• by Jim Meskauskas , August 14, 2003

A week or so ago someone posted a question to a discussion list I belong to about an anomaly he noticed in some brand studies that were conducted for a client of his over the course of a year.

The company had run some advertising over a given period of time, checked brand awareness levels and saw that those levels were up.

Advertising was run over the same period of time a year later and found that when brand awareness was measured again it had gone down some.

Basically what this person wanted to know was how is it that brand awareness levels could drop from one season to the next when the exact same media vehicles, media weight, and length of flight were used.

The question got me thinking... so many advertisers run the same media plans year in and year out, using pretty much the same media over and over again. Do most major advertisers understand the benefit of cleaning their media house?

Many clients fear to make changes in their media planning because they figure if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The kind of volumes being moved by major CPG advertisers is such that it can often times take a long while before something broken works its way to the surface and reveals itself.

The rapidity with which the media landscape continues to change and the increasing fickleness of the media consumer requires that advertisers and their agencies regularly take a fresh look at the media objectives and the plans being produced to accomplish them. Complacency is a brand-killer. Remember TWA?

Audiences no longer stay put. This has been true for decades, with the advent of the remote control. No one is required to stay put any more, there are literally thousands of other places to go, and those places can be sought out and arrived at in a matter of seconds.

Subtle tidal shifts in your audience could ultimately mean a sea-change in your business' performance. It is a good idea for major advertisers to check in regularly with audiences and find out just where they are. You may think that you are reaching just as many people with a given media vehicle as you were last year, or even last fall. But audiences move, tire, get confused, and are distracted. Advertisers need to be as fickle as their audiences are.

Here are some things to look out for when refreshing a media plan and ensure that your advertising can keep up with your audience.

1. Audiences move. You can run the same amount of weight on the same media vehicles, but it might just be that your audience is spending their time somewhere else other than where they were spending it last time you tried to talk to them. Make sure to constantly update your research and refresh your vehicle list. Your audience might be today where they weren't yesterday.

2. Burn-out. If the same weight, creative, and vehicles are used, one can experience diminishing returns due to burn-out. The audience might be "tuning out" the advertising, as they have seen it so many times they are now numb to it. Make sure that you have plenty of creative options. And don't be afraid of frequency capping!

3. Clutter. Perhaps there is a competitor that is in the market and now garnering a greater share of voice than it once was. If I am the only one talking in a room at a certain volume, it is easier to hear and understand me than if I talk at the same volume in the same room with 2 or 3 other people also talking. Making competitive reporting part of your standard planning process is essential. When I was doing traditional media, competitive reporting was a given.

4. "Distracted Dispersion." This is what I like to use to describe the phenomenon of increasing media engagement opportunity with a multiplication of activity about which media covers. Looking back to the war in Iraq you will find an excellent example of this. There is MORE going on in the world and MORE places to go to find out about it. Don't be afraid to use a lot of media vehicles that are similar or the same in nature. Nobody goes to just one place to get what they want any more. It is necessary sometimes to corral them.

Yoda says to Luke in Empire Strikes Back, "Always in motion is the future." So, too, are audiences. I suggest that we do our best to remember that when confronted with relying too much on the past for our media decisions in the present.