10-russias-largest-media-2014/
Despite the highest reach, TV stands for only 47% of advertising expenditures in Russia, however the experts predict a slight increase in 2015 based on experiences from other economic downtimes in the country.

In 2014, online advertising grew the most, TV and radio – slightly, while print lost a low of advertisers’ money.

Despite Yandex’s monthly audience surpassed Channel 1 already in 2012, all in all TV continues to be the most popular medium in Russia. According to TNS, the leading TV channels reach 99% of the Russian population. 73% of Russian people watch TV daily, and 93% – at least once a week.

Internet is one of the fastest growing media in Russia when it comes to advertising spend. The latest numbers from ACAR (Association of Communication Agencies in Russia) show that online advertising expenditures in Russia grew by 20% in H1 of 2014 comparing to the same period of the previous year, and the trend continued throughout the 3rd quarter of the year.

Print in Russia have been losing both audience and advertising budgets for several years, and 2014 was not an exception. During the entire 2014 print lost 10% of ad spend per quarter.
Radio has been the most stable medium in terms of both audience and advertising expenditures.

Based on the experiences from the previous downturns (e.g. 2008-2009), the experts expect the following trends to prevail in the Russian advertising industry for 2015:
– Press will continue declining.
– TV will strengthen its positions on the market.
– Advertising budgets will be shifted towards performance-based activities.
– Channels that are normally used to raise awareness will see decreased budgets.
In other words, the Russian market is following the trend we have seen in many of the Western countries the last years. But since the overall market is going through such a rough time  we might see even more focus toward the performance-based marketing in the coming year.

3. Paid-owned-earned

According to David Edelman and Brian Salsberg, some strategic-marketing frameworks—such as the popular “paid, owned, earned” one—are in serious need of updating. Many marketers use this framework to distinguish different ways of interacting with consumers, forms of financing, and measures of performance for each contact. Yet the paid, owned, earned framework increasingly looks too limited. How, for example, should a marketing strategist for a company react to requests from other companies to purchase advertising space on its product sites? How should a company deal with online activists when they take hold of a product or campaign to push a negative emotional response against it?



Two media types must therefore be added to the framework: “sold” and “hijacked.” These new forms of media, which demand sustained investment and attention, challenge the traditional strategies, structure, and operations of most marketing organizations. Yet marketers should view their expanding range of media options not only as a challenge but also as an opportunity worth grasping, to encourage readers to share content or even create their own.

Five forms of media

Too many companies view marketing plans as little more than an exercise in where and when to buy media placement. Yet as the number of digital interactions increases, marketers must recognize the power that lies beyond traditional paid media.

Two new forms of media—‘sold’ and ‘hijacked’—challenge the traditional strategies of most marketing organizations.

Paid, owned, earned

Paid media include traditional advertising and similar vehicles: a company pays for space or for a third party to promote its products. This market is far from dying; options for marketers are expanding exponentially with the emergence of more targeted cable TV, online-display placement, and other channels, not to mention online video and search marketing, which are attracting greater interest. The second category, owned media, consists of properties or channels owned by the company that uses them for marketing purposes (such as catalogs, Web sites, retail stores, and alert programs that e-mail notifications of special offers).

Earned media are generated when the quality or uniqueness of a company’s products and content compel consumers to promote the company at no cost to itself through external or their own “media.” Starbucks, for example, announced in July that its Facebook fan base exceeded ten million people, the highest of any US corporation. The company directly links its recent strong performance to its social-networking efforts and “crowd sourced” innovations such as “My Starbucks Idea,” a Web site where anyone can suggest ways to make the company better. Similarly, Honda Japan undertook a promotion on the social-networking site Mixi, where more than 630,000 people registered for information about the launch of its new CR-Z vehicle. The company automatically added “CR-Z” to these users’ Mixi login names (for example, “Taro CR-Z”) and gave them a chance to win a car. Nonregistered users wondered why people suddenly had login names incorporating CR-Z. Thanks to the buzz, prelaunch orders reached 4,500 units, and actual sales topped 10,000 units in the first month. 

