Planning

PLANNING FOR CHAOS
Are the new planning tools Magic or Science Fiction?

Chaos is what? Even all-knowing Wikipedia hedges the answer with a note "This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject."

DO ADS INCREASE AUDIENCE?
When We Finally Measure People Seeing Ads, Standout Creative Will Lower CPMs

With each attempt to explain how advertising works we seem to grow more confident. The ARF’s 1961 advertising model, “Towards Better Media Comparisons” sounds hesitant.

THE NUMBERS GAME
CPM and Cost-Per-Point are not the same

The recent industry proposal that spot media change from a cost-per-point to a cost-per-thousand currency measure ignores important differences -- and has competitive implications that go beyond the numbers.

HOW PPM COULD RESCUE RADIO
ROI Modeling Requires the Better Audience Measurement

I’m not one to worry about the far off future. Remembering to pick up my laundry is challenge enough. Then Steven Spielberg casually mentioned civilization’s inevitable move from a carbon to silicon base, his matter-of-fact way of saying Robots will take over the earth. At that point Data, now the new creative, will also be the creative director.

WE ARE NOT ALONE
Cosmology is as Confused as Advertising

Spielberg is right. We are not alone. Watching “Close Encounters” followed by reading the NY Times science section has convinced me that Physicists are just as mystified as Advertisers. “Dark Energy” is their “Engagement.”

THE OPEN MIND
Why neuroscience may not save advertising

Time flies and with it certainty. Or to make it personal, the older you get the less you know for sure.

FLOATING HIGH AND EMPTY
Do Our Words Say More Than We Mean?

Words have been described as the skins of ideas. But many of our most impressive words are more like balloons, floating high and empty. This column is about those empty words.

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY
Competitive Clutter is a Fact of Life. Why Not Try to Use It?

Years ago I proudly showed my analysis of the cost of clutter to Oscar Lubow, then president of the Carl Ally agency and a great advertising mind. Oscar read the title, put down the paper and said “Butt out. You’re a media person and clutter is a creative problem. Great commercials cut through clutter. Period.” I thought about it and had to admit Oscar was right.

THE CPM BELOW
User Targeting Can Discover TV Program Value

Reach, Frequency, CPM are the common measures of TV planning. Of the three, CPM is the most widely watched because it has the short-hand advantage of bundling cost and value into a single number. But our focus on CPM has a price. Few planners believe the lowest CPM buy is best even when there is no sacrifice in Reach or Frequency. And yet few planners are able to fully justify paying more money for the same number of exposures.

THE SONG OF THE SIREN
It’s Wise to Consider What’s Seaworthy Before We Abandon Ship

Their song was irresistible. It promised success, ripe wisdom and a new life to any man who came to them. And so the Sirens of Greek legend lured sailors off course to their destruction on the rocks. Like the Argonauts we are pulled by the promise of the new and the unknown, but it’s wise to consider what is still seaworthy before we abandon ship. Certainly Television isn’t going away. Most ad dollars are spent on traditional media; so much of our effort should still go to making them work better.

THE BUREAU OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
Can you trust the label on a CPM?

On July 1, 1967, Congress enacted The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. It reads: “Packages and their labels should enable consumers to obtain accurate information as to the quantity of the contents and should facilitate value comparisons.” If Congress ever looked at CPM they’d appoint a Special Prosecutor.

SAUCE FOR THE OUTDOOR GOOSE
Sure, Outdoor Needs Smaller Numbers. But TV, Print and Radio Need Them, Too.

The new Advertiser interest in Outdoor has an interesting double-edge. Doesn’t our plan to use “visibility” adjustments (VAI) to discount Outdoor’s numbers call into question many of the other media numbers we use? It certainly seems to.

TALKING PAPER
The Scientific Principles of Media Planning are Few, but Awesome.

No, “talking Paper” is not some new media device developed at MIT. It’s a short-text brief, like those prepared for the President to keep him out of trouble in Burundi.

This is a Talking Paper on the Scientific Principles of Media Planning. It’s a brief because there aren’t many.

I LOVE A MEDIA MYSTERY
What does Integrated Channel Planning Mean? And Why Should We Do It?

A Mystery is more than something we can't explain. It's something we don't know how to think about. Media planning is a Mystery. If you doubt that, check out it's latest manifestation as Integrated Communication Channel Planning.If it's about "media mix" it makes sense. But I'm not sure what it means.

THE PARADOX OF PRODUCT PLACEMENT
If You Notice, It’s Bad. But If You Don’t, It’s Worthless.

Popeye was briefly in the news again as a new cartoon food brand for this Age of Muscle. What’s Popeye got to do with wimpy old TV, you may well ask? It’s the old spinach problem. Viewers are eating up the fun stuff and leaving the commercials. And they’re using low-tech remotes, not TIVO.

