Top 10 2007

1. Top 10 2007 A research study to explore the opinions and attitudes of media planners and their bosses Prepared for: IAB Prepared by: Justin Gibbons, work research Date: 19.06.07

2. Sample and methodology • 10 one on one interviews • All were MDs and above • 4 partners • 3 MDs • 1 CEO • 2 CSOs • Interviews were conducted in their offices • Off the record, no taping, non attributable to allow them to be totally candid

3. Sample and methodology • 2 focus groups with media planners • All to have 3-6 years experience • All to have had experience across all media • All to have clients who spend on analogue and digital media • 2 per group who work in digital agencies or departments • Focus groups held in the viewing facility at ZenithOptimedia and viewed by all clients

4. Contents • The view from the top • A perspective on the year ahead • Your specific questions answered • The planner’s perspective • The life of a media planner • Digital: integration or specialisation • Media owners • Your brands in detail • Trade marketing • The year ahead

5. The view from the top

6. 2007 so far • As an industry a feeling that things are levelling out • The spend shares of most major media are settling down • Driven by a more stable TV market (and a more stable ITV) • Radio has turned its own corner and is set for new opportunities • Outdoor is widely seen to be in good nick with CBS digital and a professional JCDecaux (and well run trading arrangements?) • Press is perceived to have got its house in order and is moving effectively into digital media • Digital is growing like a weed everywhere, driven by search

7. 2007 so far • However, there are few optimists • Lean new business is the major dampener “you used to be able to bank on a £25m win each year and then a few smaller bits around the edges, now you only need about a £3m win and you’re in the top 10 in Campaign !” • Allied with a broken business model over reliant on low margin trading

8. 2007 so far • Aware that opportunities are there to be taken • ‘Putting digital at the heart’ has almost become a cliché but most agencies are moving in that direction • Exploring higher margin offerings: partnerships, integrated ideas, events, sales promotion • Exploring consultative offerings: data, modelling, research • Media owner based offerings key to two (or three) agencies • Vizeum and Carat (and naked) • Details are still under wraps but both are looking to formalise a media partnership offering run by agencies

9. 2007 so far • Digital agencies are evolving too • They are looking to a future when everybody does digital • And they have specialists nibbling away at them • Some are exploring a more full service approach • Others are sticking to their digital principles and improving their strategic and planning skills around that • Others are concentrating on professionalism • Ability to run a book, yield, more robust servicing “to me digital is the glue, I don’t think you lose that, you have to build the other, traditional bits in”

10. The challenges • Agencies are gearing themselves around three approaches • Integration: comms planning and client teams • Digital: moving it to a more central position • Ideas: a commitment to developing and delivering strong ideas • These aren’t mutually exclusive, indeed some large agencies are doing all three

11. Integration • Structurally most apparent in the adoption of client teams • Or, via better planning (for those who have a discipline by discipline structure) • View the world in terms of how different media work together • Building research around multi-media effects • Reject stories of individual medium superiority • Looking to build in (or bolt on) the missing disciplines • PR, events, content creation

12. Digital • Everybody is moving digital into the centre • Either by bringing the digital specialists into the process • Or by training their planners about digital • Or both • In the short term this means most are more responsive to platform deals and multi platform brands • Easier for planners to understand • Search represents the greatest problem • Highly specialised skills, impenetrable language

13. Ideas • Some (not all) agencies are returning to the idea as the key to their offering • Works in one of three ways • BIG ideas which do the integration bit • Media owner partnerships to drive strong media ideas • Investing in idea creation and development

14. So what are they looking for from media owners? • Flexible and open minded • Collaborative • Realistic “don’t get me all the way to the client presentation if the idea can’t be realised” • Ideas; multi platform, making most use of the audience • Integrated; understanding and selling the medium in terms of how it works with other media and communications

16. Integration • All agencies are weaving their digital departments into main agency at a planning level • Same briefing process • Integrated teams “prevents the implementational people misinterpreting briefs” “the consumer is at the heart, not the channel” • Implementation and search remain as specialisms at most places • All except Carat, Vizeum and small agencies

17. Search “a beast of execution” • Search poses some big challenges • A recruitment nightmare • Clients on the whole don’t get search • To the extent that some agencies outsource bits of search (natural search) • Google going direct to clients a big threat • Tools • Some better than others, improving, no major problems • Client support • Labour intensive, misunderstood, difficult • Specialists • All fear loss of search business to specialists “they do things we actually can’t do”

