I mean help a really small business. Turnover of well under half a million per year.
Why not? After all, to be reading this, you're most likely an experienced media professional.
I ask because of a recent conversation with the head of an outdoor adventure sports school (those who know me hear far too much about the sport to bang on about it here too...) Prospective students occasionally offer benefits in kind in return for lessons - maybe they can service the school van, or revamp the business website.
A media planner had offered to do some work in return for lessons and he'd turned them down. No surprises there, I'd have turned them down too. But what could we agency staff offer small businesses? I'm a media analyst in a big agency, and wouldn't expect that I could really do anything to help the school either.
Some people with other professional careers could certainly help - it's not just tradesmen. Web designers, accountants, graphic designers all have something valuable to offer.
Maybe we only do big business. Big ideas. Big advertising budgets.
Which is a problem this year. A client last week was contemplating how to spend a budget 80% lower than they usually have available. 80%. We still started to approach the problem from a standpoint of 'how much of your usual media strategy can you now afford?'
A change this big should put client and agency into a whole new mindset - much more like a small business. What's the best way to spend this money? And crucially, could it make a difference and should I spend it at all?
Virtually everyone in the big agency world has had the experience of missing out on a client (or losing one) because they're felt to be just too big. Turnover below £500k is an extreme example, but until we can honestly say we could barter with a smaller company for their product, we'll always lose, because they're right. We haven't really got what they need.
Monday, 30 March 2009
Friday, 27 March 2009
What's your holiday worth?
BBH has offered its employees a deal of nine additional days holiday in return for a 3.5% pay cut in order to avoid redundancies.
Work 3.5% less time in return for 3.5% less money.
Agency Spy says take the deal and I have to agree. And I wonder why, seeing as the immediate reaction to this idea is that it's a very attractive offer, we don't make it an option in the good times too. For me, 23 days plus the option to extend unpaid up to 30 would be a very attractive perk, and potentially a reason to choose working at one agency over another.
Work 3.5% less time in return for 3.5% less money.
Agency Spy says take the deal and I have to agree. And I wonder why, seeing as the immediate reaction to this idea is that it's a very attractive offer, we don't make it an option in the good times too. For me, 23 days plus the option to extend unpaid up to 30 would be a very attractive perk, and potentially a reason to choose working at one agency over another.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Book Review: Flat Earth News (Nick Davies)
Having done a lot of work over the past six months or so analysing sales in the newspaper market, I picked up Flat Earth News on the strength of a few Amazon reviews.It's a fascinating read. Nick Davies is an award winning Guardian journalist who writes clearly and readably on the theme that 'finally, I was forced to admit that I work in a corrupted profession.'
'Flat Earth News' is Davies' term for stories that are widespread and receive such substantial news coverage that their central theme becomes established fact, despite being fundamentally untrue. Think Iraqi WMDs or the Millennium Bug being set to wreak havoc.
Davies explains the background to these - and other - examples, tracing where the stories came from and why they can spread like wildfire through the UK and global media without ever being seriously questioned.
Despite the sensationalist description that you can see on the book cover, conspiracy theories about global news agendas, run by powerful individuals, are quickly rejected in favour of a much more interesting argument about what happens when you try to create large volumes of content at high speed and low cost.
Like many books in the 'Popular Factual' category, this one falls slightly flat towards the middle (think Malcolm Gladwell) as the quantity of information required to flesh out Davies' central theme is probably a little less than that required for an acceptably large book. Although understandably using unnamed sources at times, having instilled a healthy distrust of the written word, Davies' arguments do suffer somewhat at this point.
The book finishes with a bang, using real examples from named newspapers and illustrating some truly shocking examples of journalistic practice. Davies' isn't relentlessly negative - pointing to some stunning examples of investigative journalism - but overall paints a clear picture of a product declining in quality and perhaps hints at some of the reasons for falling newspaper circulations.
Even (or especially) if you feel that you are already aware of recycled PR pieces and factually incorrect information in the UK media, try the book. Its original research certainly surprised me with the scale of these issues.
All in all, a fabulous read that will change the way in which you perceive reported news; printed, televised and web-based.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
The definition of a media channel
We've had a lot of fun with media planning for insurers over the past few weeks and it's brought up - or I should say resurrected - an interesting question... What's a media channel?
