Best Practice: Media

Summary
There are some common themes about what works in social media; those presented here are a synthesis of various insights from the Cranfield Customer Management Forum. Companies ranging from Virgin Media to IBM to Great Ormond Street Hospital to Citibank and Volkswagen all have different social media strategies with different goals in mind. Macdonald and Wilson examine their effectiveness and what more should be done.

Summary
A Warc Best Practice paper on measuring and understanding newspaper audiences. The discipline is struggling to keep up with fast-changing consumption patterns, with many preferring newspaper websites to the print products. Adspend for the medium is also falling around the world, as are circulations. The paper looks into the strategic value of placing newspaper ads, overs an overview of how ad impressions are measured and points towards future development in the sector.

Summary
Measurement and understanding of Out of Home audiences has improved markedly in recent years, helping the medium in its defence against the rise of the internet and mobile media. US$31.2 billion will be spent on Out of Home advertising worldwide in 2011, according to ZenithOptimedia (April 2011) – 6.7% of major media adspend globally. Ten years previously, spending was almost exactly half of this total and its share was under 5.4%; but twenty years before, its share had been 6.4%. So Out of Home advertising has succeeded in re-gaining its share of the market in the face of fierce competition and is expected to at least maintain this share over the next two years. In reality, it is probably larger and more significant than the official statistics suggest, as many of the newer forms of out of home advertising are simply not captured. As well as roadside panels and public transport networks; out of home encompasses advertising on ashtrays, beer mats, mugs, sandwich boards, balloons, airships, floors, doors, litter bins, bus shelters, supermarket trolleys, milk cartons, the backs of supermarket receipts and even virtual panels within video games2.

Summary
This Warc Best Practice paper is an extract from Hamish Pringle and Jim Marshall's 2011 book Spending Advertising Money in the Digital Age: How to Navigate the Media Flow. It argues that many media budgeting methods lack rigour. But there is a growing consensus that using the relationship between SOV (share of voice) and SOM (market share) as the most important determinant of the budget level required. Generally, media budgeting is seen as a sophisticated analytical process which requires accurate information on the brand's competitive set, its status within it, and the history of advertising and media expenditure in its category. And the paper goes on to argue that brands that spend enough money and marshal all their media resources to provide more prominent and multiple touch points for their customers do better than those who under-invest.

Summary
This Warc Best Practice paper is an extract from Hamish Pringle and Jim Marshall's 2011 book Spending Advertising Money in the Digital Age: How to Navigate the Media Flow. It argues that the client brief often does not supply sufficient, clear, or even accurate information. The ideal brief, the formulation of which is as much the agency media strategist's responsibility as the client's, should be based on five questions: 1. Where are we now?, 2. Where do we want to be?, 3. What are we doing to get there?, 4. Who do we need to talk to? and 5. How will we know when we have arrived? In summary, the paper urges all media strategists to ensure they have a good brief from their client which includes a clear and focused hard business objective for the brand to achieve.

Summary
For years, television and newspapers dominated marketing campaigns worldwide, with magazines playing, effectively, third fiddle. In 2009, the medium moved one more place down the rankings when it was also overtaken by internet advertising. While magazine adspend is in the decline, it is still forecasted that it accounts for 9% of global adspend. They are amongst the most fragmented of media but 'fragmented' can also be re-written as 'segmented': there is a magazine for almost every conceivable interest and hobby. The medium as a whole may arguably be under less threat from new ad avoidance technologies than its rivals. However the proliferation of new formats for magazine brands has brought with it new challenges. Like all papers in the Warc Best Practice Series, it includes a list of related articles and items for further reading, many of which are available on Warc.

Summary
Television is the dominant mass medium in the minds of major marketers and consumers. It has a 41% share of major media adspend globally. In 2001 - with internet advertising still in its infancy - the medium's share stood at 38%. Television therefore remains, for many marketers, the primary communications channel when launching a new brand or supporting an existing one. It offers impact through sound, pictures and motion, the ability to reach lots of people quickly, and 'talkability'. This issues covered included set-top boxes, peoplemeters, viewing contexts and interactive TV. Like all papers in the Warc Best Practice series, it includes a list of related articles and items for further reading, many of which are available on Warc.

Summary
Around US$33 billion will be spent on radio advertising in 2011 - about 7% of major media adspend globally. This share has never exceeded its high of 9% in 1999 and is predicted to see further gentle erosion over the coming years. Despite a perception as a background medium, it has several strengths as an advertising medium, studies contend that radio's impact disadvantage is in fact relatively small, especially when set against its far greater cost advantages. Like all papers in the Warc Best Practice series, it includes a list of references for further reading on Warc.com and elsewhere.

Summary
A Warc Best Practice paper on how marketers are using augmented reality techniques today - and how they could use these techniques in future. AR - here defined as the practice of overlaying computer-generated and /or 3D virtual representations on top of real world visual backdrops glimpsed on electronic screens - has many roles: it allows consumers to sample products in new ways, encourages consumers to engage with brands, can be used by advertisers as a revenue-generating tool, and can make existing marketing investments more efficient. The author suggests that the role of AR is changing as the technology becomes more familiar and the "wow" factor fades; it will increasingly fulfil long-term marketing aims rather than just create a short-term impact. AR will also increasingly use newer marketing channels such as mobile.

Summary
Laxity about the definitions we use is rife, such as the conflation of Media Neutral Planning (MNP), Communications Planning (CP) and Integrated Planning (IP). MNP is media-free thinking; CP is creating experiences and conversations between brands and people; and IP is a comprehensive plan (or strategy) for the entire customer journey. The case for brand integration has been won, but less clear is what it looks like, who runs it, and what the optimum methodology is when applying it. The main challenges are overcoming structural barriers to integration, developing people with the right skills and finding the right balance between specialist and generalist skills.