Here's one for you: Why, when clients and agency people work on creative campaigns, does the word "strategy" mean one thing, while in the practice of media the same term seems to mean something else
entirely -- something smaller, duller, and, quite frankly, not at all inspired?
Think about creative campaigns you've seen being born (presuming you're fortunate enough to have had this
experience) and see if this doesn't sound familiar: Small armies of account planners swarm the initial campaign development process, hell-bent to identify precisely the right strategy on which to base
the creative work. They dig into consumer data, conduct focus groups and brainstorms, and otherwise exhaust all the strategic possibilities, stopping only when they are satisfied that they've isolated
the one "key idea" that will inspire work that so captivates and motivates consumers that they run to stores and buy the client's product in droves. Once they've found this elusive strategy, they work
equally hard to sell it to the client. All the while, nary a creative person starts working on the campaign.
Why is all this time and care invested before a single copywriter picks up a
pencil? Because it is accepted, some would even say proven, that great creative ideas require clear, compelling, spot-on strategy.
Now contrast this with the all-too-typical media
planning process: Media planners get a budget, figure out how much weight they can afford (using last year's media mix "just for now"), scratch out a flowchart (with a few tweaks so it's not too
obvious that it's last year's plan), and finally, while putting together the deck for the client, remember that they need strategies and scratch out something scintillating like "utilize relevant
environments" or "optimize target delivery." In other words, they reduce media strategies to painfully obvious, sometimes even meaningless, statements. Then they take the whole plan -- so-called
strategies as well as tactical ideas -- to the client all at once. No one waits to begin plan development until the strategic approach is sold in. There's too little time, and if we're really being
honest, there's far too little respect for the power of a single idea behind media plans.
Okay, I admit I'm being harsh to make my point. Certainly not all media people are planning in
such a flat-footed way today. And the advent of connection (or contact, or context) planning has allowed some media teams, Fallon's included, to glean the same powerful consumer insight in media as
has been applied to creative for so long. But even in this time of enhanced insight and creativity in media, it's astonishing how few media plans are rooted in one clear, galvanizing key idea.
Allow me to illustrate. Let's say we were working on a plan, the target for which is men. Some might say that focusing on sports environments is a good strategy. But which sports exactly? Which
environments are perfect versus just okay? Shift to a tighter strategy rooted in something you know about the target or the brand being advertised -- for example, "connect with avid college sports
fans when they're watching their favorite teams play" -- and suddenly what you need to do is clear. And you're not limited to traditional media, either. Under this strategy, what's to stop us from
recommending stadium seats as the perfect media venue? Or satellite TV "season pass" sponsorships? Or parties hosted in people's homes?
In another example, Fallon developed work last
year for the Islands of the Bahamas around the strategy of "escape." Not only did this take us to travel magazines, which might be somewhat expected for a tourism campaign, but it also led us to
station domination efforts in New York subway stations (can you think of a place where you feel more like escaping?). Under a more mundane media strategy (such as "utilize travel media to engage
people while dreaming about destinations"), we'd have ended up with a much less interesting, and less engaging and effective, media plan.
You get the idea: Media people need to work
harder to get to genuine key ideas behind our plans, and we need to resist pressure to jump into planning without them. It's one situation where we'll benefit from stealing a page from our creative
brethren's playbook.
Lisa Seward is the media director at Fallon, Minneapolis. (lisa.seward@fallon.com)