Media Mandible

“How do you plan media, anyway?” I am often asked by passersby. Usually, I insist that the asker climb a mountain and sacrifice a goat before receiving the answer. But if you find this post, it’s free.

This is (not coincidentally) analogous to a lot of sweepstakes promotions I’ve been involved in, wherein you have the choice between jumping through hoops to enter the sweepstakes, or just entering it. Some people like to jump through hoops. Some people think that life is hard, so given two options, hard and easy, they choose hard most of the time. It just feels more…honest, I guess.

I am not one of those people, though.

Step One: Find out what the client wants.

You’d think they would just tell you, right? But that’s often not the case. A surprising amount of the time, the client (or an account manager) will come to you with a mandate like “Onceler Corp. wants a media plan for their ‘thneeds’ brand by Friday. It should include an email and, uh…animation.” It is then the media planner’s job to push back and ask (among other things): What does the client want?

Sure, they want a media plan, but why? Are they trying to get people to click on a banner and immediately order thneeds online (direct marketing), or are they trying to get across the idea that thneeds are things that everyone needs (branding)? Why have they decided to run ads at this particular time? Are they launching a new product? Doing damage control on one that exists? Making a show of force to counter a competitor’s advertising? Or did an executive at the client company just announce one day “We should really be doing more of that…what do they call it…online advertising” (this happens more than you think)?

Getting these questions answered is more important than anything else at this point. And this is crucial: It’s more important than delivering a media plan. Because if you give in and just make something up, then before you know it, you’re going to have to implement it and then defend the results. Fortunately for you, asserting that you need these questions answered before proceeding is usually an effective pushback. Either the client realizes they don’t know what they want, or the account manager realizes they don’t know what they client wants. In either case, they decide to mull it over (or you pro-actively help them figure it out, if you want to swim in those waters), and you live to plan another day.

Of course, the best way to avoid this problem is to make sure you’re involved in the account from the start, i.e. even before there is talk of planning media, so that you have all the relevant background information. I do not agree with Seth Godin’s implication that meetings are usually a waste of time. Sure, they often don’t accomplish what they set out to accomplish. But for the observer who is simply interested in soaking up the nature of the situation under discussion, filing it away for future reference, meetings (other people’s meetings, that is) can be a great resource.