Creativity, creativity, creativity. It’s the new media mantra. There’s probably not a media shop in the country that wants to be known only for sheer clout, not a buyer or a seller in the nation who wants media to be treated as a commodity.
But despite all this talk about creativity, Canada didn’t score a single Media Lion this year, and off the record, many planners acknowledge that the truly creative media plans are still the exception rather than the norm.
Some sellers too have had enough of all this talk about creativity and want to see clients and their agencies put their money where their mouth is. Sure marketers seem to like the general idea of being creative, the sellers say – but given a choice between the tried and true and risking millions on something new, many marketers still opt to play it safe.
Jeff Marchand, GM of Starcom Worldwide in Toronto, allows that there still is a lot of commodity trading going on in media, particularly in television, but it’s not just the fault of media buyers, sellers, or clients: ‘Sometimes everybody is culpable for big ideas not getting done.’
In some cases it’s the agency people who have trouble being innovative, he says, while in other cases it’s clients who are nervous about investing money or diverting resources into something unproven. Clients are under great pressure for profitability and increasing brand share and as a result, they are understandably apprehensive about being the first to try a new strategy.
In addition, Marchand says, media sellers are at the point where they don’t want to give anything away. Added value to them is no longer free, but many advertisers are still demanding it.
Innovative media use comes down to a chicken-and-egg conundrum, he says. The media industry needs to be able to prove that the non-traditional is more effective than the tried and true to get clients to try it – but there’s no proof until someone does buy into it.
‘Accountability has gone to where it is the number one, two and three issue from clients to their agencies right now. We have to make sure that we’re measuring accountability on the tried-and-true, boring 30-second spot schedule because that’s where all the money gets spent,’ states Marchand.
‘Until we know that our high-cost 30-second spot schedule is effective, it’s not very responsible to try to figure out if skywriting, chalk art and events outside of the SkyDome are going to be effective.’
Aaron LaFontaine of NBA Canada says despite the chatter about the ‘new creativity’ in media, he finds that the majority of conversations between media sellers like the NBA and media buying shops quickly evolve to the topic of cost.
‘Whether we have a story about driving business results is clearly unimportant,’ he says. ‘Whether it fits into an established guideline of cost – which tends to be unrelated to anything in the marketing plan or the sales objectives – is the sole factor. That is sad.’
LaFontaine has a unique perspective on the business. In his job as director of broadcast partnerships, he wears many hats. He is a client, a broadcaster and a media seller because NBA Canada is responsible for all national telecasts associated with the NBA and sells the vast majority of the commercial inventory. He also has experience working on the media agency side with Media Buying Services (MBS) and DMB&B.
In many cases, LaFontaine says, buyers are just feeding their clients what they want – the low cost and the safety of traditional strategies. But this lack of imagination is having the side effect of pushing more clients to work directly with media sellers, he says. The strategy and campaign development for about 98% of NBA Canada’s advertisers is now handled directly by the NBA, with execution of those plans handled by broadcast partners or the client’s agency.
Those clients, LaFontaine says, are looking to build relationships with the NBA’s fans, events and participants and to link their brands more closely with the NBA – rather than just buying commercial slots.
As a client, NBA Canada walks the talk, he says. Its own media buying is now handled in-house because the NBA’s strategy is focused more on collaboration and partnerships, rather than just buying space and time.
‘Media has become such a commodity situation with the selling point for agencies being, ‘we buy it cheaper than anyone else and the clients like it because they’re getting good cost efficiencies,” LaFontaine says. ‘You end up in this death spiral where agencies can’t prove themselves any other way than buying low cost. For clients, the sizzle of their media plan is being stripped out because they are only pushing cost efficiencies. There have to be success stories based on more than ‘we bought this cheaper than anyone else.”
The only way to move clients away from a commodity way of thinking is for media agencies to do a better job of explaining what they do, he says. Stop baffling clients with talk of GRPs, PMB, reach-frequency and all the technical aspects of media, rather take a pointer from how the creative teams work and start painting them a picture – how it’s going to work, rather than justifying it with numbers.
But Sandy Muir, VP of marketing and advertising sales at the Globe and Mail, believes the business will always be about numbers – the best value and the best CPM audience delivery for the money.
That preoccupation with figures doesn’t always have to come at the expense of creativity though. Media buyers are not only looking for the best rates and added value, he says, they are also exploring ways of leveraging the Globe and Mail or Report on Business brands and associated platforms for their clients.
‘It’s a value equation conversation with a series of attributes that end up equaling the price and quality of the audience. Media buyers have to be able to rationalize and justify the buy to their clients. In our case, they’re rationalizing around the quality and size of the audience, where it’s located, disposable income, and ability to purchase and consume what they’re advertising and selling.’
Standard Radio president and CEO Gary Slaight says that on the radio side of things, it’s a given that all conversations with media agencies are going to be driven by ratings. At Standard, agencies account for about 25% of the business and CPMs are usually the crux of the negotiations.
But Slaight says that marketers are soon going to have to give up this reliance on CPMs as a basis for media decisions. With media fragmentation and a trend that’s seeing consumers gravitate towards areas of interest in their media selection – whether with their choice of radio format, magazine or specialty TV channel – he says they have to start buying the best audience for their brands as opposed to the most audience.
‘It’s partly radio’s fault for not doing a better job in swaying the way [clients] think about the way they spend their money,’ says Slaight. ‘It’s the job of the Radio Marketing Bureau – and us – to show them the benefits of radio on an ongoing basis. Sometimes that doesn’t happen.’
For his part, Ken Johnson, SVP of the television division at CanWest Media Sales, says that not much has changed: As always, today’s media strategies really depend on where a client’s business is at the time. Different clients have different needs, with cost efficiency important for some, while others are looking for something breakthrough.
Johnson agrees with Slaight in that clients need to rethink media usage because of fragmentation, but sees it as an opportunity for advertisers rather than a death knell for traditional media.
‘The market is absolutely getting fragmented,’ says Johnson, ‘but where audiences are getting smaller, the people watching are giving television their total attention. There are a lot of small magazines and a lot of small radio stations out there doing just fine with audiences smaller than TV audiences.’
At the end of the day, Ed Weiss, VP associate media director at Echo Advertising in Toronto, can understand why marketers are still reluctant to try something different: Often non-traditional buys have very high CPMs. But they should take the chance, he says. Echo has found these campaigns can be very successful because often the audience makeup is 100% the client’s target.
For instance, when Echo put together a plan for Microsoft PC games, it included elements that couldn’t be justified through CPMs alone.
‘We did a display at the Canadian Aviation Expo in Oshawa in June for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2004. It cost a lot of money and the CPMs were awful but it didn’t matter because the audience was so perfect,’ says Weiss. ‘The client was quite pleased, and we’re doing an air show in B.C. as a followup. It’s not tonnage, not getting as many eyeballs as possible, it’s all about getting the right eyeballs.’
