softer’ side of media planning

Saturday April 11, 2009
GroupM CEO advocates the ‘softer’ side of media planning
By M. HAFIDZ MAHPAR


MEDIA specialist companies, which plan the media strategy for advertisers, have been known to complain of the lack of media data, or lack of quality media data, available from research firms.

Rarely, however, do they admit to being too demanding or inflexible. Which makes GroupM Malaysia chief executive officer Paul Corrigan’s remark during an interview with StarBizWeek a bit of a surprise.

Corrigan, who heads one of the country’s largest and most respected media specialist groups, says: “We, as an industry, are guilty of being far too rigid with our need for data.”

He is talking about the fear of some media specialists to use Astro due to fewer in-depth data available for it compared with free-to-air TV.


Paul Corrigan says media planners shouldn’t use numbers as a crutch.

“It’s much easier to measure viewership on free-to-air TV where we’re dealing with four to five channels than to measure 50 to 60 Astro channels. We need to get our heads around that,” Corrigan says.

“Sometimes we (media planners) have to be sensible and make recommendations and judgments based on what we see ourselves. We have a good idea how many homes Astro is in and we’re consumers of the media as well,” he says.

Corrigan thinks media planners sometimes use data as a crutch — “a bit of an excuse to hide behind.”

“Research should be used to confirm a hunch than to actually dictate what you do. If someone suddenly takes away the TV data, does it mean everyone will stop using TV?” he asks.

While data is used as a “trading currency” in the industry, he says there is also the “softer side” of media planning.

“It has got to the point where we’re measuring numbers which are not necessarily relevant to the clients’ (advertisers’) business. I want to scream when people say they have media discounts, this amount of reach and this frequency. But does that help the client sell more products?” he asks.

“As we become more and more number-reliant, we become more inward-looking and obsessed with media numbers, and lose sight of trying to help clients. I’m always worried if people know the cost of every ad in the newspaper or every TV spot and don’t know how many products the client sells. We have become obsessed with media output and not the marketing outcome, which is more important,” he says.

Corrigan acknowledges that to a certain extent, what is happening is inevitable due to the increasing complexity of the media planner’s job.

“In the past, when choosing media vehicles was simpler, we had more time to understand the bigger picture and the clients’ business. Today’s 27- and 28-year-old planners are doing a lot more work. They have to be experts in digital, events and other things, and there are 60 to 70 TV channels. They’re doing far more for clients and have to know far more. Unfortunately, there’s a danger that they don’t have enough time to focus on understanding the client’s business — the most important thing,” he says.

Corrigan points out that people nowadays spend very little of their waking hours consuming traditional media; yet, media planners prefer to use these media due to the availability of audience data and the fact that they are already comfortable with them.

GroupM sees digital media as an important area of future growth. “Our specialist unit, GroupM Interaction, is growing at a faster rate than our traditional media spending on TV and newspapers,” he notes.

“But digital is not something that’s picked up and measured very accurately. Nielsen measures only a fraction of the ad spending on digital,” he says.

GroupM is increasingly working with clients on areas like search engine marketing and social networking campaigns besides the traditional online placements like banners and pop-ups. Another area of growth for GroupM is activation, which includes doing on-ground events.

“As people have more control of what they consume on media, they also want to control how they interact with brands. Years ago, people shied away from sales promoters in shopping centres, but people now have gotten more used to experiential marketing and want to hear what the salesperson is talking about. With on-ground events, the brand connects to a smaller group of people (compared to TV, for instance), but it’s effective in building deeper connections and gives people a richer experience,” he explains.

Besides its Interaction and Activation segments, the group’s content production and research units (under Entertainment Sport Programming and GroupM Consumer Insights, respectively) have also been growing fast over the last few years.

This year Corrigan wants to focus on introducing business planning and public relations.

The group will develop business planning capabilities within Mindshare (the largest member of GroupM) as well as creating a business planning unit to be shared between the other members — Mediaedge:cia, MediaCom and Maxus.

“This allows us to step back and understand more of the basics of our clients’ business and what are the dynamics that drive the business,” he says.

Corrigan says the emergence of media independents (media operations that are separate from creative agencies) was driven by clients.

“As media agencies become larger and benefit from the size, we began to, if you like, move up the strategic food chain in our relationship with clients. However, as the media planning job becomes more complicated, we as an industry have not taken advantage of our position to build a strong relationship with our clients,” he points out.

“While we as an industry — including the creative agencies — spend more and more time on 20 to 30 different elements of a campaign, we’ve allowed other people (from outside the industry) to position themselves as high-end consultancy partners to certain clients, and that should never have happened. We’ve become experts in marketing execution but we’re not as good at doing the basic thing — helping clients grow their business by understanding their business,” he says.

“In many ways, GroupM is going back to basics — to be a business partner to our clients rather than a marketing communication media partner,” he adds.

Corrigan says GroupM wants to add value to clients before the marketing process even begins.

“We need to regain the high-end relationship with clients, and we do have a lot of experience. We know what sells and what doesn’t, which price is sustainable, and which distribution channel works,” he says.

On developing a public relations unit, Corrigan says GroupM is not trying to re-invent itself as a full-service agency. “We already tend to be providing services like this to clients on an ad hoc basis,” he explains.

“The lines are becoming more blurred territorially. Increasingly, people will talk less and less that something is a media agency’s role and another thing is a creative agency’s role. Clients increasingly are looking for strategic leadership from their partners. So the concept of creative and media agencies being two distinct, separate things is a bit outdated,” he says.

On the group’s performance, Corrigan says that most of its fast-moving consumer goods clients look healthy. “We’re definitely looking at revenue growth this year,” he adds.