The Third Force....

I recently had the honour of chatting to the sales team of one of the major media sales houses. We discussed the dichotomy that exists between the allocation of adspend between media owners – regardless of performance of their mediums. Some media owners perform well (or poorly) despite their performance. It is as if there is some sort of third force involved in decision making in media!

For example – Finesse Magazine is currently sitting on a circulation of 95,000 copies a month (79% LSM 8-10). According to Adex, they made just under R10m in advertising income in 2007. Compare this to Fair Lady which is currently sitting on 71,000 copies in circulation (43% LSM 8-10) who made R43m in advertising income. Fair Lady has more readers according to AMPS – but not enough to justify four times the income in ad revenue!

These trends are all over the market – in radio, stations like RSG lag way behind the major regional radio stations despite having similar sized and profiled audiences. In newspapers The Sowetan has a quarter of the circulation of the Daily Sun and yet makes 60% of their ad budget.

There is something else that comes into the equation in a big way when media people make their decisions. Something that stretches beyond AMPS and way beyond common sense.

I think familiarity plays a big role in the decision making process. If you ask most people to name a female magazine title, I would bet that most would name Fair Lady, and Finesse would be much further down the list. Trying to sell a client on Finesse is not as easy as Fair Lady. Most clients have gone into Fair Lady before – and I would guess not very many have tried Finesse.

Secondly I think language plays a role. If a title is for a certain language group exclusively, I think planners tend to ditch it despite the numbers looking better from all angles. I think people think that by targeting a specific language group, they automatically exclude the vast majority of the South African population. 5fm got R100m more than RSG in ad revenue, despite RSG having more listeners, and having a similar profile of audience.

Thirdly, I believe that the sales force of a certain product plays a massive role. Certain brands are kept top of mind because their sales staff are in the faces of planners every day, while other media properties are not actively sold, and are therefore not put on the menu at all. Nowhere is this more evident than in the newspaper business, where one can clearly see one sales house completely out performing another sales house despite their lower circulation and readership.

The aim of the sales force should always be to keep the brand name top of mind with media decision makers, and to give these decision makers a reason to use their product.

Lastly, (and I hope I am wrong), I think some media decision makers get personal when it comes to media decisions. If they don’t watch a certain programme, they don’t advertise on it. If they don’t read a certain magazine, they don’t use it. No matter what the numbers say, there is a certain distrust that exists in the mind of the media decision maker. The old adage of clients picking billboards on the road where the CEO lives, seems to still be around, and seems to still permeate our industry.

Our industry cannot afford this, as it dilutes all our efforts down to a subjective call on what I like, instead of an informed decision on what the best media option is. Commoditisation of the worst kind...

By: Chris Botha, Director, The MediaShop