Media Planning

What is Media Planning?

Media Planning is a very important component of the Marketing Strategy of an organization.

Media Planning is defined as "Process of designing a scheduling plan that shows how advertising
time and space in selected media and vehicles contribute to the achievement of marketing
objectives in an advertising campaign".

Media planning, in general terms, is a tool that allows the advertiser to select the most
appropriate media to communicate the message in sufficient frequency towards the maximum
number of potential customers at the lowest cost.

The two most basic words in Media Planning are:

* Medium: A medium is a carrier and deliverer of Advertisements. It is a broad general category

of carries such as Newspapers, Television, Radio, Internet, Outdoor, Direct Mail, etc.

* Vehicle: It is a specific carrier within a Media category. So a Zee TV would be the vehicle in
the category of TV. Many a time a specific programs or sections within a medium may be termed
as a vehicle. For example, a "Kyunki saas bhi…" on Star Plus would be the vehicle in the
Television category.

Types of Media used in Advertising

The types of media used in Advertising can be broadly classified into:

Traditional or Mass Media: TV, Radio. Idea to reach large audience.

Niche Media: Cable TV, Direct mail, etc. Reach the target audience with specific demographics,
narrowly defined target audience.

Non-Conventional Media: Internet.

Media Planning Procedure

As mentioned earlier, Media planning is a component of the Marketing strategy of the
organization. Therefore, marketing considerations must precede Media Planning. Media planning
on the whole answers a lot of questions like "How many prospects do I need to Reach?". "In
which medium should I place the Ads?", etc.

In the media strategy the target audience must be defined more clearly and thoroughly.

1. Target audience and advertisement must fit each other.

a. Kind of argumentation, esthetics, used language etc.

b. Appropriate prominent endorsers (e.g., Shah Rukh Khan for Pepsi)

2. Advertising might communicate to different target audiences with different objectives, e.g.,
Increase product sales in group 14-29, Increase brand awareness and image in group 30+

3. Reaching target audiences by mass media advertising means: matching...

a. Target audience of advertisement and

B. (Factual) audience of vehicle

To increase the value derived by the advertiser, the intersection 'B' should be increased by
identifying the target audience of the brand and the audience reached by the brand.
Some Essential Terms in Media Planning

The main objectives of Advertising are: Inform, Persuade and Remind. Media Planning is the
subset of the Advertising Strategy, which in turn is the subset of the overall Marketing Strategy.
In the field of Media Planning one encounters the following terms quite often:

o Reach : The proportion of the audience should be reached with the advertising message during
a specified period. It is the number of different recipients exposed to at least one advertisement
during the specified period of a campaign (usually four weeks)

o Frequency: How frequently are the recipients being exposed to message? In other words it is
the average number of times an advertisement reaches each recipient in a given period.

o Weight: The amount of total advertising is needed to accomplish advertising objectives.

o Continuity: The amount of advertising budget being allocated over the period. There are basic
types of ways in which the advertising budget is allocated: Continuous Scheduling, Pulsing and
Flighting.

Use of Traditional Media in the Online space

First there were hyperlinks. Next there were buttons. Then we had tiles. Following that there
were banners. Now we have pay-per-click search. These have served as the tools used in
advertising in the online space.

Over the years, a lot of other ad formats have come online. We've got large display ads that take
prominent positions on a web page or are served in the transition of clicking from one page to
another. There is streaming audio that is served either as part of a banner; or it is served either
before or after an audio contents stream. And there is video.

As the demand for these formats grows by the day, it is quite interesting to note that these
formats have originated in the traditional offline format. The online arena now offers advertisers
to use in one medium many of the tools and strategies used in the traditional arena.

The web has more or less become an environment of convergence. Broadband has brought to
online the ability to generate and serve an increasingly complex array of advertising formats.

Lets us study a few traditional media and see how they now play an important role in the online
arena.

Television/Video

Streaming video content is now a given online. Though there are still the occasional buffering
issues, most online video content now serves as smooth as an early Spring run-off.

Many players in the television industry are now offering their content online in the video format
and charging the users for the same. Mainly the news channels like NDTV, Aaj Tak, etc use this
platform to deliver the content and it is a very sound business model for them. At the same time
some select portion of a particular event or program is available online free. For example, select
clippings of 'Performances' in the Filmfare Awards were available free on their website.

Video is going to become the preeminent online ad format in the months and years to come. But
questions about how it is to be evaluated alongside the rest of the online media communications
package remains to be determined definitively.

