Telmar Chairman & CEO: Integrated Media Plan, A Necessity
The Necessity of Integrated Media Planning in the Digital Age
Stan Federman, Telmar Chairman & CEO
2-15-11
Today’s advertisers and their Media Planning experts rarely have the luxury of casually selecting media.
There was an era when a media planner could simply pick TV, add one or two other traditional mass media types and end up with a highly defensible media plan. This plan would be evaluated using standard performance metrics.
More recently a new breed of media planners has emerged. This planner loves digital only, either because she was raised in all digital media world, for whatever reason, doesn’t believe that traditional media have a place in today’s media planning.
The planners often produce suboptimal plans and deny the power of non selected media types because they refuse to examine the whole landscape of media alternatives simultaneously in relation to their brand’s marketing requirements.
This whole phenomenon is just another variation of the old Silo-Mix Planning (SMP) vs. Integrated Media Planning (IMP) debate.
Web Media, Social Media, Eyes-on Out-of-Home media, Mobile Media and other new media developments have proved the traditional media Silo approach myopic, but the total abandonment of traditional media from the planning process is equally unwise.
A simple review of the Silo vs. Integrated approach may be helpful.
For many years and still in many parts of the world, agencies and advertisers plan their media campaigns separately, in silos.
What’s a silo?
A silo is a storage unit used in agriculture to hold grain; one for corn, wheat, soybeans, etc.
In media planning this translates to; one bucket for radio, tv, outdoor, etc. and then bringing them together for a final mix.
The downside for advertisers?
Agencies creating plans without treating media neutrally, at least initially, deny each media to demonstrate its contribution to a brand’s marketing goal. Some agencies first allocating budget or GRPs to each media ‘silo’
Telmar has spent millions of dollars in media planning systems that move the planner away from SILO planning and towards ‘Integrated Media Planning The results are impressive; these systems allow all media, including Social Media, the Web, Digital Outdoor and traditional media to be considered equally at the onset.
To serve the wide range of clients needs, Telmar offers both Silo/Mix Planning (SMP) and Integrated Media Planning (IMP), but wants to tell you why we recommend that you leave the Silos at the farm.
Here are the basics of the two approaches:
In Silo/Mix Planning (SMP),
The planner:
1- Uses a segmentation system to determine the best target(s) for the brand,
2- Runs a crosstab to analyze all the individual media separately (using the best currency and alternative data available),
3- Then, using the above results combined with judgment and experience selects the individual media types thought best for the brand, a budget, or how much media weight or R&F to allocate to each media type,
4- Using a Silo planning systems of choice, create the best plan for each media type selected for the resources allocated in 3 above,
5- Mix the plans selected to create an overall report on expected performance on the whole multi media plan.
Under Integrated Media Planning (IMP),
The planner:
1- Uses a segmentation system to determine the best target(s) for the brand (same as above)
2- Then allows all media to be considered neutrally and generates a plan.
They do this using an integrated, all media, single source Fused or MultiBased study.
They evaluate the study in a media planning software system that considers all the media available in the studies simultaneously, produces a recommended budget allocation, and a media plan.
The plan runs across all the media types the system selects and produces all the individual and total plan media performance metrics.
3- Also produces alternative plans on a ‘What if’ basis to compare qualitative variables not able to be considered in the Benchmark plan.
4- Selects the best combination of Benchmark and ‘What if’ plans to produce the final plan for the client.
5- Mix the plans selected to create an over all report on expected performance on the whole multi media plan.
In the hands of the professionally trained and experienced media planner both approaches can produce superior plans. Choosing the IMP approach, however, will guarantee that ALL the old and new media available in today’s new digital media environment are at least considered.
Media neutrality is key when beginning the planning process and this is virtually impossible with Silo planning.
Please contact us at info@telmar.com to learn more about modes of planning and to discuss which makes the most sense for you given your clients, region, and media data subscriptions.