18. Currency • All acknowledge major data problems • NMR no good, up to 75% wrong “robust data is a million miles away” • Adds to client concerns though not to client spending • Main problem is reassurance to move beyond response approach • Benefits • Allows comparison with offline media • Some are ambivalent • Fast moving so accuracy may always be questionable • It is working currently (to a degree) • Anticipate it will happen • A JIC of some sort to administer it (or IPA)

19. Budgets • No one single effect on budget splits • Incremental growth can come from brands who use digital successfully • For some digital spend comes at the expense of all other media • For others TV is main loser (as the biggest single component)

20. The planner’s perspective

21. The past 12 months • Last year was all about creativity and ideas • This year it’s all about DIGITAL • Merged planning departments (not buying) • Training • Media owner inductions • Enthusiastic and capable • A learning curve but familiar planning territory • A sense that creativity was more difficult

22. Branding campaigns • ‘Brand campaigns’ is a largely meaningless term • “one of those words like strategy which fly around” • Driven by client set up • “we work on a client where there is a brand department and an acquisition department” • Broader measurement criteria • Awareness, knowledge, propensity to buy • Currently dominated by TV (cinema and radio) • Some briefs coming through for digital but highly experimental

23. Branding campaigns “I think the big question for direct-response advertisers at the moment is getting a true gauge of what the on-line cost of acquisition is, not involving other media at all, because for a client I’m speaking to, on-line’s performing significantly better than any other media in terms of CPA, but people don’t understand the effect of seeing something in a newspaper, and that drives them on-line, or see an advert on television and that drives them on-line - at the moment, on-line’s getting the credit for everything, and other media are suffering for it.”

24. IPA Touchpoints • Overall a fairly dismissive attitude to the study • Used but not rated • Underused versus expectations • The integrated bit still doesn’t work which leaves it as an interesting though dated consumer insight study I’ve used it for some Camelot planning, because there’s a Wednesday lotto and a Saturday lotto, and it worked for that, because radio and on-line is very much a key platform for the Wednesday lotto, whereas on the Saturday it wasn’t so much, so it helped for that kind of planning. Integrated still doesn’t work, and they still haven’t managed to get on-line so you can’t do total coverage, and that’s what we were waiting for. That’s what it was sold in on, and that’s what we’re still waiting for – it’s flawed

25. Online in the process • Agencies have adapted • No sense of a disjointed process • Briefing is happening at the same time • Digital planners feel part of the agency process • Buying remains a specialism (as with any other) • Clients are driving the integration In my experience, it’s the clients, we all go to a meeting, and they say how much they want to spend on and off-line

26. Media owners are becoming brand platform owners “I would usually include digital in my channel planning, but what we’re finding is that we’re doing less and less channel planning and more and more media brand planning, so you have one media brand across different platforms, so you wouldn’t be able to do your traditional channel planning in the same way any more, so moving away from that model”

27. Online currency • While MDs can be a bit ambivalent, planners are more adamant about an online currency • The main benefit being client support I think it would help clients, because then it would be like other media, and you could say, this is it, and they would have a metric, something solid they can go on I agree, some of the clients I work on, on-line is a relatively new arena for them, and they find it hard it hard to gauge how big or small a campaign is, if they do a big TV campaign, they have a feel for how big that’s going to be, but they still have a problem getting a feel for how big (on-line) is going to be. Saying, so, you’re going to get three million impressions, that means nothing, it’s just, oh, that’s a big number, but you can’t relate that to price or TV, and you can’t compare

28. Plan approval • All evidence a highly subjective attitude from clients It’s amazing for such a new medium how big an opinion every single client can have, not just on particular brand, but on everything – no that site’s not right, how about this one - because there isn’t that metric, everyone thinks they can have an opinion so you get this huge bunfight Yes, you get clients who’ll say, well, I use on-line for this, this and this, so why would someone want to use it for this reason, so when you propose other sites where the client doesn’t understand why anyone would want to go onto them, it’s very difficult to get them to buy into it. Because the people you’re speaking to aren’t digital natives, are they, they haven’t grown up with it so it’s easy for them to default o what they know. What we found was that, for a long time, it was easy to get things signed off if they were a small add-on to a big campaign, but recently, Coke in particular seem to have moved away from that

29. Search • A difficult medium to work with • Highly specialist implementation • Confused clients • Changing very fast • Digital planners are broadly happy with the tools and support • Non digital planners struggle to have much of an opinion

30. Search It’s like Lost – you really think you’re getting somewhere, and then there’s a whole new series. It’s quite hard to fathom, even if you specialise in digital, that’s why you have the Search department who’re these mad little experts My personal opinion is that I don’t know it even belongs within a media agency, it’s that different to everything else that I seem to do. I think I really underestimated Search, coming from the off-line, I talk to so many people, if you say to people in radio, media owners, and they say, how do Google make money, and I say, you know the stuff in the blue box in the top, that’s paid for, and they say, really?, and people don’t seem to realise, I think it’s quite a different experience if you don’t work in media, people just assume out of the blue that this must be a really good search.