Print

Large display ads and banners have existed in the online space for quite some time now. And
now with more data transfer ability these can be put to better use than just as an online banner or
display. They have to be treated differently. Not all online ad vehicles can be treated like print.

A lot of prints content in the online format have a shelf life more than the traditional medium.
With more and more people using the search engines, the data that may be old yet relevant to the
user could be ideal for advertisements. Therefore, an article on, say "Different types of
meditation techniques" would have a longer life, so would the advertisement on that web page.

However, for a property that behaves a lot like print (e.g financial news and newspaper sites, et
cetera), online inventory should be sold much like print inventory: a fixed position that exists on
a page for the life of the issue.

Radio

Streaming audio content is now online. Though there are still the occasional buffering issues,
most online audio content are now easy to access. There are a lot of people who now stream
audio content on a regular basis. According to one of the leading research agencies in US, there
are over 34 million people who have listened to the radio online or have streamed audio content
in the course of a month; nearly 12 million of them do so every day.

However in India the popularity of Radio on the Internet is relatively low. However, a large
scope does exists in the field on online Radio and audio formats.

What keeps the Advertisers away from the online world?

During the dot com boom, online media planners were convinced that the online medium had
earned its place at the brand marketing table, alongside other media. Post-dot com bust, media
planners came to realize that purchase habits of the consumers did not change so did the well-
established business models overnight.

Just as abruptly as it started, the dot com land grab ended in late 2000. Most brand marketers fled
from the online media space upon realizing that web surfers weren't so overwhelmed with glee
upon the sight of one of their ad banners that they would stop whatever they were doing, click,
and buy their product immediately.

The pendulum swung the other way - big time. Many online media execs went back to traditional
planning. Agencies rolled back their online media capabilities until they were almost
nonexistent.

However, online media has the ability to brand and that the changing media landscape would in
the future force most brand marketers to reconsider online media as a viable channel.

Media Planner is a job title in an advertising agency or media planning and buying agency,
responsible for selecting media for advertisement placement on behalf of their clients. The main
aim of a Media Planner is to assist their client in achieving business objectives through their
advertising budgets by recommending the best possible use of various media platforms available
to advertisers. Their roles may include analyzing target audiences, keeping abreast of media
developments, reading market trends and understanding motivations of consumers (often
including psychology and neuroscience).
Traditionally, the role of the media planner was quite close to that of the Media Buyer, the
obvious distinction being that the planner would devise a plan for advertising and the buyer
would negotiate with the Media proprietor on things such as rates, copy deadlines, placement,
merchandising, etc. The role of the modern media planner is more wide reaching however.
Today many agencies are actually eschewing the job title of 'media planner' in favour of titles
such as communications planner, brand planner or strategist. This reflects the shift away from
'traditional' media planning to a more holistic approach, with the planner now having to consider
(as well as standard above-the-line channels such as TV, print, radio and outdoor) PR, below-
the-line channels, in-store, digital media, product placement and other emerging communications
channels all for the purpose of ensuring the client's advertising budget is well spent as well as
adhering to the overall marketing strategy devised by marketing consultants or the client
themselves. Their expanded job scope has thus made greater demands of their time, placing them
in immensely pressured situations matched by the states faced by their creative (copywriters and
art directors) counterparts.

Though many media planners are housed within ad firms, Initiative Worldwide, Carat, Zenith
Optimedia, Starcom, Mindshare and OMD are examples of stand-alone global media planning
agencies for general consumer brands. As media opportunities grow increasingly fragmented,
greater degrees of specificity and specialization have become expected by advertisers.
Specialization within individual vertical industries has become the norm. For example,
Communications Media Inc. is known for media planning for the pharmaceutical industry, and
would therefore be versed in the complex legality of advertising within that industry. Criterion
Global is an international media buyer specializing in media for real-property and resort
developments, which customizes media strategy to suit the sell-out objectives of real estate
projects, and broad geographic focus of the travel sector, with an eye toward return-on-
investment metrics. Strategic Media, in Washington DC, US specializes in political campaign
media buying, which requires special expertise due to legal restrictions on political advertising
expenditure and other campaign finance cash-flow regulations.

Additionally, specialization within media type has made the media planning landscape further
complex. For example, digital media planners are now heavily recruited by media firms. Future
areas of digital specialization with high expected growth rates include: behavioral planning
specialists, ad network marketing specialists, social media specialists, and SEO/SEM/PPC
experts. The extreme growth of the digital sector has justified the advent of online-only media
planning firms, most notably Avenue A/Razorfish and Centro, the latter having managed digital
media buying for Barack Obama's successful 2008 Presidential bid in the US.