The reason it applies to insurers particularly at the moment is that insurance aggregator sites like Money Supermarket and Confused.com are growing at a frightening rate. Frightening if you're a big name insurer who relies on brand recall and affinity to sell policies rather than being the cheapest in the market. Suddenly you're in a list with everybody else that makes this tactic extremely obvious.
Insurers pay aggregators a fee for every policy they sell. That fee comes from the advertising budget and I don't think that makes sense.
Are you advertising when you place your product on an aggregator? I'd argue that what you've done is more the equivalent of an FMCG brand getting stocked in a new supermarket. One where the profit margin is lower (because of the aggregator fee.)
Would you let marketing decide, on their own, whether your product should be stocked in ASDA or not, based on the profit margin? Of course you wouldn't.
There's a very blurred line between retail and advertising. Getting stocked in ASDA could well increase brand awareness because ASDA shoppers will see your product on the shelves, but that doesn't bring it under the remit of the marketing department.
How and when to use aggregators ahould be an all-stakeholder decision, with a budget that comes from outside marketing. Which definitely doesn't mean that marketing might not get their budget reduced as a result...
Marketing's job should be to get the maximum number of policies out of a presence on the aggregator - to create trust in the brand so that when it tops the list as cheapest, conumers will click on it and buy a policy.
The reason it applies to insurers particularly at the moment is that insurance aggregator sites like Money Supermarket and Confused.com are growing at a frightening rate. Frightening if you're a big name insurer who relies on brand recall and affinity to sell policies rather than being the cheapest in the market. Suddenly you're in a list with everybody else that makes this tactic extremely obvious.
Insurers pay aggregators a fee for every policy they sell. That fee comes from the advertising budget and I don't think that makes sense.
Are you advertising when you place your product on an aggregator? I'd argue that what you've done is more the equivalent of an FMCG brand getting stocked in a new supermarket. One where the profit margin is lower (because of the aggregator fee.)
Would you let marketing decide, on their own, whether your product should be stocked in ASDA or not, based on the profit margin? Of course you wouldn't.
There's a very blurred line between retail and advertising. Getting stocked in ASDA could well increase brand awareness because ASDA shoppers will see your product on the shelves, but that doesn't bring it under the remit of the marketing department.
How and when to use aggregators ahould be an all-stakeholder decision, with a budget that comes from outside marketing. Which definitely doesn't mean that marketing might not get their budget reduced as a result...
Marketing's job should be to get the maximum number of policies out of a presence on the aggregator - to create trust in the brand so that when it tops the list as cheapest, conumers will click on it and buy a policy.
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
The importance of a theme tune
The F1 Grand Prix starts again this Sunday and it's moved back to the BBC.
Like a lot of people it seems, I used to watch the F1 pretty regularly, up to sometime when Schumacher was dominating and then began to lose interest.
This isn't about F1 as a spectacle though, it's about the BBC's theme music - a bass line that for a generation of fans is the Grand Prix. In their trailers, the beeb leave it till late to give a little hint of the tune.
From the minute the change back from ITV was announced, there were three themes of conversation among fans. Thank God James Allen's gone, no adverts and will they bring back The Chain? Apart from a well publicised mishap in San Marino (and James Allen) I thought ITV's Grand Prix coverage was actually pretty good. There's plenty of space in an hour's racing to slot in an ad break or two. The Jamiroquai theme music was totally forgettable though.
The link to the BBC theme is so strong, I'd have been tempted to lead with music as a creative idea for the trailer, rather than 'The World's Greatest Car Chase', but then I'm 31 and supose it has to appeal to viewers who didn't grow up watching Nigel Mansell and listening to Murray Walker.
Still, when people are imagining their own opening credits on youtube, you've got to be onto something. For me, this isn't the BBC's brand that fans are excited about. It's the brand that the BBC created for F1 over many years and all the associations with past champions that come with it.
If you are one of that older generation, you'll probably enjoy this.
Like a lot of people it seems, I used to watch the F1 pretty regularly, up to sometime when Schumacher was dominating and then began to lose interest.