THE BABEL PROBLEM
Will Creating a Common Language Improve Media-mix Planning?

The children of Noe traveled far along the Tigris River into the land of Sennar. There they settled at a place they called Babylon and said, “Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven so that others will celebrate us.” But this offended God who confounded their tongue so they could not understand one another, and the tower was left unfinished.

That’s where media is today. A Tower of Babel. Progress confounded by a hundred tongues. TV speaks ratings, Print talks readership, Internet hawks page views, Outdoor sings showings.

THE ACCOUNT PLANNING AGENCY
Important enough to have its name on the door

The late Stanley Pollitt, a brilliant advertising man at Boase Massimi Pollitt in the UK, is said to have invented strategic planning. More accurately he invented the strategic planner, since agencies could make fair claim to the strategy thing before Stanley.

MEDIA-MIX NEEDS TO THINK SMALLER
There are only three national media in the US today.

Big media agencies like big media ideas. Data fusion, optimization, media-mix. But big media agencies hate small media. Too many pieces, too many touch points, too many posts. Big media are more cost

MEDIA PLANNING AS A CONSPIRACY
It’s difficult to explain why we spend as we do.

How do we select media? That is a $60 billion question we can’t answer simply without sounding foolish or evasive. The media planning process isn’t easy to explain.

TEACHING TAP TO THE ELEPHANT
Media Planners Have Fewer Options Than They Think.

Media theorists are naive. Like Captain Picard, we assume if we can think it we can make it so. We are choreographers, who do not understand the limits imposed by nature. Why else would we try to teach the elephant to tap dance?

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
Media Planning Meets Menu Planning in the Search for the Perfect Campaign.

We are just beginning to understand the Natural Laws of advertising. Don’t panic. They could have been written by Weight-Watchers.

MADE-UP METRICS
Expert Systems Give Prejudice And Wishful Thinking the Respectability of Numbers.

It’s getting complicated out there. Growing inconsistencies in Government statistics have led the watchful Economist to swallow hard and caution, "We must learn to live with a less measurable world."

MEDIA-MIX
The New Media Planning is About Picking Combinations of Media.

The brain takes comfort in simple sorting –- I like apples better than oranges. It is less relaxed with conditional complexity –- But, if I’ve already eaten an apple, then I’d like an orange. Media planning

AS VIAGRA IS TO SEX.
Will Strategic Planning Bring Agencies Back into Marketing?

They go by many names and dwell in many castles. Strategic planner, brand planner, campaign planner. They are to agency new business as Viagra is to sex, although exactly what they do is not as certain.

A MEMO FROM THE MOUNTAIN
P&G and Unilever Agree. There’s Less TV in Their Futures.

Three seemingly unrelated events. A rumor that swirled around the ANA conference hotel. The last :30 in the Super Bowl had just sold for $3 million to a dot.com — roughly double the going rate. ABC’s

THE SOUND OF MISCHIEF
When Buyers Complain About Clutter, They Mean the Other Guy’s Commercial.

The hills are alive with the cry of "clutter!" The Myers report, quoting SFM Media, shows the big four networks have increased their prime time commercial load by 3% over last year. A week earlier

THE FOG OF BATTLE.
A General Inquiry into the Value of Targeting in TV.

Advertising loves the conceit of combat. Campaigns, impact, flighting, bursts, targets. While this is scarcely an original thought, (Al Ries on Posi-tioning likens himself to Klausowitz on War), it is apt, since this broadside aims at targeting itself.

THE GREAT WALL OF MEDIA
In Planning, There is Television and Then There is Nothing.

Media directors will tell you media selection is a rational process where all media compete for dollars based upon objective criteria like cost, audience and quality of exposure.

THE PATRON SAINT OF MEDIA
The Medium serves the Message and the Message is God.

Advertising has a patron saint, St. Bernardino the talker. If media had a patron saint it would be St. Christopher the schlepper.

THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE
Media Planning Doesn’t Seem to Have Any.

The media department has a shameful secret. We don't really know how advertising communication works, but we seem so buttoned-up, our colleagues are convinced we do and constantly ask our guidance.

CAUTION: DANGEROUS CURVES
Formula Reach and Frequency is a Rough Approximation.

There's nothing as dumb as belonging to a cult. Subordinating your God-given intelligence to some shop-worn absolute. Unless you're a media wonk and the cult is "reach and frequency." But, how good are our R&F estimates and how did R&F's come to take over the media business?

GUERILLA MEDIA
Media Strategy Is Not Solitaire. It Is A Battle-Plan For The Life Of A Brand.

Media strategy is not solitaire. It is a battle-plan for the life of our brand. General Cornwallis blew the battle of Yorktown, because he was a "by-the-rules" soldier and a gentleman. His idea of war