Nike: Media Swoosh

09 April 2008
For two decades, Nike has been one of the marketing industry’s great innovators – displaying
creativity and insight that would perhaps merit the word genius if the company composed
symphonies instead of simply selling sportswear.
Through high-profile endorsement deals with the likes of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and the
Brazilian football team, Nike’s iconic imagery has encapsulated the passion, humour and
emotion that underpins the relationship between fans, stars and sport.
By these high standards, 2006 has been a tough year. Not because of any failing on Nike’s part –
but because of a sustained fightback on the part of rival Adidas.
A rejuvenated Adidas used its official association with the 2006 World Cup to try and shut Nike
out – outspending its rival by a factor of two to one. More dramatically and more controversially
Adidas acquired Reebok and signed an 11-year pact with NBA basketball, the sport that played a
large part in making Nike the company it is today. Adidas already had Major League Soccer
signed up.
Challenges such as this force Nike to be quick-witted. In the case of Germany 2006, for example,
Adidas not only controlled billboards outside German stadia but also had exclusive rights to
games broadcast by US networks ABC and ESPN.
Nike responded with typical flamboyance, making man of the moment Ronaldinho the headline
act in a viral campaign. A seemingly amateur video showed the Brazilian star wearing Nike
boots and repeatedly shooting volleys from outside the penalty box onto the crossbar – attracting
12-15 million visitors before the event had started.
More ambitiously, Nike joined forces with Google to launch Joga, a social network site for fans
and players. Available in 140 countries and 14 languages, Joga members could create websites
and send e-mail, photos and video clips, as well as access content related to Nike players.
Work of this kind did not replace TV ads but it flagged up the fact that Nike is looking beyond
the medium. An example recently broke in the US – where basketball star LeBron James is
fronting a campaign to promote the latest incarnation of the Nike Air Zoom LeBron sneaker.

MULTIPLE MESSAGES

TV and print still feature – notably the Nike sponsorship of sports channel ESPN’s flagship news
show Sports Center, the first time the long running show has ever been sponsored by a single
advertiser.
But it is the digital and nontraditional executions that really catch the eye. They include 400,000
copies of DVDs about the making of the shoe and the ad campaign; saturation advertising on
sites such as espn.com and mtv.com; a temporary retail store in Manhattan; video vignettes on
MTV2 cable and a huge neon billboard in central New York.

Nike director for US advertising Adam Roth has explained that the company increasingly uses
TV as a catalyst. “Our marketing model is evolving quickly. It’s fair to say we’ve gone deeper
into pushing content into just happen via the web. A strong element of the work is big and small
events. During the World Cup, for example, we held three on three football tournaments with the
emphasis on skill and beautiful play rather than the team ethic and discipline.”
SPAIN SERVES UP NADAL

Such engagement requires detailed local understanding. So while W+K delivers a central above-
the-line execution and sets out a consistent media blueprint, it is down to agencies in each
territory to bring the strategy to life. “The centralised approach is important from a consistency
and financial efficiency point of view,” he explains, “but a contextual framework is needed for
the campaign.”
This point is underlined by the way different sports are selected in different territories. In 2005,
Media Planning Group used tennis star Rafael Nadal to front an innovative outdoor campaign in
Spain promoting Nike Pro clothing via a giant billboard with a Bluetooth transmission that
offered passers-by exclusive content. In France, rugby star Frederik Michelak was used to front
the launch of Nike’s Made to Move range in the run-up to Rugby World Cup 2003.
Even if Nike’s strategy is not built around stars, campaigns like this underline the importance of
talent. Although it didn’t have official sponsorship status at ermany 2006, for example, Nike
chief marketing officer Trevor Edwards is happy to dismiss such concerns: “The swoosh will be
where it matters most – on the pitch,” he said.
And he doesn’t just mean Brazil (locked in until 2018). At Germany 2006, Nike had eight team
sponsorships and will also have a strong presence in Beijing in 2008. Nike has signed up 21 of
China’s 28 Olympic squads, including tennis, athletics and basketball. Such deals enable the
brand to build local PR and promotions. In recent years, for example, Luis Figo has been an
immense asset in Portugal – where MPG has worked hard to leverage his iconic status. At Euro
2004, he appeared as part of a huge illuminated building wrap in Lisbon, which changed copy
depending on how the home team performed.
High impact and physical scale are recurrent themes. During the 2006 World Cp, Nike had 70-
foot high Mexican team shirts in Los Angeles. In Canada, some of the biggest-ever outdoor
constructions have seen Nike use images of ice hockey stars hanging from cranes and floating
around harbour fronts (courtesy of Cossette Communications).

