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How Long Should I Advertise For? |
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Written by Tom D
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Tuesday, 24 June 2008 |
Should I advertise for three weeks real heavy or run a lighter schedule throughout the entire season? Here some thoughts from one of the world's preeminent practiioners of such questions.
Erwin Ephron is a legend. He is credited with practically inventing the concept used in major advertising agencies around the world of MEDIA PLANNING-the practice of researching, weighing and scheduling ads to be their most effective and efficient. Mr. Ephron also coined the term RECENCY. The term has grown to mean the idea of hitting a prospective customer with an advertising message as close to actual purchase as possible. Or as Ephron himself explains, “It’s the simple idea that advertising influences the brand-choice of consumers who are in the market for the product.” The following is taken almost word for word from Ephron’s website, Eprononmedia.com and offers keen insight into how to plan a radio or any advertising campaign.
Ephron goes on to explain, “We have also gone through a reevaluation of what makes consumers buy. We now appreciate it is events in their lives -- the empty cereal box, the high telephone bill, the broken dishwasher, the expiring car lease, the wedding anniversary -- that gets them to make a purchase, not the advertising.
Recency planning grows from the sound idea that consumer needs drive advertising effects. The critical variable is whether a consumer is "in the market," which means the timing as well as the targeting of the message is important. Visualize a window of advertising opportunity in front of each purchase. Advertising's job is to influence the purchase. Recency planning's job is to place the message in that window.
So how do we do that?
Hal Miller, the legendary media director at Grey Advertising, used to talk about media's "Law of the Strawberry Jam: The further you spread it, the thinner it gets."
Seasonality and Hal's law of the Strawberry Jam lead us to flight advertising, but flighting gives us an itch. The possibility that any gains made during weeks when the advertising is heavy, may be lost during weeks when there's no advertising at all. We convince ourselves that flighting is the best alternative because we accept a theory of advertising communication called effective frequency.
Effective frequency is the idea that multiple exposures to an advertising message in limited period of time are required for it to have an effect. Multiple exposures require concentration of limited GRPs, which pushes us to advertise intensely for short periods (flighting), instead of advertising moderately for longer periods (continuity).A number of studies (including Reichel, Jones and the Colin McDonald material analyzed in Mike Naples 1979 "Effective Frequency" monograph) show that the effect of advertising is greatest when the exposure is close to the purchase. The word for this is "propinquity" or closeness in time.
Consumers are familiar with most advertised brands in the product categories they use. So the function of most brand advertising is to remind people about the brand when they are ready to purchase the product.
Since people purchase products every day, ideally, a brand needs to remind people every day, to maximize its share of business. Seen this way, the real issue in scheduling is presence, not frequency. The value of what we call "frequency" is not repetition, but propinquity, the greater probability of being there with a reminder, when the consumer is ready to purchase.
Krugman says as much when he writes, "Advertising needs frequency because like a product sitting on a shelf, you never know when the consumer is going to be looking for you, so you have to rent the shelf space all the time."
The ideas of presence and propinquity also close the biggest hole in effective frequency planning: the paradox of concentration. The most cost-effective way to increase reach at a frequency of three-or-more is to run three commercials in the same telecast.
Today serious students of advertising understand there is no formula answer to the question "what is effective frequency." They believe multiple exposures are important for new products and new campaigns, but they also believe a single message can work by reminding the consumer close to purchase. This is the strategy of Presence to achieve Propinquity.
How presence is scheduled depends upon the distribution of purchases across time and, probably most important, the budget. Presence also supports the use of 15-second commercials to remind.
Which brings us back to Hal Miller and the Law of the Strawberry Jam. Remember how the Red Queen cautioned Alice against flighting. She said, "Jam every other day, may be no jam at all."
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 24 June 2008 )
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