best practices marketing
Why Do Some Media Reps Lie? joshFIELD
Josh Field is the president of SCB Marketing and editor- in-chief of Spacecoast Business magazine. He received his MBA from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management before embarking on a business career that included executive marketing positions with many well-known consumer goods companies including Ralston Purina, Coca-Cola and Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Sifting Through the Bulls**t
It’s amazing what some people will say to make a sale. In the media business, quantitative analysis – e.g. number of readers, viewers or listeners; audience demographics; cost per thousand target audience – are typical metrics for making media buying decisions.
Yet most local buyers (and
advertising agencies) rely on sales reps rather than independent, third-party sources to supply this information. In Brevard – a relatively small and unsophisticated media market –
advertisers oftentimes encounter claims from media outlets that are “unsubstantiated” (or, the more technical term, “bulls**t”). One local publisher, for example, claimed to have 125,000
readers … before ever publishing its first magazine! Their rationale was based on printing 25,000 magazines and having 5 readers per copy (an “industry average,” their media kit professed). While they
may have been truthful in their intended printing quantity, stacks of magazines that sit around the county that are never picked up or read should hardly count as readers. The fact is: only three individual local media products currently reach over 100,000 adults in Brevard County. The Media Audit is an annual local market multime-
Who Reaches Brevard’s Largest Audience?
The LARGEST audience doesn’t imply the BEST audience for your business. Understand the composition of each media’s audience as it compares to your target … everything other than your target is a waste of your media budget.
FLORIDA TODAY Hometown News Savings Safari SpaceCoast Living Brevard Dining Guide Space Coast Medicine Spacecoast Business Brevard LIVE WA1A (107.1 FM)1 WBVD KISS (95.1 FM)2 Brevard Business News WHKR Hit Kicker (102.7 FM)1 WLRQ Lite Rock (99.3 FM)2 WMMB (1240 and 1350 AM)2 Spaces
The Beachside Resident Source: The Media Audit, Melbourne, FL, May-June 2009. Target: Adults 18+. 1
Cume Persons 262,935 184,662 172,408 85,963 62,798 59,339 50,375 48,876 47,053 44,640 43,345 38,355 29,138 28,885 27,510 18,434
Cumulus radio; 2
dia research study conducted and syndicated by International Demographics Inc. Their telephone interviewing and sampling methodologies are recognized and accepted by publishers, radio and television stations, Internet companies and other media outlets across the U.S. Access to this data is expensive – in Brevard, only SCB Marketing and a few other media outlets purchase the information – leaving other local media companies to find “alternative means” (such as guessing or making up numbers) for quantifying their audience in marketing to their poten- tial advertisers.
Cume Rating 59.0 41.4 38.7 19.3 14.1 13.3 11.3 11.0 10.6 10.0 9.7 8.6 6.5 6.5 6.2 4.1
Clear Channel radio.
Efficiency vs. Effectiveness Radio reps like to boast about
their “low cost per thousand listen- ers,” as the average radio spot may sell for only a few dollars and produc- tion is often included in the cost of a media buy. The problem, in this case, is frequency. It takes the typical listener 5-7 times hearing a commer- cial before they actually process the message. How many times must your spot air in a week for your target customer to hear it 5-7 times? And can you effectively reach your
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spacecoastbusiness.com
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