Media Planning: Recency Theory - Essay Example

Media Planning: Recency Theory s Department 5th December Introduction In the modern society, where the abundance of services and goods is simply astonishing, with new companies and manufacturers emerging literally every day and competition growing at an enormous pace, it is totally impossible to succeed in selling the product or service without marketing instruments. What’s more, these instruments are to be picked with care and wisely elaborated, so that a product or a service arrests attention of as many consumers as possible and the company succeeds in sales. Among marketing tools, advertising is probably the most popular and widespread way of not only informing consumers about products, but also persuading them to buy (Blair et al, 2013, p.149). Taking this into account, it is logical to think that the huge emphasis is laid nowadays on the quality of the advertising message transmitted to the potential buyers via various types of existing media, because the impact produced by this message determines the success of the campaign and – eventually – sales level. As the result, enormous amounts of efforts and financial expenses are involved in advertising industry, because creating a persuasive advertising message is considered to be crucial for consumers to make decisions in favor of this or that company. However, a bare advertising message is unlikely to guarantee success for a brand: “a great advertising message in front of the wrong audience is a total waste of time and effort” (Kelley and Jugenheimer, 2008, p. 5). For a successful promotion campaign, message strategies must be combined with wise media strategies for a message to reach the audience in the most effective way. Media strategies should be always highly flexible and capable of complying with the changes in preferences and behavior of consumers. “When consumers change their consumption patterns, the marketing communications strategy to reach these consumers must change as well” (Víglundsson and Halldórsson, 2012, p.1). It is also important to adjust media communication strategies to the patterns of media consumption and change (or enhance) them, if new media emerge or gain popularity among consumers. In the recent decades, rapid technological progress has shown dependence of marketing on the innovations in communication technologies. “For the advertiser and agency, this technological revolution has meant radical re-thinking and redeployment of how messages and incentives are distributed to relevant marketplace customers and prospects” (American Academy Of Advertising Conference Proceedings, 2013, p. 49-51). Moreover, the audience for an advertising campaign should be picked correctly, i.e. the message transmitted to the right target audience (picked due to certain demographic criteria) will be far more efficient, that non-target one. Nowadays, budgets of promotion campaigns and expenditures for media advertisement are estimated in “hundreds of millions of dollars”, and thus even a slight increase in efficiency in the way media advertising reaches a target group can lead to enormous savings (Smith et al, 2010, p. 428). Of course, this can be achieved only with help of wise planning of advertising campaigns, media planning. Media Planning Media planning is currently one of the key tools necessary for any marketing company to operate and achieve their goals, the tool, without which it would be impossible to work effectively nowadays. Media planning is the strategy of advertising campaigns’ planning, focused on developing an optimum program of advertising material placement and increasing efficiency of the contact between the promo message and the target group to maximum. Media planning is an important instrument of prediction and analysis, enabling to enhance efficiency of advertising. Nowadays, the wide array of media suitable for transmitting advertising messages includes all mass media such as TV, radio, magazines and Internet, and outdoor advertisement. This wide range of media for advertising dissemination should be used by the advertisers in a balanced way. What is meant here is that the advertising budget should be planned optimally with regards to statistical data while choosing channels for advertising placement. Here, a well estimated media plan is necessary for reaching the high level of efficiency at a relatively low cost. The media plan is created in order to communicate the promo message to a certain target group of consumers in a certain period of time; in addition, the message should be duplicated for a precise number of times. In fact, the workers of marketing and strategic media planning sectors are, first of all, the researchers, whose work has its core in examining market and consumers’ demands, then adjusting their marketing strategies in accordance with the data they obtain. The important task is to understand consumers’ relations with the promoted brand and then identify exact ways in which media can be deployed for engaging the customer’s attention with the brand message (Katz, 2007). Knowledge and ability to apply various concepts of media planning can allow the planners to define the least risky directions of advertising investments, to use already existing budgets effectively and sometimes to find a way to save advertising money, as it was mentioned above. Strategic media planning is based upon the analysis of target audiences, target regions and markets of the brand. This analysis is to create a foundation for the plan development. According to Rossiter and Danaher (1998, xi), media planning implies formulating the strategy, which meets advertising objectives of a certain brand, and then implementing this strategy in the cost-effective manner. The planning process usually begins with defining marketing goals and the preferred media for advertising delivery. Further steps should include making a decision of using a certain media planning strategies or their combination; setting optimum efficiency level (which the campaign is expected to produce); planning stages of the campaign in connection to time, season, level of competition etc.; constructing and validation of the advertising budget, and distribution of budget costs among the chosen categories of mass media. The core of planning is in the preparatory researches that result in