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Feb
13
I’ve had some interesting conversations with some media sales friends over the last few weeks on the prospect of the US ad recession and its impact on our sales efforts and tactics. Many of them are in TV and some in Newspaper. Interestingly, the Canadian economy is still strong, attitudes are bullish and consumer buying is actually pretty good - we don’t have a recession here yet. Canada’s banks also didn’t fall for the sub-prime tactics as deeply (partly for legal reasons) and so lending is still ok up here in the North, which helps perpetuate the consumer spending. Canada has probably got a year or so of good economy while we wait to see what happens in the US.
The US Ad Recession does however, affect our collective media sales efforts in the US, which is where many of my efforts are right now. My conversations with traditional media reps to date have focused around the Olympics and the political sending as what will keep the ad biz from falling to far as an industry.
Recently, however, watching what has happened in the US has had me focused on the targeting capabilities of Digital OOH as what may be a focal selling point to work through buyer reticence around spending on advertising. Ultimately, what’s a better way to use your precious ad dollars than in one of the more efficient and targeted mediums? And we all know (man - don’t we know!) how cheap the Digital OOH medium is and how effective compared to the other mediums out there for comparable audience numbers.
So I had to laugh when Ad Age reported on local radio and had much more succinct arguments than I do around why Brands (including Wal-Mart) have already shifted spending into localized radio to counter the recession.
Per the article:
top spenders from brands like Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and Macy’s, as well as key media buyers at Mediaedge:cia and MediaVest, spoke of radio’s advantages and efficiencies in executing less costly media plans.
The Wal-Mart crew supported this approach further:
Rex Conklin, media director of Wal-Mart Stores, said Wal-Mart has already started using radio for more efficient media spending in the wake of economic recession. “Particularly in a down economy, the advantages of radio are significant in that it’s very local and very flexible, which is incredibly important, especially when you’re talking about pricing. Being able to change copy in a day if I need to is very important to Wal-Mart as a retailer.” He added that Wal-Mart is continuing to look at programs that will take advantage of radio in this economy.
Want a good laugh? replace every instance of RADIO with DIGITAL SIGNAGE and you’ll find the sales message that every Digital OOH sales guy has been using for 4 years now.
Richard Phelan, media director, Macy’s, New York, echoed Mr. Conklin in his appreciation of
radio’s ability to customize copy and also to “really drive people to stores and obviously the end sales. It’s something we must continue to consider as hopefully this doesn’t last as long as everyone’s saying. I think it’s a great medium to use in times of whether it’s a good time or a bad time [for the economy.]”
Laurie Clark at Coca-Cola had a quote that involved in-store:
She noted that recent brand launches for Coke Zero and some of the company’s water products used emerging media to supplement media buys. As recently as five years ago, the majority of Coke’s media buys were executed on TV and radio. Now those mediums are being used to more efficiently drive reach and to support other buys the company is making with in-store media and other new platforms.
Digital Signage advertising is even more targeted than Radio and if the radio industry (which is a mature industry that is growing) thinks that they’re a good choice and their customers agree, I think we can do them one (or two or three or four) better.
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