This isn't about F1 as a spectacle though, it's about the BBC's theme music - a bass line that for a generation of fans is the Grand Prix. In their trailers, the beeb leave it till late to give a little hint of the tune.
From the minute the change back from ITV was announced, there were three themes of conversation among fans. Thank God James Allen's gone, no adverts and will they bring back The Chain? Apart from a well publicised mishap in San Marino (and James Allen) I thought ITV's Grand Prix coverage was actually pretty good. There's plenty of space in an hour's racing to slot in an ad break or two. The Jamiroquai theme music was totally forgettable though.
The link to the BBC theme is so strong, I'd have been tempted to lead with music as a creative idea for the trailer, rather than 'The World's Greatest Car Chase', but then I'm 31 and supose it has to appeal to viewers who didn't grow up watching Nigel Mansell and listening to Murray Walker.
Still, when people are imagining their own opening credits on youtube, you've got to be onto something. For me, this isn't the BBC's brand that fans are excited about. It's the brand that the BBC created for F1 over many years and all the associations with past champions that come with it.
If you are one of that older generation, you'll probably enjoy this.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
There's a datamonkey behind one of those windows
Google Street View launched in the UK today.
What's the advertising angle? I give it a month before somebody claims that posters are now more effective, because people can view them online. Please don't ask if anybody can measure the difference. Or at least don't ask me.
If you really want to, you can look up advertising agencies. Here's mine, because I don't see it enough in real life...
View Larger Map
What's the advertising angle? I give it a month before somebody claims that posters are now more effective, because people can view them online. Please don't ask if anybody can measure the difference. Or at least don't ask me.
If you really want to, you can look up advertising agencies. Here's mine, because I don't see it enough in real life...
View Larger Map
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
How to brief a marketing analyst
So you want an analyst to spend some time looking at your marketing? This is all about how you get a piece of work that will do something more than confuse you for a couple of hours (which means it must be very, very clever) and then spend the rest of its life in a filing cabinet.
If you don't brief your analysts this way, then they really should ask questions until you do. They might not though - it depends how good they are. Writing a good brief maximises the chance that your 50-100 grand will be money well spent.
Here are the rules.
1. Why do you want the work done?
If the answer is 'you've heard econometrics is amazing for media ROI' then don't even think about briefing anybody yet. You'll most likely end up with a model that perfectly explains why sales have moved about for the past three years but tells you nothing about what to do next year.
Here are a few possible starters for ten:
2. What data have you got that you know of?
This goes beyond sales and promotional plans. What segmentations have you run? Research tracking? Web metrics? Tell the analysts about all of it and let them decide what's useful. You may be surprised.
3. When is the decision deadline that this work informs?
Start from there and work backwards to get your timeline. Assume the useful interpretation of any models will not arrive until two weeks after the debrief date, when you've had the chance to digest it and ask questions.
4. How will the work inform future decisions?
Do your consultants have planning software? Optimisers? Make them demonstrate them to you. I can't stress this enough - you need to see them working. Otherwise, how do you know that you're not looking at a screenshot somebody knocked up in Excel for a piece of software that doesn't actually exist yet? Or a fancy looking piece of utter garbage?
5. Who are your project team?
You need to meet them, not just the guy who's selling the project.
6. Interim meetings.
For a twelve week project, you want:
What, specifically, is your marketing spend supposed to change? You're not sure? Shame on you. And your ad agency.
You're commissioning somebody to measure the effectiveness of your advertising. If you've been running brand building campaigns, then looking for an effect on awareness tracking could well be a better idea than looking for an effect on short-term sales. Model sales and you run the risk of 'proving' that your campaigns are unprofitable, because you're looking for effects in the wrong place.
8. What data has the agency got?
If the analysts are independent, then how are they going to work with your agencies to source data? Or are you going to have to do it?
Which leads to...
9. Who is responsible for data?
You need a project champion who will co-ordinate all the requests for (probably a lot of) data that you're going to get. Who's going to keep track of all this and chase it up at your end? It's much, much better to do it this way than have an external company mailing all sorts of people they've never talked to at your company and hoping to get a timely reply.
10. (This one is less about the brief, but is still incredibly important.)