FAST REACTION TIMES

But as well as doing big well, Nike has also been speedy. Implementational speed backed by
shrewd preparation is a recurrent theme. In the UK, for example, pre-planning meant that within
an hour of England winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup, billboards started going up in 500
rugby hotspots. Later that day a laser projection “The Empire Strikes Back” appeared on
landmarks in London and Nike ads were placed alongside coverage in the national press.
Similarly in China, Nike reacted quickly when hurdler Liu Xiang won gold at Athens 2004.
Using typically feisty language, Nike ran a TV ad showing Liu winning his race – superimposed
with provocative questions such as “Asians lack the will to win?” A rapid response repeated
when Liu broke the world record in 2006.
Irreverence is part of the DNA of the Nike brand. It rarely apologises for its in-your-face attitude
– though one time it did backtrack was in China 2004 when a campaign featuring LeBron James
was branded sacrilegious by the government for its use of traditional religious imagery. With so
much at stake in this fast-emerging market, Nike recognised the commercial common sense in
saying sorry.
Such slip-ups are few and far between, however, and the marketing is reaping financial reward.
Nike now generates some $13.7bn in annual sales. Since it entered the football market in 1994,
sales in that sector have gone from $40m to $1.5bn. In China, Nike has 10% of a $3bn market.
But it’s not stars or TV ads that give Nike a competitive edge. It’s the company’s uncanny knack
of fusing sport with social trends. The New York billboard that allowed mobile users to design
their own Nike sneaker is a good example – as is Nike+, the trainer that interfaces with the iPod
Nano to download running data.

Nike sees opportunities in expanding beyond performance products into sport culture products –
and it is here that its media guile will be a key.

Nike just did it winning Best Newspaper Ad of 2006

Wieden + Kennedy's ad featuring Wayne Rooney for Nike scores £25,000 grand prize as
the overall 'Winner of Winners' of best newspaper ad of 2006.

Chris Groom, Stuart Harkness and Guy Featherstone, of Wieden + Kennedy, are the proud
winners of the Newspaper Marketing Agency’s (NMA) £25,000 ‘Winner of Winners’ award for
the best national newspaper advertisement of 2006.

The creative team, nominated for their iconic ‘St Wayne’ ad for Nike, collected the award at the
sparkling Awards for National Newspaper Advertising (ANNAs) ceremony held at the Mall
Galleries on January 31st and hosted by comedienne Jo Brand.
Originally accredited in June 2006, the ad was heralded as a visually striking piece of artwork
that captured the spirit of the World Cup and Wayne Rooney’s triumphant return to the England
squad.

The voting panel, consisting of twelve of London’s creative directors, obviously agreed with
Dave Dye who singled out the ad in June and commented: “It reminds me of one of those great,
jingoistic Sun front covers like ‘Achtung!’ or ‘Turnip Head’, the kind of images that seep into
our culture.”

The panel also selected two ads to claim £5000 apiece for demonstrating the best use of creative
craft skills in two categories – copywriting and art direction.

The copywriting category was won by Zac Ellis, Rich Littler, Kim Hutcheson and Joe Fitzgerald
of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R. Their ‘Gone with the Wind’ ad for Virgin trains was
commended for its wry re-working of the classic Clark Gable line ‘frankly my dear, I don’t give
a damn’.

The art direction award was picked up by Kevin Stark and Nick Kidney at Bartle Bogle Hegarty
for their ‘At the Bar’ execution for Murphy’s Irish Stout.

In addition to the ‘Winner of Winners’ and craft skills awards, this year’s ANNAs’ saw the
introduction of a new award with a £10,000 prize. The Creative Media Partnership Award
recognised the combination of great creative with inspirational media planning and buying.

The award has two winning categories, best creative team and best media team.

The Creative Media Partnership Award was given to Chris Groom, Stuart Harkness and Guy
Featherstone at Wieden + Kennedy who were again selected for their ‘St Wayne’ ad. Dan
Boosey at Mindshare Media UK was credited for his inspirational media planning and buying.

The runners up for the new award were Colin Jones and Niall Fleming at Brave for their ad on
behalf of Green and Black’s and Ceri Davis and Victoria Lemm, media team at Matters Media,
for the same campaign.

The ANNAs were launched in 2004 to shine a spotlight on the very best in national newspaper
advertising. The ANNAs are unique among awards schemes as there are no entry fees or forms
to fill out.