Sold

Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers touting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initial catalyst for users’ responses. But in some cases, one marketer’s owned media become another marketer’s paid media—for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend, which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies’ marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.

Hijacked

The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them. High-profile examples involve companies ranging from Nestlé (whose Facebook page was hijacked) to Domino’s Pizza (a prank online video of two employees contaminating sandwiches appeared on YouTube).

In each case, passionate consumers tried to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. When that happens, the company’s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, mitigated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

In a related phenomenon, the evolution of new kinds of media means that consumers are engaging more often in real-time conversations, particularly on social networks and other digital platforms. Helping consumers to express themselves is a scary and significant reversal of the control marketers have traditionally tried to maintain over brands. While most marketers are already exploring tools to monitor conversations in social media, they need to develop triage and action engines to ward off people seeking to hijack their media.

One consumer electronics company, for example, has recognized that every review or rating posted about its products creates the possibility of a hijacked conversation. It now responds to all comments within 24 hours: positive feedback gets a thank you, an invitation to become a Facebook friend, and special offers; negative reviews get explanations of how to fix issues, instructions on how to navigate an interface more easily, or follow-up questions to learn more about what the consumer didn’t like. Some hotel chains, recognizing the importance of travel sites (such as the popular TripAdvisor), likewise encourage satisfied guests to post comments online, while employing staff to follow and answer negative comments. These conversations become an interactive public-research project to gather information for future improvements. In effect, the evolution of media types means that a company’s marketers are now on the front lines of its efforts to deliver outstanding goods and services.

A good article "Sample Marketing Plan With Paid, Owned, Earned and Shared Media" at pearanalytics.com :

According to research done by Forrester, during nearly two-thirds of  the buying cycle (early research phase), your prospects are using online search, talking to peers and reading what the experts have to say to form their opinion of you before they attempt to call you and generate a lead for your sales team.  Peter O’Neill refers to this as the “Customer Decision Journey” — and yes, this is primarily for you B2B folks.

4. Roles of different agencies

A media agency (or media planner) is responsible for the strategic recommendation of media activity for your campaign. Working from your brief the planning process involves analysing the audience objectives and balancing the reach, frequency and costs of media options to deliver a detailed media plan that maximises advertising exposure and impact.

Planning should demonstrate a coordinated approach to different media and illustrate the thinking behind the proposed approach. Media planners work closely with advertising agencies to ensure the client's advertising budget is well spent, as well as adhering to the overall campaign strategy.

Communications council (Australia) gives the following description:

Media Agencies are generally a separate operation to the creative service agency and a media agency has the task of ensuring that the communication message works effectively. That means, it must be seen, read or heard by the right target, at the right time, in the right environment and at the right price. With a large volume of a marketing budget allocated to media investment, efficiency in delivering a strategy that meets the needs of the campaign is vital. Maximising the return on investment is also therefore a critical role that the Media Agency plays. There are now essentially 10 core job areas within a media agency and in each case they utilise specific skills sets to deliver the task at hand. In some instances these roles are merged and this will depend on the structure of the agency and their client portfolio.The core areas include:·

• Management: Generally responsible for the management of the agency, client group team or specific function.
• Strategic Planning: Identify the target audience, what the best media channels are to reach this target to deliver marketing objectives and to identify innovative ways of communicating to the consumer.
• Implementation Planning and Buying: This function is aimed to identify how the selected media channels can best be used in order to deliver the strategy (ie, what stations, day parts, programs, titles etc)
• Buying: To negotiate and place all media activity and leverage negotiations and increase added value benefits.
• Research: Manage industry research inputs and assist agency in utilising the range of proprietary systems to assist the planning and buying functions. Administration and Finance: To manage a range of administrative and financial functions generated by the buying role.
• Digital: Specialise in the identification of the right digital platform to meet the media brief and to undertake the role of planning and buying in this specific field.
• Digital Creative: To provide the creatives services for digital media messages.
• Modelling and econometrics: Provide econometric modelling services that assist in maximising client return on their marketing investment.
• Sponsorships and Promotions: For specific client brands and message combinations develop concepts to leverage media properties and express the brand’s key thought.