Commentary

The Sell: Bottom of the Ninth

The Sell-Andrew EttingerTo many Americans, summer means baseball. I am not one of those people. Yet every year I go to the ball park. I am quite content to stuff my face with hot dogs, nachos, beer and peanuts. By the time I am done eating, it is already the fourth inning. I suffer until the seventh-inning stretch and then say my good-byes. Still, despite my misgivings about the game itself, perhaps it can provide some insight into the game of advertising.

At a conference last winter (in Cancun, of all places), a colleague explained his theory of nine-inning negotiations. The agency throws out the first pitch in the Request for Proposals. This sets the ground rules for the game. Next, the salesperson responds with a swing (usually a miss). He sends over a sales proposal, typically with a high CPM and no added value. So begins a lengthy bout of negotiations. After nine innings, CPMs are lowered and promotional value is added. Sometimes the game goes into extra innings and we have to stay at work past 5 p.m.

Unlike baseball, however, where a game cannot end in a tie, in advertising, a tie is the goal. Under optimal conditions, everyone wins; sellers get cash, buyers get inventory. To an extent, this is a simplistic argument: Everyone may get what they want but not always to the extent that they want it. The degree of winning or losing is everything.

Talk of CPMs obscures the larger, more important issues. We forget that buying ad space is simply a means to an end, like getting a runner to first base. He still has to round third and get home. Equally, securing media inventory is just a means to an end, not the end itself. Marketing neither begins nor ends with media selection. To become better partners, ad agencies need to involve themselves in the remainder of that continuum.

Advertising and baseball are both games of numbers. Instead of ERA and RBIs, we use CPM and VPH, basically any three-letter abbreviation will suffice. Those numbers tell a story. By digging deeper into those stories, we evaluate the effects our impressions have on sales. Moreover, there are numbers behind the numbers. If we peel back each layer of numbers, we can examine the underlying ROI of the media plan.

Consider the Los Angeles Dodgers. They created a seating area dedicated to pigging out. In the outfield bleachers, the cheap seats, the Dodgers created an "all you can eat" section. For the price of admission, fans can eat unlimited Dodger Dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn and soda. Beer, ice cream and candy cost extra. At first glance it seems like the Dodgers are taking a beating on this PR stunt. Dig deeper and you will see that the Dodgers are making a killing. The alcohol alone makes this profitable, and these fans still pay for parking and souvenir pennants. Lastly, this fills seats that would have gone empty otherwise (Dodger fans are notoriously lackadaisical).

This type of analysis belongs at the heart of every ad agency. It is not enough to track how many people attended a baseball game. Rather, we must look at how many hot dogs they ate and what T-shirts they bought. Great media agencies engage in their clients' businesses beyond just the impression. They dig deep down into that murky thing called metrics. Media buys are full of numbers waiting to be crunched.

No other area of advertising gets as close to a client's business as online. Online we can analyze how many people clicked and how many of those converted into a sale or a lead. That is part and parcel of our job. Getting customers to the site is equivalent to getting a man on first base. To score a run, he has to make a purchase or take an action. By using granular statistics we provide insight and achieve ROI.

Establishing ROI for traditional media makes hitting a Johan Santana slider look like a piece of cake. There are no easy answers, but if there were, I would copyright them. Correlating sales data to delivered grps is a good place to start. However, I can count on my hands the number of times I did that as a TV buyer. The data was there, it was just not shared by the client. If agencies are to be held more accountable, then clients must open their books.

This July, the All Star Game comes to New York. The only thing worse than watching baseball is begging sales reps for tickets (for my clients, of course). Still, I consider myself lucky. While everyone else is watching the game, I'll be at the concession stand.

Andrew Ettinger is the director of interactive media at RJ Palmer Media Services. (aettinger@rjpalmer.com)

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