selection of a certain target group based on criterions of psychographics and demographics, i.e. the audience that can be influenced by certain types of brand contact. In accordance with the researches and analysis of the consumer audience, the marketing objecting can be set, which is rather often to increase sales, attract consumers and evoke interest for a newly established brand. An important step is defining the media planning strategy for a campaign, which can be done based on marketing situation analysis. For defining a strategy, the advertiser should focus on the key criteria, such as the number of consumers that can be reached by the advertising message; frequency of advertising messages distribution; specific markets and regions for a campaign to focus on, and the possible amount of money that could be needed. Then, there are several types of strategic media planning based on different criteria. Probably, the most popular strategy is effective frequency theory, which is widely used by advertisers. “Effective frequency generally refers to the average number of vehicle exposures required to effectively expose the average audience member to an advertising message» (Cannon et al, 2002). This strategy is based on the statement that three or more advertising contacts are necessary for a potential consumer to memorize a brand and influence the decision to purchase. “Effective frequency suggests that various degrees of advertising repetition are more (or less) effective in communicating a brands advertising message or selling that brand” (Sissors, 1982, p.33). While planning within the framework of the effective frequency theory, advertisers set the optimum level of effective frequency, based on the objectives of the campaign. The required level of effective frequency depend on numerous factors, which serve as a basis for estimating the level of advertising “pressure”. Another important criterion is effective reach, however, its level is usually restricted by the budget. Distribution of advertising “pressure” is defined by the stage the campaign is currently on, season, and competitive strategies. Many advertising agencies succeed in media planning based on this single strategy nowadays, yet researches show that this approach has its flaws and isn’t as simple as it seems to be. Gerard Tellis (1997, p.75) states that effective frequency doesn’t depend only on the level of exposure of the advertising message. It is asserted that efficiency of this approach depends of three factors such as brand familiarity, message novelty and message complexity. For instance, according to Sawyer (1981), ads of the brand that is already familiar to a potential consumer received greater attention even at a lower level of repetition, whereas a brand that is unfamiliar could receive weaker response even at a large number of repetitions. Recency Theory Another theory – though not so popular – is the recency theory, which rests upon the researches showing that the most recent ad contact before the purchase produces the biggest impact on the decision to purchase. According to John Phillip Jones’ (2000) study, far better effect is achieved with help of a single ad exposure in the last seven days preceding the purchase than via multiple repetition of the ad exposure. In other words, the ad message perceived by the potential buyer recently before the purchase is much more efficient that the message repeated earlier for multiple times (at higher frequency rate). If a single ad exposure is considered reach and multiple exposures are then frequency, than it can be concluded that using single reaches is more cost-effective. “Ready to buy” is more important than number of messages” (Euphron, 1998, p.3). Within this theory, it becomes crucial to schedule the single exposure in the way that would be the most effective. Generally, it has been offered to focus on weekly exposures of ads, and the campaign must be continuous. As far as this strategy is based on close proximity to a purchase occasion, “the planner’s task is to manage an outgoing flow of ad exposures in such a way to intercept these purchase occasions and maximize the number of “hits” and “near-hits” (Reichel & Wood, 1997, 69). Thus it is logical to concentrate on reach and use a week as a basic period of planning; moreover, continuity of exposures is important. The primary goal is to maximize weekly (or 4-week, or quarterly) reach instead of maximizing frequency of exposures (Research Digest, 2007). For this purpose, recency strategy of media planning prefers more weeks for advertising to high levels of exposure frequency. The theory could be supported by the following arguments. Firstly, consumers who are already the partakers of the market do not need large numbers of ad contacts. Secondly, the continuity is justified by the universal fact that purchases of brands are made literally every day. Thirdly, reach enables intercepting permanent participants of the market. Generally, recency media planning emphasizes reach, continuity and dispersion instead of frequency, flighting and concentration. Even though there are still some confusions experienced by media planners regarding the way of reaching the large number of potential consumers as close as possible to their purchase, researches show (Beal et al, 2008) that continuity scheduling should create a default principle for modern media planners. Planning within recency framework is made according to the following principle: having certain fix budget, one should find an optimum number of weeks for a certain weekly reach. Also, the direction of ad campaign can be adjusted to certain tendencies. In conditions of continuous purchases, the task is to maximize reach to cover the largest possible part of a target group in as many weeks as possible (Audience Watch, 2009). However, some days have greater numbers of purchases. Thus – considering these days of the week – it is desirable to optimize the media plan, emphasizing value of advertisements aired in days preceding the day of higher activity. Media Planning In connection to the approaches considered in this paper, I would like to offer a media plan for an existing brand. It could be assumed, that one of large retail mass market clothing brands, H&M, is launching a special sales period devoted to 10th anniversary of their large store in