Those Tricky Cable Buys...

Wow, I don't post for a month and Blogger changes their whole look! Life sure has been moving fast these past few weeks.

Obviously, I've been pretty busy with all the new things going on and haven't been all that interested in writing about it. I thought I would be - but I have turned to more personal types of communication (phone calls, emails, face to face) during my transition to new city, new agency, new friends, etc. But anyway, I'm motivated again to get back to this blog! It was recently put on AdAge's Power list, so I guess it's time to show some new folks how insightful this blogger can get!

Read a cool article in Media magazine during lunch last week. Steve Farella and Audrey Siegel discuss how they went into my version of media planner heaven and basically just played around with schedules on random networks to see if they could get the same reach and frequency. Kind of like media russian roulette. 11 networks at random - how do they deliver? Another 11 random networks - how do they deliver? And so on. Will one of them triumph? Does planning even matter?

At first I was a little uncomfortable with this notion. Because according to them, it didn't matter how much you planned. The average audience sizes all came out the same. The random schedules all looked good on paper. And to an uneducated client, could probably convince them to move to a cheaper media planning partner.

But of course, Farella and Siegel couldn't leave it at that or we would all be out of jobs. I mean, computers could do this stuff for us and we'd all be jobless at home watching 4-hr marathons of Law and Order SVU (hmmm). The main point was that with cable networks, you're planning with the environment in mind, much like planning for radio. So you want to choose networks that your audience will relate to so that they will be receptive to your message.

This would also affect your added value packages, which could actually add more value to your buys than just additional GRPs if they were running on networks that were relevant to your audience. Like, if a shoe company ran an ad for their sale during TLC's What Not to Wear. Then they could have a promotional :10 about how pointy-toe flats elongate the leg line while still being comfortable. "Find the shoes at "XX" and continue watching for more great tips from Stacy and Clinton."

This could also be an argument for creative working closely with media. Just something to chew on...


Image via asa.org.

Death of a Medium

What a depressing thing to say. I keep hearing about media dying off and wondering, why do people keep saying this? Is this a news media scare tactic?

I'll admit, I have - on more than one occasion - asserted that newspapers are dying. TV is dying too. Radio is long gone. And advertising on those channels? We'd better start planning for the apocalypse. I've even been so brave as to hypothesize that "if technology exists to avoid it, it's obviously on its way out" (referring, of course to satellite radio and DVRs).

But all of the above is just talk. The thing that is happening right now is fragmentation. And growth. We have all these wonderful new media channels, but still 24 hours in one day. So of course something has to give. Maybe I'm not listening to the radio, but I'm downloading podcasts. Or I'm not watching the evening news, but I've got CNN on RSS. It's not a matter of life or death - just change. Change from mass appeal to segmented audiences.

Just a little food for thought.

Have We Met Before?

I'm posting today because I'm stoked that this blog is now being featured on Tallahassee.com, the website for Tallahassee's newspaper. So I wanted to write a little introduction and explain what I'm all about for anyone reading this via Tallahassee.com (my apologies for being redundant).

My name is Michelle and I'm the media director for Kidd Group, a local advertising agency. I oversee the media planning and buying for our agency's clients. This means that I am the one who decides which episode of American Idol to buy or what radio station to run advertisements on. It's a pretty cool gig.

Topically, this blog is about just that; media buying and planning. But I also explore consumer behavior, media related and general news, and I attempt to spice it up with anecdotes from my own life. I'm excited to be on this site and welcome any and all comments. Thanks for reading!

Click here to read via Tallahassee.com.