Get everyone who will use the results involved at the start.
Any and every piece of modelling work can be picked apart. Always. Academics spend years doing it to each other in journal articles and they spend years building the models in the first place. We build models in a couple of months. That doesn't mean they're wrong, but it does mean somebody can definitely argue with the way the work was done and refuse to believe its results.
If you plan to use the results outside the marketing department then get those people in for the kick off meeting. It's much harder to argue with a piece of work that you agreed at the outset was a good idea...
That's it, a handy list to cut out and keep. Anything I've missed?
If you don't brief your analysts this way, then they really should ask questions until you do. They might not though - it depends how good they are. Writing a good brief maximises the chance that your 50-100 grand will be money well spent.
Here are the rules.
1. Why do you want the work done?
If the answer is 'you've heard econometrics is amazing for media ROI' then don't even think about briefing anybody yet. You'll most likely end up with a model that perfectly explains why sales have moved about for the past three years but tells you nothing about what to do next year.
Here are a few possible starters for ten:
- Finance are trying to take your budget away, so you're hoping to prove that marketing spend makes money.
- You don't know whether it would be better to run a TV campaign, or switch the money to Press and Radio. You need the answer.
- You want to know which of your products are most advertising responsive so that you can reallocate your spend.
- You're launching a new brand next year and want to know how best to do it. Which channels and budgets?
- Finance have asked you to make a case for how big next year's budget should be and you want to make that case in terms of how much product it will sell, or awareness it will build.
- You don't know whether to run one big burst of advertising next year, or two smaller ones.
2. What data have you got that you know of?
This goes beyond sales and promotional plans. What segmentations have you run? Research tracking? Web metrics? Tell the analysts about all of it and let them decide what's useful. You may be surprised.
3. When is the decision deadline that this work informs?
Start from there and work backwards to get your timeline. Assume the useful interpretation of any models will not arrive until two weeks after the debrief date, when you've had the chance to digest it and ask questions.
4. How will the work inform future decisions?
Do your consultants have planning software? Optimisers? Make them demonstrate them to you. I can't stress this enough - you need to see them working. Otherwise, how do you know that you're not looking at a screenshot somebody knocked up in Excel for a piece of software that doesn't actually exist yet? Or a fancy looking piece of utter garbage?
5. Who are your project team?
You need to meet them, not just the guy who's selling the project.
6. Interim meetings.
For a twelve week project, you want:
- A kick off meeting with the analysts
- A data review and progress meeting around 5-6 weeks in
- A marketing team debrief about 10 weeks in, to give you the chance to tailor the full debrief towards any new questions that have come up in the past couple of months. The models might not be quite finished for this one.
- A full debrief at the end with everybody who's interested, so that you can show off this wonderful piece of work
What, specifically, is your marketing spend supposed to change? You're not sure? Shame on you. And your ad agency.
You're commissioning somebody to measure the effectiveness of your advertising. If you've been running brand building campaigns, then looking for an effect on awareness tracking could well be a better idea than looking for an effect on short-term sales. Model sales and you run the risk of 'proving' that your campaigns are unprofitable, because you're looking for effects in the wrong place.
8. What data has the agency got?
If the analysts are independent, then how are they going to work with your agencies to source data? Or are you going to have to do it?
Which leads to...
9. Who is responsible for data?
You need a project champion who will co-ordinate all the requests for (probably a lot of) data that you're going to get. Who's going to keep track of all this and chase it up at your end? It's much, much better to do it this way than have an external company mailing all sorts of people they've never talked to at your company and hoping to get a timely reply.
10. (This one is less about the brief, but is still incredibly important.)
Get everyone who will use the results involved at the start.
Any and every piece of modelling work can be picked apart. Always. Academics spend years doing it to each other in journal articles and they spend years building the models in the first place. We build models in a couple of months. That doesn't mean they're wrong, but it does mean somebody can definitely argue with the way the work was done and refuse to believe its results.
If you plan to use the results outside the marketing department then get those people in for the kick off meeting. It's much harder to argue with a piece of work that you agreed at the outset was a good idea...
That's it, a handy list to cut out and keep. Anything I've missed?
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