Recently I happened to have a chat with a former media colleague, and was amazed at the change of expectation in the global scenario of media planning.
In Sri Lanka, back when I first started working over a decade ago, the Media departments of advertising agencies were always referred to as the ‘scheduling ‘ department, with mostly conventional usage of mediums. Advanced planning, which used to be measured through so called quantitative measurement ratings, cprp, grp were exclusively used by so called ‘big agencies’ who had access to the ‘diary’ method of SRL and LMRB. 60% reach by Rupavahini Sinhala news used to be the safest media investment which produced ‘numbers’.
Then slowly but steadily the media landscape started changing, with Private channels taking over along with the invasion of ‘Shanthi’s’ and ‘Damini’s. Measurement methods changed from the manual diary method to the automated people’s meter (with less numbers of samples though, but who cares… it gave us quality insight). As predicted by a study on another market where television meters were used for measuring, it did change the shares of the channels and reach of 60% for any campaign was no more achieved through any one program, even through a channel.
Then it took on another turn with ‘reality television’, where most of the channels jumped onto the band wagon, copied each other shamelessly and even ‘created’ controversies to gain ratings. We exploited “flash in the pan” stars to promote our brands and achieve short term goals. Long term goals of ‘brand equity’ was thrown down the drain.
Even we, as consumers of media, changed our way of interacting with the media; media interaction become more and more a two way dialogue, mostly in a global sense. Popularity of this new means of interaction was sometimes hyped up by You tube, video posts, such as ‘susan boyle’. Clever communication attempts to ‘standout’ in a cost efficient manner through viral influence proved immensely successful, such as “’blair witch project”.
But throughout everything, one thing remained constant in SL scenario, our (clients as well as advertising agencies) underestimation of the growing intelligence of our consumers – We forget that we ourselves, as media consumers, are changing the way we look at communications and so fail to understand what ‘ticks’ our fellow consumers towards our communication.
We still want the ‘lowest’ CPRP’s despite the fact that we still need ‘quality in programming’. We still ‘long’ for the biggest logo display of brands on the screen. We want RJ’s to shout out our brand messages more frequently on the morning show, and in print, still fight for the main section, right hand positions. Product placements and consumer interactions become ‘communication fashion terminologies’ – everybody wants to associate with it, but no body wants to under stand it completely.
Instead of getting out of the box, we have made our own box bigger and refuse to leave it. While the rest of the world moves towards unorthodox methods of communications, we still linger on to our safe, past proved methods to achieve our goals.
Even though IMC has become an integral part of advertising, we still compartmentalize the flow of communication to our consumers. We are rigid and conventional in our methodology of media planning. If we seriously, as brand custodians and media planners, take a look at ourselves now, what would we see? Are we holding on to the old value system of media being passive, refusing to be a part of the ‘consumer create media’ culture?
In my opinion, first steps taken towards progress should include evolving the term ‘media planning’ into ‘communication’ planning, where current ‘media’ departments should be challenged to evolve into ‘communication specialists’. The vision of this change is for the betterment of the development of the ‘seamless integration’ of a communication message, or to use a clichéd and more prostituted term, a ‘ 360 degree’ solution.
I would like to invite your comments and opinions on the above, to take this note further…
