• by Jim Meskauskas , December 8, 2004

It's that time of year again, when senior level agency personnel and senior level publisher representatives get away from the physical hustle and bustle of their work-a-day lives to participate in the hustle and bustle of relationship building, reinforcing, and expanding.

Yup; I'm at the iMedia Buyer's Summit, a bi-annual event held for the very purposes of what I briefly described above.

Though there are lots of very interesting conversations about industry goings-on, developments, and prognostications, I wanted to just mention briefly one of the things we've discussed that I think is important for everyone - publisher, client, and agency - to think about: how to make media planning, buying, and placement easier on everyone.

The biggest issue facing all of us on all points of the marketing triangle here is time: a lack of it, or too much of it being wasted.

The time constraints on the delivery and execution of the work we do have gotten tighter and tighter with every passing planning cycle. We are all given less and less time to put together good, efficient, short turnaround media plans; publishers are given less time to put together good, effective, innovating communications packages; and when all is finally agreed to, creative needs to be delivered under a certain schedule that often times seems difficult for agencies and creative teams to meet when given the variance in formats and technical requirements.

So, upon some lively discussion between both the publisher and planning constituencies, suggestions for a solution have been advanced. I wish to share those with you now.

1) In order to deal with planning time deliverable issues, agencies need to be more stern and insistent on being honest with clients as to how much time it really takes to create and execute a plan. Because clients so often do not see all the work that goes in to producing a plan and making it happen, they are not always sympathetic to the fact that their desires don't always match planners' abilities to deliver.

Agencies need to do a better job of putting forth a realistic timetable and sticking to it. And this means all agencies. So often an agency operates in fear that someone else is always out there ready to undercut on time of delivery and cost of service. But there comes a point when good, efficient, quick turnaround plans cannot be good, efficient, and fast. There is only so fast an agency can develop a strategy, a sales executive can respond to an RFP, and the planners can process those RFPs and negotiate rates, placements, and terms. There is only so much that can be done to produce good, functioning creative and get it tested on all the media properties.

Though planning and execution schedules cannot be standardized, the market will determine realistic time frames. From some of the biggest agencies, there is a call for a four to eight week planning schedule. I guarantee, though it will take clients some time to get used to this, they will see better plans that yield much more powerful results.

2) Late creative and signed IOs are a regular issue for publishers when dealing with agencies. When creative and contracts are late, inventory is lost and placements become more difficult. Though it is hard to believe sometimes, your client and my client aren't the only ones out there in the market place. Especially these days, there are LOTS of other clients moving in the market. We cannot expect things to remain as they were when we first contacted a publisher. Space and material close dates, like we have in print, need to be instituted in order to alleviate the pain and suffering for all of us - marketers, agencies, and publishers - experience when both inventory and time are lost.

There are certainly more things that could be done to improve how the process operates, but these are two points I think it's important for all of us in the industry to begin thinking about.