Commenting on this year’s awards, Maureen Duffy, NMA Chief Executive said: “This is the
second year of the ANNAs and once again, I am impressed and encouraged by the strength of the
winning ads. I am also delighted that this year, we have introduced the Creative Media
Partnership Award which recognises the contribution a strong creative idea and clever media
planning and buying can bring to an ad’s impact.”

Media Planner is a job title in an advertising agency or media planning and buying agency[1],
responsible for selecting media for advertisement placement on behalf of their clients. The main
aim of a Media Planner is to assist their client in achieving business objectives through their
advertising budgets by recommending the best possible use of various media platforms available
to advertisers[2]. Their roles may include analyzing target audiences, keeping abreast of media
developments, reading market trends and understanding motivations of consumers (often
including psychology and neuroscience).

Traditionally, the role of the media planner was quite close to that of the Media Buyer, the
obvious distinction being that the planner would devise a plan for advertising and the buyer
would negotiate with the Media proprietor on things such as rates, copy deadlines, placement,
merchandising, etc. The role of the modern media planner is more wide reaching however.
Today many agencies are actually eschewing the job title of 'media planner' in favour of titles
such as communications planner, brand planner or strategist. This reflects the shift away from
'traditional' media planning to a more holistic approach, with the planner now having to consider
(as well as standard above-the-line channels such as TV, print, radio and outdoor) PR, below-
the-line channels, in-store, digital media, product placement and other emerging communications
channels all for the purpose of ensuring the client's advertising budget is well spent as well as
adhering to the overall marketing strategy devised by marketing consultants or the client
themselves. Their expanded job scope has thus made greater demands of their time, placing them
in immensely pressured situations matched by the states faced by their creative (copywriters and
art directors) counterparts.

Though many media planners are housed within ad firms, Initiative Worldwide, Carat,
ZenithOptimedia, Starcom, Mindshare and OMD are examples of stand-alone global media
planning agencies for general consumer brands. As media opportunities grow increasingly
fragmented, greater degrees of specificity and specialization have become expected by
advertisers. Specialization within individual vertical industries has become the norm. For
example, Communications Media Inc. is known for media planning for the pharmaceutical
industry, and would therefore be versed in the complex legality of advertising within that
industry. Criterion Global is an international media buyer specializing in media for real-property
and resort developments, which customizes media strategy to suit the sell-out objectives of real
estate projects, and broad geographic focus of the travel sector, with an eye toward return-on-
investment metrics. Strategic Media, in Washington DC, US specializes in political campaign
media buying, which requires special expertise due to legal restrictions on political advertising
expenditure and other campaign finance cash-flow regulations.

Additionally, specialization within media type has made the media planning landscape further
complex. For example, digital media planners are now heavily recruited by media firms. Future
areas of digital specialization with high expected growth rates include: behavioural planning
specialists, ad network marketing specialists, social media specialists, and SEO/SEM/PPC
experts. The extreme growth of the digital sector has justified the advent of online-only media
planning firms, most notably Avenue A/Razorfish and Centro, the latter having managed digital
media buying for Barack Obama's successful 2008 Presidential bid in the US.

Nike scoops Digital Brand of the Year award

by David Tiltman 21-Nov-08, 16:09
HONG KONG - Nike has been named as the Digital Brand of the Year ahead of next

week’s Digital Media Awards.

The sportswear brand took the prize, awarded by Digital Media’s editorial team, for consistently
high-quality work across the year. The judges felt that, in a year in which many brands showed
themselves capable of producing great digital work, Nike stood out as the brand that most
consistently put digital channels at the heart of its campaigns and matched its ambition with great
execution.

Meanwhile, Guinness and OgilvyOne have scooped the award for Innovation of the Year for its
‘Passport to greatness’ mobile application for the Hong Kong Sevens - a campaign the judges
felt was a great example of the way mobile marketing will head next year.

The editorial awards are announced ahead of the ceremony, which will take place in Shanghai on
25 November. The full shortlist can be viewed at www.digitalmedia.asia/awards, and videos
featuring the winners will be posted on the site after the event.

Nike creates top EMEA planning role

Marketing, March, 2002 by Mason, Tania

Nike: recent advertising has included television spots using sports stars

Nike has promoted its associate media director, Duncan Mills, to a new role as marketing
planning director for EMEA. The appointment comes as the sportswear brand seeks to improve
integration of media planning with its overall brand strategy.

Mills will report to European marketing director Phil McAveety, and is charged with promoting
synergy between Nike's various marketing activities, including sports marketing (sponsorship of
teams and events), PR, ads and retail marketing.