• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, January 29, 2003

Media planners and buyers may have millions of dollars at their disposal. The decisions they make may have major implications for the fortunes of multibillion-dollar companies. But when it comes to contributing to and reinforcing a company’s long-term brand strategy, they are not sufficiently in tune with the overarching strategic goals and concepts of their clients.

That was among the findings of “Operationalizing the Brand: A Survey of Brand Management Practices Today,” a study recently released by San Francisco–based brand and communications consultancy Prophet. While the report does not specifically address the role media planners and buyers play in shaping a company’s long-term branding strategy, Prophet partner Tim Munoz says that planners and buyers are not as “tapped in” to big-picture brand strategy as they should be.

“Don’t get me wrong, they are involved [in brand-strategy development] to an extent and their input is valuable. But they are nowhere near involved enough with the big-picture ideas and concepts that the client and ad agency are trying to get across,” Munoz explains.

Most of the Prophet study is devoted to determining how big- and small-ticket companies can better “operationalize” or “institutionalize” their brands. It is critical of the current branding landscape, finding that of the 90 global corporations surveyed, only 48 (53%) have a long-term brand strategy in place. The study also concludes that there is only a “moderate” level of satisfaction with current brand strategies and that few marketing activities or functional areas (media planning and buying, human resources, customer service) are well aligned with those strategies.

Roughly half of the corporations surveyed were public companies, and 57% boasted gross revenues above $500 million in 2001. The study looked at companies in the services, products, business-to-business, non-durables, and durables industries.

Some of the study’s conclusions are relatively obvious. “Overall, there’s nothing earth-shattering, but it’s nice to have quantifiable data that backs up our experiences over the last few years,” says Landor Associates executive director of strategic services Russ Meyer. For example, it’s no big shock to learn that commitment to branding by senior management is the most important factor impacting the institutionalization of a brand throughout an organization. However, the study reveals that most companies do not provide sufficient or effective brand-related training and internal communications, which poses potential difficulties for media planners and buyers who are left out of the branding loop.

“Branding is still seen as the precinct of the marketing department,” Munoz explains. “The idea should be to make branding the job of the entire company, not just the marketing department.”

To this end, Munoz sees media planners and buyers as essential participants in any branding-strategy bull session. “Media will always be about buying the right numbers, and the efficiency of media buys is as important now as it has ever been. But good media planners and buyers have always gone way behind the numbers,” he argues. “They provide the innovative ideas for connecting with the audiences that they know better than almost anybody else. They realize that a relationship with customers has to go well beyond a specific product offering.”

Few professionals within the media and branding communities disagree. “I think everybody more or less believes that media planners should be very much involved in brand strategy at all levels,” says Nik Mainthia, executive vice president and media director at OMD in Atlanta. “It makes for better brand strategy and certainly for better media plans.” Adds Tom Birk, vice president and director of account planning at Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky, “I can see why certain parties, like accounting, don’t have to be involved in those discussions. But the media people — content distribution is what they do. I don’t know how you could not have them involved from the very beginning.”

“They can bring a brand to life in unexpected and relevant places,” says Rich Lobel, executive vice president of client management for Clear Channel Entertainment.

But as to why media planners and buyers are often excluded from strategy sessions or brought in only late in the game, there isn’t as much consensus. Jim Warner, president of interactive media consultancy Avenue A/NYC, has a snap answer: That’s the way things have always been done. “Historically, media planners and buyers were viewed as an afterthought — ‘Oh, by the way, go find our audience.’ The way people consume media is totally different now. You can create the greatest spot in the world and never have it find its target audience. That’s why media has to be involved throughout the [strategic] process.”

Others fault senior managers for limiting media buyers and planners’ access to brand-strategy sessions. While the Prophet study stresses that management must drive the institutionalization of any brand, few senior-level executives boast a marketing or branding background. “They come out of finance or manufacturing. To them, marketing people are the ones who come in with ponytails and say ‘Our competitors are spending $200 million, we should spend $200 million,’” quips Jack Leslie, chairman of Weber Shandwick Worldwide, the world’s largest public relations company. Clear Channel’s Lobel agrees: “There used to be a corporate mentality of ‘Don’t let other people interpret the brand,’ but media planners and buyers aren’t exactly outsiders.”

What Prophet’s Munoz finds particularly troubling is the lack of continuous brand training and communication at companies today, whether it’s among media types or human resources staffers or even the guys in the mailroom. Ninety-one percent of respondents said that some sort of brand education is provided at their firms, delivered mostly via vehicles such as internal newsletters. However, the study noted that only 29% of the brand training and communication is continuously reinforced. Similarly, only 12% of respondents described the training as “extremely” or “very” effective, while 33% said it was “somewhat” effective.

While communicators and brand experts agree with Munoz, they caution that continuous brand education requires a commitment much greater than most companies are able — or willing — to provide. “The keepers of a brand are the marketing people, but do they have any control whatsoever over what the sales or media people do?” asks Lee Rogan, a partner at Connecticut-based branding and design firm BRZoom. Clearly, brand training requires more than simply making sure the right people are in the right room at the right time. To reinforce branding concepts, CPB’s Birk says his firm writes little “brand manifestos” in order to keep media, creative, and everybody else on the same page. But Laura Ries, president of Atlanta-based brand gurus Ries & Ries, says such manifestos, mission statements, or positionings often do more harm than good: “People who write these things, they spend all day in meetings and shove every buzzword into the statement. By the time they’re done, it means nothing to anybody.”

So how can media planners and buyers force the issue and become more attuned to and involved with the brand-strategy process? OMD’s Mainthia suggests that planners and buyers should have their own brainstorming sessions before entering any brand-strategy meeting. Cingular vice president of advertising and marketing communications Daryl Evans adds that companies might want to use their media relationships — largely forged by planners and buyers, of course — to help drive their brand. “Speak at a Forbes or Fortune conference, or have their writers speak at your conference,” he says. “Let your media purchases become networking opportunities for you.”

Others say that something as small as a change in titles can make a difference. “When we hired our current media director, we immediately changed his title to director of creative content distribution,” says CPB’s Birk. “If you call somebody a media director, they’re going to behave like a media director. Finding creative ways to distribute content creatively is the essence of the job.” BRZoom’s Rogan proposes a similarly cosmetic shift: “Planners sometimes get banished to their rooms on the fourth floor. They have to get themselves out into the middle of things.”

In the end, Ries says, what media planners and buyers should take away from the Prophet study is the confidence to demand a greater strategic role in the branding process.

“Media planners and buyers should have some brand ownership. If they’re excluded, the company will suffer — they’ll just rely on the relationships they already have to negotiate where the advertisements end up,” she argues. “Agencies have to give them something to work with. You want them out there looking for opportunities, which aren’t easy to find. They’re more likely to find them, obviously, if everybody knows what they should be looking for.”