31. Advertising networks • Known by the digital planners • Cheap • Performance buy • Not for carefully crafted campaigns • Popular amongst clients • Addicted to CPA and therefore love cheap clicks • Runs counter to ‘proper’ media planning “it’s fine if you’re not too concerned about where the ads going to appear, if you’re not too precious about your environment”

32. Advertising networks You can pick the categories you do and don’t want to go into , but if you want to go newspaper sites, but you don’t want to go into the Sun and the Star, you can’t narrow down that much These places, they’re either sales houses for people who don’t have sales houses, or they’re selling distressed inventory that no-one else thinks is worth a shit there’s enough poker sites or porn sites out there, that you’ve got to be very careful that your brand isn’t appearing in the wrong space And invariably you’ll get a client ringing up and saying, yeah, I’ve just been on-line and seen our ad on that site, and what are we doing on there, and that’s part and parcel of that network buying?

33. Web vs TV • Too early to be a consideration for most planners • Spontaneously think of IPTV • Or using a TV ad online • No evidence of budgets moving around yet We have a 52-week TV laid down, and we also have, which is new this year, a 52-week on-line, but it would sit alongside, not instead of • Some media distinctions about how you use TV and how you use online “you can’t just take a TV ad and bang it onto a website”

34. Media owners

35. What a difference a year makes • The year when cross channel deals became a reality • At a macro level driven by the web • At an industry level driven by improving departments and offerings from media owners themselves • Some change has been required internally (at the agencies) • Trading groups have had to work more closely together • Planners have had to broaden their expertise and creativity • A huge improvement in the quality of media owner offerings • Better ideas per se • More joined up, though still not perfect

36. What a difference a year makes That’s been something they’ve been talking about for five years, but it’s only just started to happen, there’s RSVP and there’s IPC up for it, and they’ve pitched for stuff for the past three years, and as soon as this year comes, you see them cropping up on people’s plans, and it tangibly becomes, well, we’ve got this site, this deal. The web’s increasingly forcing fragmentation, increasingly you’re seeing people who can sell across them, and create more of a platform. There’s a cry of desire for more of a platform or one big idea In 2001and 2002,the on-line guys wouldn’t even speak to the press sellers, they would probably even sit in a different building, but now it’s completely different There was a period of time when it would be like, yeah, we’ve got the magazine, and you can have this many impressions on the site, and it meant nothing to anybody, where now it’s more on the site we have this sort of a proposition, we have this sort of section in the magazine, and it’s two quite solid elements, almost equal …….

37. More contact • An increase in the quantity and quality of media owner contact • Last year, many felt distant from media owners • Especially as they became more senior “They went through a stage of trying to get the planners into the media owners, didn’t they, specific people just to speak to planners, not to speak to buyers” • Though still some lingering reservations There’s still this point-scoring system, like each rep’s got to get thirty different free lunches to get, so you get them coming in saying, yeah, I’m here, say whatever you want, I’m safe, my bonus is good, and you think, just go away

38. Who do they contact • The majority still go through personal contacts developed over years or via the buying departments if they don’t know anyone • Some are aware of the new planner contacts • A sense that they are more willing to see them “You become a bit picky about the ones you do see, it’s the ones that are relevant, and you know that when you’ve spoken to them in the past, they really understand what you’re trying to achieve”

39. What they want from reps Yeah, they’ll still come in with the same kind of rate and reach information that I’m not really interested in- I want to know more about the brand or something like that Sometimes, when they call up and say they want to come in and meet you, they could help their cause by having something more concrete to bring to the table Yeah, they just come in and start talking about their new formats, and it’s more valuable to us if they come in with ideas, they ask for a brief and you give them something where they can showcase ideas, or if they’ve been doing research recently, what the results are, and what that can mean for us.

