Advertising is only an integral part of INTEGRATED BRANDS MANAGEMENT. Functionally, a given brand support strategy may totally exclude advertising. I guess that explains the new brand identity of some industry practitioners, deliberately disconnecting with the traditional common reference of ADVERTISING AGENCY. Gone are those days of advertising agency, it is time for holistic involvement (the banks will say wholesale banking). For the purpose of our non-professional readers, advertising is all about marketing communication; it is the process of creating and disseminating advert messages for the purposes of enabling brands marketing opportunities.To the extent where advertising is only an integral part of integrated brands management though, it has remained the most crucial single unit impute in advertising over the years. It has been the centre point for success measure, analysis and appreciation for both the client and agency over the years. Agency earning comes from media buying, the client or brands marketing communication success also depends on media. Over the years, therefore, practitioners have had to pay critical attention to the business of media engagement.The power of media in advertising is based on the impact of its contribution to the advertising process. To the extent where actual communication of brands offer is concerned, the media vehicles are the executioners. No matter how beautiful and convincing any campaign materials are, they will be useless without the engagement of media vehicles. Traditionally, media is expressed in the use of radio, newspaper/magazine and outdoor. In those days, creativity in media planning and buying started and ended with how well these traditional media vehicles are used/deployed.Plenty of arithmetic and financial accounting created rationale for the choice practitioners made of the choice of vehicle among these three, with the objectives of reach and effectiveness. In those days we commonly heard words like cost per thousand, too often to not have it guide our everyday thinking when considering media planning. The client must be made to appreciate our professional competence by the way we conjure figures to justify media spend to support effectiveness, reach and penetration. Add to that, just push some volume discount at the client and the story is told in totality.Today, so much innovation has been brought to bear in the practice of media planning and buying. With the turn of the new millennium, the market of media vehicle(s) appreciation and application witnessed tremendous innovative thinking. There was so much of experimentation with new learning; the local environment was literarily struggling to keep pace. The change drivers then could only manage to drag managers of international brands and local brands with international affiliation into the new understanding on the basis of aspiration. Even at that, majority of media buyers at the start of the new media era were only taking chance with their advertising budget. Because the appreciation was very low, not much was considered in terms of relevance, effectiveness and Return-On-Investment (ROI). The big brands managed to add to their brand equity in terms of image perception, because those daring moves they made with blind experimentation portrayed them as sophisticated, trendy. Not much was gained in Naira (and such other currency with which their international offices calculated their financial support).The new trend ushered in the digital media age. All kinds of production technique found their way into the Nigerian advertising practice. South Africa became Mecca to innovative media experts. To the local industry leaders, the mere knowledge of the appropriate production house in SA to produce the new TV Commercial was enough to demonstrate expert professional knowledge to win a good account. In fact, Advertising Agencies started parading all sorts of Oyibo practitioners as in-house consultants. Most of them came in through technical assistance from affiliate agencies abroad.Agency affiliation became a new craze, because it was either the serious agency puts forward an expatriate at pitches, or it is likely to lose. We appreciate all of these changes, because they introduce colour/glamour into the traditional way we did our thing. But over time we started noticing the power of raw knowledge. Those who were opportune to be properly trained in areas such as marketing, sales and creative art represented themselves adequately. There was nothing any Oyibo from any agency abroad will tell a Unilever-trained marketing person in the area of brands management to cause panic. Yeah, it was all about difference in system.It only took time for this emptiness to reflect in other areas of advertising. Today, the story is changing. Most of those local agencies that went for foreign practitioners under all sorts of guise started sacking them, as fast as they came. Conflict in internal workings and between the so-called expatriates and the local practitioners started impacting negatively on the over-all effectiveness.It is this same system pollution that attended our local media with the introduction of expatriate ideas without proper consideration. No matter the extent and nature of innovation or change, the basic function and objective remain effective reach and impact.I always asked the question why media independents' Every of the so-called independent media shops are only as independent to the extent that they now exist independent of the traditional advertising agency structure. They do the same thing (even with lesser diligence) compared to the traditional media departments of a standard advertising agency. That is my opinion, and I am open to superior argument. This will form a topical issue for discussion for the future. However, the kernel of this whole position is that such were the questionable changes that filtered into our local advertising industry at the turn of the century.Nobody asked questions. Now we are into another change era, the era of social media in advertising. Social media is peculiar in the area of technological innovativeness. Yes, it is a flexible platform for person-to-person inter-relativity that gives the individual the power to decide when, where and how he or she can be sent information for mass communication. It clearly individualises the target audience. No more can any media planner/buyer just reel out spurious rationale for media engagement proposal without very careful consideration. More and more, the buyer or advertiser can take part in the consideration of media platform and vehicle effectiveness. It is now truly such a global village, space constraint makes no sense.It is the effectiveness of social media that supported the evolution of Target Marketing in media engagement. With the social media, it is easier to appropriately define the target audience for a given advertising message, with a proper understanding of prevalent social trend and habit, among age brackets and social cultural environments. Therefore, it was easy for the Senior Brands Manager for Magnum Ice-cream in the US, Mike Hanley, to report 89 million impressions, 83 clicks on posted links and more than 270 replies mentionall on April 29, 2011, as a result of the promoted trend he/his brand bought into.In same vein, ZujiAustralia, an Australian travels and leisure company, invested in the promotion of online travel reservation, using long-term approach to building awareness, engaged Tweets (specifically, promoted tweets), in May 2011. The results are said to be still coming in, but the company has already more than doubled its follower base in the two months since it started using tweets.These two reports represent many other relatively successful uses of social media as a consumer or target audience engaging media platform, for purposes of advertising. However, the danger inherent in the application of the new media is in the area of efficiency in the face of compatibility and appropriateness. The same brands that posted relative success in the use of social media quickly reported doubt in the impact of recorded success in value terms. In other words, the social media is only effective in awareness and not actual sales.Now, the concern concerning social media ineffectiveness on sales actualisation is a joke compared to the many failures social media will face in our environment characterised by high illiteracy rate, negative rating on technology appreciation necessary for e-media, lack of infrastructures for internet social interaction, etc.So, our contribution at MC&A Digest is, unlike we have had to accept changes in the past, practitioners and clients must take time to study the use and implication of social media for advertising to guide against wastage of media spend and blindly shooting in the dark. Whether we talk of old or new media platforms, the above-mentioned remain the over-riding consideration for effective and profitable media engagement, across market segment.
Click here to read full news..
