FOCUS, SIMPLIFY & DELIVER BRILLIANT BASICS – How to maximise media investments in the current climate.
As the advertising industry, like so many others, is challenged during these unprecedented times, now more than ever is the time to simplify, remove complexity and focus on brand purpose, humanity and delivering brilliant media and marketing basics.
As so many advertisers are facing financial constraints at this time, we’ve outlined some quick tips to consider on how to maximise media investments and to help weather the storm.
Focus on Business Critical & Simplify
Focus media investments on those products, consumers and markets that drive the revenue and are truly business critical. Not everything can be supported through paid media, and to be focused also means saying “no”. Assess team structures and ways of working to ensure agility. Example, simplifying uber-complex review and approval processes to fast track decisions, save time, and resources. Simplicity also pays. According to “The World’s Simplest Brands”, a global consumer study by Siegel + Gale, brands that consumers perceive as simple, consistently outperform the major stock indexes. If there was ever a time to simplify, it’s now.
Focus on Agency Contracts, Pricing, Deals and Safety Settings
Review your current contracts. In the current climate, it may be good to know your legal position in terms of your commitments to your agency, and your agency to you. You may also want to re-evaluate your pricing commitments. Media owners are looking for commitments from advertisers and may offer different benefits to gain these assurances.
Also many brand safety and other system settings (like content environment) will need to be adjusted to reflect the current climate. Example, if you have a brand safety setting featuring “COVID” then your reach will be massively hit, as so many sites are covering COVID related content. In addition, audiences for topics like live sports have collapsed, so discuss with your agency.
Focus on Connection Planning & Collaboration
If you haven’t already done so, get marketing teams together to develop an integrated comm’s plan, one that clearly maps out 2020 comm’s activities (paid media, owned channels, PR, CRM, re-scheduled events and any other communications) to get a holistic perspective. If you have one, great, then re-work it to ensure media investments are focused on campaigns that are truly essential and develop a “Plan B” to support all else via owned channels or other. To help deliver this, we’ve recently led “virtual planning workshops” for clients, to quickly develop revised plans, take decisions and implement.
Focus on Priority Media & Deliver Brilliant Basics
With your agency partners, review media plans and prioritize what is essential to ensure effective campaign performance. When cuts need to be made, it will fast track decision making and minimize detrimental effect to overall plan performance. Consider consolidating investments into fewer campaigns to ensure impact and focus on fewer media, with executional excellence. Example: provide consumers “best in class mobile experiences” vs fragmenting budgets across too many channels with little to no effect.
Filter!
In the current climate, filter all communications before launching, asking yourself as a consumer, not as a marketer, “how would I feel seeing this message right now”? According to a recent Edelman Trust Barometer study, conducted across 12 global markets, 65% of consumers say how brands respond to the current crisis will have a “huge impact” on their likelihood to buy their products, with 90% wanting brands to partner with government and relief agencies. If there was ever a time to focus on promoting your brand’s values and purpose to humanity (genuinely), it’s now, as these are the brands consumers will remember in years to come.
We hope this provides some quick, practical tips. If there is anything we can support you with at this time, even if it’s just for an independent perspective, please let us know. No ask is too small. For further information please contact Julie.marshall@flock-associates.com