Gordon Patterson, Group Managing Director of SMG (Starcom MediaVest Group), honoured as Advertising Achiever of the Year at this year’s AdReview Awards

Marketingweb

29 April 2010

Congratulations to Gordon Patterson, Group Managing Director of SMG (Starcom MediaVest Group), who was honoured as Advertising Achiever of the Year at this year’s AdReview Awards.

Apart from driving the successful SMG media group, as Vice President of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), Patterson has made massive contributions to innovation and maintenance of print audit standards at in the ABC. Over the past decade, both in terms of quality and accessibility of data, Patterson’s influence has resulted in a significant and positive impact on print media planning in South Africa. Read more

PRODUCT UPDATE: ReSearch GURU brings you Ready Reports

Ready Reports, available on ReSearchGURU, allows users to create their own customized reports. Then, next time they
login, Guru generates prepared reports and graphs meeting their exact needs.

Since Agencies and sales houses obviously benefit from this new feature. We also see great benefits for our research company clients who upload new will now be able to upload and distribute new studies themselves! Read more

The Usual Suspects – The Optimum TV Strategy and Planning Journey

With the television scene in South Africa changing rapidly and the industry experiencing difficulty in unpacking the implications, a SAARF industry TV Information Forum was held last week in Johannesburg to ensure that everyone is “on the same page” and understands the past, current and future methodology changes and the implications.

Telmar SPC was invited to talk on the importance of the media and planning process, and to review how we should go about media strategy and planning from the perspective of marketers, media owners, advertising agencies and media agencies. The presentation was well received by the industry and is summarised below.

Many of you will remember the 1995 movie, “The Usual Suspects”. It’s about five men who are hauled into the New York police station because a crime was committed and they are “the usual suspects”. No doubt you are asking yourself “What on earth has this got to do with media strategy and planning?”

The movie was hailed for its brilliance in leaving crucial questions unanswered, inspiring viewers to revisit it and try to connect the dots. The big question is “who’s the one controlling everything?” Overall, one is left with a strong sense of “all is not as it seems”.

In the same way, our ever evolving TV environment is so much more than it seems on the surface. The question is “What are we going to do about it? How should we approach our strategic thinking and media planning?”

Very basically, in this constantly changing and sensitive economic environment, we still need to follow our usual cyclic strategic process, as follows:

• Marketing and Advertising requirements
• Media Brief
• Media Strategy based on research and media insights
• Media Plan including sponsorship
• Local Implementation/buying, negotiations, monitoring of media plan
• Financial Management
• Media Review
• Evaluation of Results – reapply learnings

However, before coming up with solutions, we need to take into account the “usual technical suspects” which include:

• Working with Targets (Planning vs Marketing target markets)
• Universe, samples and weighting
• Timing /Seasonality (source periods, forecasting, down weighting)
• Objectives (Reach, Frequency, Ratings, ‘000, CPP, CPT)
• Implementing TV plans
• Delivery

The implications and how to manage these and ‘other technical suspects’ was discussed, illustrated with practical examples.

In conclusion, we are experiencing ongoing changes in our TV environment. There have been changes to methodologies which are making life very challenging for us and we need to accept that all is not as it seems. Our optimum TV strategy journey should be to follow our tried and tested strategic process, at the same time taking into account the usual technical suspects.

There are great lessons we can learn from “The Usual Suspects”. Watch the movie and you’ll see what we mean!

If you’d like us to share this important presentation with you, please contact Sharon or Lisa at Telmar on 011 804 4489, or sharon@telmar.co.za or lisa@telmar.co.za.

Written by Sharon Penhallrick, Managing Director, Telmar SPC South Africa.

How to take full advantage of the current recession

In these tough economic times whatever marketing decisions you make, you need to make sure that they’re based on the best information available. This is where sound consumer and media research can point the way for you. Good quality, up to date data is essential – as is research and planning software that will help you analyse the data, understand it and apply it to the creation of advertising campaigns that will yield you recession-beating results.

It’s important to keep ahead of the game in a recession, especially in your advertising and promotional efforts.

As a first step, it’s critical to understand consumer spending. According to marketing doyen Philip Kotler, as household incomes fall during the course of a recession, consumers go through several stages of adjustment, namely: Denial, Cut & Trim, Anger, Despair and Resignation. By keeping close to your customers, you’ll be in tune with their current psychological state and in an excellent position to tailor your advertising initiatives accordingly.

Should you cut advertising spend?
Here we draw on the experience of Tony Hillier and Marilyn Baxter who studied the business performance of 1 000 companies. They concluded that:

“The natural reaction of many businesses experiencing a downturn in their revenue is to cut costs in areas like advertising and promotion. Our findings prove that they should do exactly the opposite if they are to ride out a recession and thrive thereafter. “The data shows that businesses which increased marketing spend were not significantly less profitable during recession. However, their profits increased dramatically faster once recovery started – unlike cutters of marketing spend whose profitability actually fell when recovery began. “Furthermore, businesses which increased marketing spend in recession, gained market share three times as fast as cutters once recovery began.”

Making the most of the downturn
Dr Simon Broadbent advocates “taking advantage of tough times to turn the screw on your rivals”. Budget slashing is no answer – even maintaining your level of spend can give you a major competitive advantage. During bad times you can enjoy greater relative share of voice.

Effective actions can be taken to develop new media and new messages, attuning them to your consumer’s state of mind. It can also be a time to move media money into more cost-effective channels, for example from television into radio.

Taking well-informed marketing decisions
This is even more critical in a recession like the one we’re experiencing now. The good news is that Telmar can help you with marketing, advertising, media and research interpretation and expertise – in all major markets across Africa and around the world.