The joint seminar of the Association of Canadian Advertisers and the Canadian Advertising Research Foundation held recently urged the audience to look beyond traditional advertising to the alternatives.

Speakers at the one-day event, held May 3 in Toronto, stressed the need to go beyond tv-only advertising.

Michael Drexler, president of Bozell unit BJK&E Media Group, said that while in-store is the fastest-growing alternative media, it is seldom considered by ad agencies.

‘Despite the major shifts in the marketplace, both in the changing consumer and how manufacturers are now trying to reach them, the one constant is that consumers continue to shop in-store,’ Drexler said.

However, Sunni Boot, senior vice-president, managing director of Optimedia, Foote Cone Belding’s media unit, says agencies are embracing other media.

Boot said agency media departments are using customized print, video and place-based marketing packages, the latter of which is often tied to major media, sporting or entertainment events.

Peter Case, vice-president advertising for Royal Bank, said there is a fundamental change in the way media is selected, fuelled by clients with growing customer databases.

Case said Relational Database Media Planning, the selection of media based on client customer data and demographic and lifestyle databases from other sources, is cost-effective for advertisers because they can more finely target their audience and make more selective media purchases.

Case urged media and agencies to keep pace with advertisers.

‘If the media sticks to traditional measurement formats, we’ll have two uncomplementary spectrums at work: what the media have versus what advertisers have,’ he said.

‘They won’t be the same thing.’

Case said agencies need to invest time and money in new technology that will merge and manipulate the information garnered from advertisers and media.