Bink's personal views on marketing and media

Here's some random thoughts.  Let me know if you have ideas on how to better connect them together.

1. Many people hate marketing and Marketers
2. Advertising works
3. The history of advertising has been to interrupt people's entertainment 
4. The future of advertising is about connecting and contributing to communities on multiple platforms
5. Not all media is priced appropriately.  While I agree that that the Yellow Pages can work, the cost of advertising in it is ridiculously high for the number of people who actually use it.
6. Each media type offers a unique platform to communicate from.
7. These platforms are most effective when connected together by bridges (The USP)
8. The more senses (sight, taste, touch, hear, smell) you can communicate to, the more effective your message and therefore brand will become.
9. Marketing is the strategy and Advertising is the execution
10. Passion & Connection wins.  
11. The best marketing plan that I've seen is this...CARE
12. The second best marketing plan that I've seen aligned all resources to a multi platform plan according to useage
13. Marketers are not normal.  we turn up commercials.
14. Today, every person has the ability to my publish & broadcast themselves. 
15. Marketing is hard to measure. 
16. The consumer purchasing journey is normal.  trigger, initial consideration set, active evaluation to add more options, purchase, post-purchase evaluation, re-trigger, loyalty loop.
17. Every media type has a use. 

Yellow Pages - lumps your business services alongside your competition, in every category, to reach an older consumer who "needs it fixed right now".  Less than 5% of daily media time is spent here and shrinking.

Newsprint - allows you to visually display a brand alongside editorial content of yesterday's news.  has a aging demographic of "coupon clippers".  Seriously, I wonder what the adspace to content ratio is.  Accounts for about 10% of daily media time and shrinking.

Radio - The original real time communication platform.  at it's best, gives you the ability to target any demographic by audio in their minds eye.  At worst, it's an unmeasurable Johnny Fever pimpin' product.  With online streaming added in, about 30% of peoples daily media time is spent here.

Direct Mail -  visually interrupts a person at home with your product samples/logo/mesage in a postal code.  1% rate of return is optimistic.  Less than 1%

TV - Bruce said it....57 Channels and nothing on.  "the boss" is only partially right.  On my tv, it's more like 400 channels and something's on.  Mostly on my PVR.  TV is arguably the most powerful medium up until now.  I read somewhere that The Final Epsiode of I Love Lucy had 70% of the american audience watching it compared to 17% of the final episode of the current reigning champion...American Idol.   Average daily media time spent 30%

Internet - Real time platform 2.0.  If radio is the James Brown of media, then internet is the baby Huey.  Canadians already spend about 20% of our daily media time with this medium, but are limited to high speed access.  What happens when the internet is as pervasive as electricity?  The ways that we can communicate with eachother (email, text, social media, geotargeting, game play, consumer reviews)  changes almost as fast as the devices that we communicate with (commodore 64, desktop computers, sony walkman, Android, iPADs, google TV).   

Outdoor - Billboards, bus wraps, building signage.  To make an impact, it's either "power to the people" good or it's about size & locations...the more the better

one other amazing facts...

Did you know that some preying mantis' can catch and eat small mice?

Popcorn, Peanuts, Hotdogs....Get your media value here

I'm willing to bet that Popcorn, Peanuts and Hotdogs are a part of the fabric of baseball, not because they're good for you, but because the fans appear to get a lot for their money (and ball parks get big mark up). In a year like this, we're reminded by nearly every marketing group that we, as consumers, should expect to get more for our money. The McDonalds Value Meals, www.Hotwire.com 's "Best Value" deal, Hyundai's incredible growth http://www.thestar.com/business/article/759602--hot-hyundai-revs-up-january-auto-sales are but a few examples that illustrate this point.

So what is value? According to thefreedictionary.com, value can be defined like this..."reasonable or equivalent return"

My next question is, SO WHAT? How then do we deliver value in Media? Wikipedia explains that "When an organization delivers high value at high price, the perceived value may be low. When it delivers high value at low price, the perceived value may be high." When it comes to media, one way to define value is to say that a high value media is one that can deliver your message to the most potential consumers, the most times for the least cost.

Each media has it's own strengths and weaknesses so it's hard to find an apples to apples comparison. However, for the purpose of this article lets look at how many consumers are using each media on any average day since it's indicitive of consumer behaivour.

According to the Canadian Newspaper Association http://www.cna-acj.ca/en/aboutnewspapers/circulation, the 2008 average daily circulation of the
Calgary Herald is 119,909
Calgary Sun is 49,633

There is limited information on how many people use Yellow Pages on an average day, but according to the Fall 2009, BBM RTS survey of Adults 12+, the number of people in Calgary who will use the Yellow Pages today is 36,016.

According to S4,2009 PPM results, our Radio stations would reach the following Average Daily Audience
JACK FM - 110,150
LITE 96 - 94,338
660NEWS - 48,148
FAN 960 - 46,837

Using my best estimates a full page, full color yellow pages ad costs about $5000/month and given you have to buy 12 months thats accounts for $60,000 of my annual budget.

With the same budget, I could buy about
16 full page ads @ $3600 each in the Calgary Sun.
12 full page ads @ $5000 each in the Calgary Herald
26 weeks @ 21 or more ads per week on either FM station PLUS 26 weeks @ 35 or more ads per week on either AM station

Which media has the most value for you?