40. Trade marketing

41. So what sticks ? • Research • Consumer first not sales driven • Emap and C4 have a good track record of big studies that capture the imagination Emap did a good one, the Insider one. And if they’ve got a track record for being good, you feel warmer towards them, like with Emap and C4, you think, ah, I’ll go along to that, but there are others where you just don’t bother

42. So what sticks ? • Creativity • Not all gimmicks are loved but they do grab attention • Food, pens, memory sticks all popular • Wasting money (or paper) on daft things becoming less and less popular I have a real problem with them – I once got a big box with a 1980’s phone in it, and I just thought what was the point, it was just a complete waste of money, there are better ways of getting your attention than just chopping down a forest

43. So what sticks ? • Events • Seminars and conferences reasonably well attended • Orange, IAB, C4, emap • And not all juniors I think if you send it to the right person, the Head of Press for example, then they send it to the right people, and it kind of becomes compulsory that you do attend • Roadshows at agencies also popular

44. Final words of wisdom

45. The future Mobile – it’s always about mobile, you’re always waiting for something tangible, and I think in the next year or two, when people drop the data downloading costs for broadband, you’ll suddenly get a massive uptake when it’s cheaper. Also PVR’s becoming more mainstream with more freebies, it’ll be interesting to see where that goes As on-demand with the gear-up to analogue switch-off and IPTV with 2010 being the year that really takes hold, and with BBC i-Player coming, that’s going to be a big shift, that whole technology And Vista’s going to roll out this year, if you get Vista with, what is it, two foot and ten foot solutions, it’s mad, I mean a two solution would be on your PC, where you’re looking at it like that, and ten foot would be when you’re ten foot away from a big plasma screen, but your computer’s hooked up, and suddenly your whole entertainment media consumption is going through that, there’s going to be massive shift when that takes hold

46. Integration It’s not a landscape at the moment where an easy win’s going to work, you’ve really got to get your head round it, and not all media owners and creative agencies have managed to do that yet, they just need to catch up and invest time in understanding it, understanding where clients and media agencies’ businesses have changed, so that you can have the right conversation with planners I think if you’re an off-line brand, and you haven’t got your on-line, it’s going to be tight – a media brand I really like is Virgin, because it’s a small company, when you deal with Virgin, it’s like a little family, everyone knows everyone, but I don’t think they’ve worked out and monetised their digital yet, so for companies like that, the big growth area would be that

47. Brand as platform If it’s all from the consumer, then you start there, and then work outwards in terms of what brand are closest to it, and it’s not necessarily in the format that it’s consumed, but it is what that medium is saying, what it means to people Media owners can offer more than just one thing, they can offer multiple things, it’s going to be bigger. And you get the consistency as well On a simple level, when you’re planning, I think you’re moving away from thinking things like, oh, TV delivers the numbers, press delivers sell message, you’re moving away from that and thinking about the media brands that share the same values, and that you want to be working with, and be associated with One of the first things that pops into my head is, oh, this would be perfect for a Guardian reader or an Independent reader, or something like that, you don’t think in terms of press or on-line anymore, you try and think across the board

48. The new sales call If they don’t have anything to say to you, it’s just like, oh, I just want to hear an update from you, and personally, well, I’m really busy, and giving you an update is, well, if it’s not a proper brief, it’s kind of wasting their time, and it’s wasting my time, because you’re not telling them anything they can go away with and come back with It’s really for them to tell us stuff that’s really interesting, even if nothing’s changed in the market, just to come in and go, do you know what, Marks and Spencer have been doing this, and I think it’s really good, and I’m not sure if you’ve seen it, but here’s some stuff, and I’d go, brilliant

49. The old challenges That’s a big part of it, getting them to really understand your brand as well, as if they’re working on it It’s difficult, though, because we’re saying we’re not going to give them the time just to come in and give them an update, and on the other hand, we slate them for not understanding our brands, so I do feel for them

50. More bravery What I find really good is when they come in and champion their medium as well as their brand, so there’s certain people that I know – Carlton Screen would be one, possibly ITV, Yahoo would be another – where I’d say, look, I’ve got a question about cinema, TV or internet in generally, not specific to their brand, and I know who I can go and ask, that’s really, really helpful Having an opinion, a classic example is a conversation I had this morning with Metro, where a lot of people have done cover wraps, I want to know, seeing as it’s your brand, who’s done it really well and who’s really naff, what are the learnings they’ve got, and they go, “ooh no, we think all of them are lovely”, and that’s bollocks, I mean have an opinion –it’s the blandness that’s annoying