• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, June 20, 2013

Two years in the making, WPP media shop MEC has unveiled a new communications planning approach called Momentum. The new initiative is designed so that individual clients can tailor it to specific marketing challenges. MEC executives say it sheds further light on the consumer pathway to purchase decisions.

According to Pele Cortizo-Burgess, global director integrated planning at MEC, CMOs have been focused on “rethinking the consumer pathway” -- one reason that MEC developed Momentum. MEC’s new platform, he said, “augments a brand’s understanding of how a consumer goes through the decision making process” to buy a product.

Momentum examined the purchase decisions of over 100,000 consumers worldwide across multiple categories and brands. Consumers tend to pass through both passive and active stages in the purchase pathway, the agency found.

Passive-stage consumers consider fewer brands and are less concerned with price when making their choice. They are happier with their decision after purchase, according to the research.

Understanding the consumer mindset in both passive and active stages of the pathway are critical to advertisers’ choices of both media and messaging approach, said Cortizo-Burgess. “There are different opportunities and roles for media and messaging to help move the consumer forward” toward a desired behavior," he added.

The Momentum approach is designed to help clients hone in on brand perception and determine which people have a bias toward their brands or their competitors and why. It also addresses in-store influences and the roles that paid, owned and earned media potentially play in different stages of the purchase pathway.

In order for clients to get maximum benefit, said Cortizo-Burgess, they have to commit to a fairly intense collaboration process with the agency to tailor the approach to their specific needs.

“There is no Momentum Lite,” he said. “It forces us to think through what the client objectives are, existing competitive sets and how a category is or isn’t changing.”

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