San Francisco. This event would be called “H&M Birthday Sale”, which would commence – hypothetically – on the 15th of August and last for two months, i.e. to the 15th of October in Westfield Centre’s store of the brand. As far as the brand is rather familiar and isn’t new at all, there is no need to make potential consumers familiar with it – all the permanent participants of the market are likely to be familiar with it. Thus, the initial objective of a possible advertising campaign would be not to introduce the brand, but to introduce the event held by the brand, in our case – the season of good discounts (let them be up to 50%). Taking this into account, high-quality advertising messages for media should be developed. Moving to defining the target group, one should keep in mind, that the brand’s sale is held in one store only (as far as it is celebration of this store’s anniversary). The first criterion for defining the target group of ad campaign is geographical location – the campaign is to be held on the local level, i.e. only in San Francisco. Furthermore, other demographic characteristics are to be considered. Naturally, as the brand has been existing for a long time – and in this city, too, the basic target group of potential consumers has surely been selected before. The brand offers “collections, representing fashions for women, men, teenagers and children” (Giertz-Mårtenson, 2012, 111). Thus I would assume that the target group of our campaign includes males and females from 18 to 45 years old, having medium level of income. Naturally, at least part of this target group are already familiar with the brand. As it was stated above, the key objective of the advertising campaign is to inform potential consumers about “H&M Birthday Sale”; the secondary aim could be introducing the brand to new customers. The advertising message will focus on demonstrating the products as well as informing about the sale (and, of course, percentage of discount). As far as the sale is to last for eight weeks, the media plan would cover these eight weeks and a week preceding the event (in accordance with the recency theory). Starting the campaign a week before the sale starts will enable exposing the ad message in the most effective proximity to possible purchase. Furthermore, exposure is to be repeated weekly, for all eight weeks of the sale. However, in order to optimize the media plan, one should consider the days when the number of purchases is higher. Obviously, these are weekends: on weekends, people tend to do more shopping than on working days. Keeping this in mind, I would optimize the plan by setting the time for ads exposure. To my thinking, it would be most efficient to set exposures to Wednesdays. Every Wednesday the new wave of advertising messages would be aired. To my mind, in connection to our specific brand event and general shopping tendencies, the middle of the week would be the most favorable time to “remind” customers about the sale and influence their decision to purchase. The budget of the campaign is to be defined by the choice of the mass media and the cost of ads placements in this media. Choosing advertising media, I would suggest using outdoor advertising on billboards and city-lights of San Francisco; fashion and youth magazines (at least 2 or three popular ones); radio ads on 2 or 3 popular radio stations; and various types of web advertising. As for the latter, it is reasonable to focus on web advertising, because statistical data indicates that the internet is used by as much as 74.4 % of all American households (File & Ryan, 2014, p.2). Web advertising should deploy e-mail ads: this option is likely to bring rather fruitful results, as far as existing databases of the company can be filtered according to geographical criterion and used for e-mail messages containing advertising of H&M Birthday Sale. Besides, local search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads are necessary to be used, as they are likely to produce high reach. Visual advertising material must include photos, representing the brand, and laconic yet informative message about the discounts, dates and place. Development of visual advertising material would be assigned to photographers and designers and will be used in all means of visual advertising: outdoor advertising, web ads and magazines. As for outdoor advertising, it would be possible to buy 30 medium billboards for 2 months starting with the week before the sale’s beginning. For two or three San Francisco’s most popular fashion and youth weekly magazines, it would be possible to buy a half-page ad place for each issue within the sale period. I would also suggest an idea of saving costs for this type of advertising: in order to pay less for ad printing, one could create promo material in black-and-white – fashionable black-and-white photos would look rather descent and save costs. SEO is also rather cost-efficient type of ad to use as one would have to pay only for installation, and the use of media is free (WebpageFX, 2014). In order to persuade e-mail recipients to attend the H&M event, it is possible to attach additional fliers with guaranteed presents (for instance, a piece of jewelry for purchase of 2 or more clothing items). Advertising via e-mail should also be sent on Wednesday, whereas SEO configuration can operate for the entire event plan’s period of 9 weeks. Radio advertisement bought on 2 most popular radio stations would appear on Wednesday, too (probably, for several times). In this type of mass media, it is crucial that the radio stations are really most popular with many listeners belonging to our target group, as it will bring us the best reach. The general budget of the media plan depends directly on prices of ads placement existing in the chosen city and thus may vary. However, to my thinking, the offered draft of the media plan for H&M clothing brand is likely to produce desirable effect, as it deploys mass media, which are most popular (TV was deliberately excluded, as it could be inefficient because of many unqualified customers and relatively low popularity among the selected age category of consumers; moreover, use of TV could lead to additional expenses for commercials’ production). References AUDIENCE WATCH. (2009) Recency Theory. 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