I am often struck by the following thought: If marketing didn’t exist and we were inventing it today, it would bear little resemblance to our modern-day customs and practices. One aspect that always brings this to mind is the huge mismatch of the average marketer’s time and effort that goes into developing the creative, compared with the media plan.

Like many of the mysteries of modern marketing, the reasons for this lie in the fact that the industry remains wedded to old ways of doing business, which since the 1960s have not evolved to match the profound changes in consumer attitudes and behaviours.

Back in those halcyon days, the ratio of around 95% of one’s time devoted to developing the message versus 5% to the media plan was actually about right, if the advertising process can be considered in the context of the five Ws. (Who are we talking to? What do we want to say? Why would they believe us? When should we tell them? Where should we tell them?)

The easiest bits were Where and When, since everyone sat in front of their TVs watching the ad breaks in I Love Lucy. The Who, while important for message tonality, was actually quite irrelevant for media as, it being so cheap in those days, marketers could broadcast to the many while talking only to the few.

Therefore, all the focus was on the relatively hard bits of the advertising process – the What and the Why – which influenced how marketers spent their time. Ten minutes at the end of the presentation for media was fine when we all knew what the plan was going to look like anyway. Fast forward to today’s hyper-stressed, time-starved, me-me-me consumer

and it becomes clear that the situation has been totally reversed. By far the hardest elements of generating a return from one’s ad spend today are the Who, Where and When, because the average consumer now makes a big effort to avoid any and all advertising which is not immediately relevant to them, and them alone, at that precise moment.

So that being the case, why don’t all clients spend at least twice as long on nailing the perfect media strategy and plans as they do on the crafting of the message? A couple of reasons spring to mind: Clients can have spontaneous opinions on creative, validated by the fact that, ‘Hey, I’m a consumer too,’ whereas any client opinion on media is immediately crushed by an avalanche of factual data; and media is profoundly dull for the non-numerate. But while this may play a role, the main reason is that it’s what we did when we were keen young ABMs and we haven’t thought to question it since.

But all is not lost, because advantage can be gained by doing the complete opposite to your competitors. My advice? Book a half day to meet with the head bananas at your media agency; don’t cancel said meeting the day before; stay awake while you’re in there; and ask them what capabilities are under-utilized by their other clients.

You will be amazed at what you learn. Media agencies are bursting at the seams with intelligent, knowledgeable individuals who want nothing more than the chance to help their clients get a better return on their ad spend. You might need to spend more than 2% if you’re going to take it seriously, but since when have you been confident that at least 2% of your ad spend wasn’t being wasted?

Twenty-plus years in marketing were enough for John Bradley; he left to do other things which interest him. He writes this column to help the next generation of marketers simplify an overly complex profession. He values and responds to feedback at johnbradley@yknotsolutions.com.