• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, July 15, 2005

Del Griffith, John Candy's character in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," was a salesman. He sold shower curtain rings. After enduring a barrage of verbal jabs from Steve Martin's character Neil Page, a marketing director by trade, Del started a memorable diatribe with, "You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target."

The back of any sales rep craves pats and yet carries a target. Whether it's media or shower curtain rings, those who do the selling are emotionally exposed far more than those who buy. Having done both in the world of media, I believe the job of buying is harder than selling but not nearly as dangerous. Sellers of media are constant fodder for daily gossip exchanged inside media shops. Their messages are often deleted without being heard or read. Face time with them is generally avoided. It is high school all over again for those who lived on the outside of in.

We choose these jobs so this is not a rant on how hard it is to push space for a living. What this is however, is the public raising of a red flag in the collective relationship between buyers and sellers of media and a way to turn this flag white.

Last week, MediaLife released a study voicing the opinions of media buyers. According to the study, buyers believe only half of media reps "know what the heck they are doing" and "about one in six buyers have such a low opinion of reps they believe only 10 or 10 percent are useful." The complaints center on their time being wasted, both in the form of over contacting and proving ill prepared when conversations do take place and an overall disgust for what buyers called "overly hard selling."

This study is an embarrassing public spotlight on the deterioration of the media buyer and seller relationship. Relationships are always fifty-fifty but do not always feel that way. Therefore, the question becomes what are buyers doing to contribute to the problems surfaced in this study.

The answer has to do with the time, attention, and information sellers covet and buyers hoard. This contradiction supports the foundation of friction between these two professional adversaries. So how can this issue be resolved?

We need to look back and west to find the answer. Back to the early '90s and west to a media department located then on Battery Street in San Francisco. Led by the booming voice of its founder, Hal Riney & Partners introduced a unique way of selling cars and buying media. The media director had a contagious flare that drew sellers of media towards him. His name was David Verklin. If you wanted to have lunch with David, you just needed to call his office to get on his schedule.

What became the "Riney way" of working with sellers was on full display for those vendors looking to win the Saturn business. The first noticeable difference was how formal yet easy the access was to the media team. The Saturn media planning exercise, for those who never sold through it, would start with a generous portion of invites to potential media partners to hear the Saturn account director present the communication goals of the campaign. You would sit quietly, amongst your competition, and write quickly in the hopes of uncovering the creative key for driving away with this piece of business.

Afterwards, you called a specific assistant planner to schedule your presentation. When your day came, the Saturn media team would sit in to watch and listen to how your property could help achieve the goals of their campaign. Any concerns about your property in regards to its vitality and audience delivery were then shared and addressed.

Once the planning exercise was completed, and the client signed off on the plan, a media buyer from Riney would call you to inform you of your status. The call either confirmed rates and promised positions, or shared a specific reason as to why you did not make the plan. Either way it turned out, the seller got their day in court and overselling stopped overnight.

Buyers need to own their 50 percent of the problems highlighted in the MediaLife study and understand you get back what you put out. The "Riney way" takes much more time and preparation to execute, but even an adaptation fueled by the same general concepts will go a long way to solving these problems as opposed to contributing to them.