Media Planning

My Favorite Media Placement

Connecting with the market and standing out from the clutter are typically an ad creative issue. However, McDonald's, in my favorite media placement, managed to do both. Consider where people are looking while walking up the stairs from the subway - down at the stairs. In London, McDonald's had its red and yellow logo painted on every step leading from the underground to the street level. That is the kind of breakthrough creativity we admire at epr.

The advertising resource SRDS needs more than 1,200 pages to list U.S. business publications and more than 1,000 to list U.S. consumer publications. The public relations resource Bacon's details 18,000 U.S. newspapers, 12,000 radio stations and 3,400 TV stations. Add outdoor advertising and millions upon millions of Web sites and ezines and it is easy to see why even the most experienced media placement companies seem as bewildered and overwhelmed as some of their Clients. I saw a veteran of America's largest media firms paralyzed by the responsibility of planning an ad campaign blending TV, print and the Internet. At epr, we recognize the awesome responsibility we have as asset managers and take pleasure in squeezing stellar returns out of every dollar invested.

Our approach cuts to the chase:

(This is where sales-fluff would normally go.)

What we do works very much like this:

Historically, media placement firms earned 15% of the total budget invested in advertising as compensation for its contributions. As some advertisers questioned the contributions of their media placement firms, reduced commission rates became common. Consider that the work involved in planning a $800,000.00 campaign vs. a $1 million campaign is not very different strategically but the standard commission dictates an additional $30,000.00 in compensation - quite a difference.

Then along came the Internet, which demanded media firms expand its expertise to remain assets to their Clients. But with online publishers eschewing accepted compensation structures, and many going under before media firms could be paid for their efforts, media firms began bearing a disproportionate share of the risk of ad planning, even after accepting reduced commissions. Agencies, publishers and advertisers began searching for more equitable compensation solutions. At epr, we feel we have developed such a solution.

The Flat Fee Plan

For a single, flat fee, epr will deliver the following:

  1. Research and assess opportunities throughout traditional and online media
  2. Devise media strategy to deliver frequency, control costs
  3. Evaluate the budget - investing too much? Or not enough to achieve goals?
  4. Negotiate with media representatives to secure favorable rates and value-added programs
  5. Deliver recommended media plan for Client implementation
  6. Recommend measurement tools to build into ad creative
  7. Manage credit applications, contracts and placements
  8. Shield Client from media sales calls and meetings
  9. Take responsibility for securing compensation in the event of publisher's error
  10. Recommend follow-through steps to convert advertising leads into sales
  11. Review published/broadcast ads and send ad tear sheets to Client and Client sales team, if desired
  12. Monitor budget
  13. Present additional opportunities throughout the year

Or, also for a single, flat fee, epr will deliver #1 - 5 and walk away, if desired.

The epr Flat Fee media program is designed to compensate the agency for its contribution, rather than for the size of the Client's budget. Typically, the epr Flat Fee is significantly less than the standard agency commission. epr also accommodates traditional and alternative compensation plans as desired by the Client.

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