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Special
Media Issue
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Why
media planing must be redefined
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Santosh
Desai
Strategic Management Research Team. |
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If
the medium is indeed the message, why is media planning
not at the heart of the communication process? Why is
the media function still seen as an important but a peripheral
player, a kind of quantitative outhouse in the main agency
compound? Why is it the perennial postscript at presentations
(“And finally, we will do media if we have the time”)?
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To be sure,
media has evolved dramatically. We all know how the
media landscape has changed. The media explosion and
the resultant media fragmentation has given rise to
a new, even more dazzling set of acronyms that the function
can befuddle its audiences with. Structurally the function
has changed, the business model has changed as have
tracking methods. In short, virtually everything has
changed.
And yet, what this change seems to have accomplished
is to push media even more into isolation. It has become
a more specialised island, where mainland laws do not
apply. It is a code language that specialists whisper
to each other while everyone else in the room furtively
looks at their watches. Maybe there is nothing wrong
with this.
Maybe media
has become too complex a subject for generalists. Maybe
the wise thing to do is to let media as a function evolve
on its own as a full discipline in its own right
And here lies
the paradox. There are enough respected thinkers who
believe that media plays the primary role in communication.
That content is nothing and media is everything. Marshall
McLuhan is the most celebrated among a band of media
determinists who believe that media has impacted society
much more than the content it carries. And that every
medium has its own implicit language through which it
effects the viewer..
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At
a commonsensical level, this is not new to us. We know
that the same message carried in print produces a different
effect than if carried on television. And likewise for
all media. The question is, how much do we know about
these differences? Apart from clichés like ‘newspapers
are good for topicality and magazines retentivity (a word
created unmistakably by media planners), how well do we
really understand the effect media has on people? |
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truth is that our conception of media is that it is a
passive vehicle, an inert deliverer of a ‘potent’ message.
Its role is to bridge the distance between the message
and the receiver. Its effectiveness is judged on the basis
of how many people it delivers the message to at what
level of intensity and cost. All measurement of media
effectiveness relates to how well the message is transmitted
and not how well it is received. Media is thus seen as
a ‘dead’ intermediary, a mere postman in the core communication
process. The larger problem lies in our definition of
what constitutes media. Again we define the tangible carriers
of message as media. What about typography? Typography
is, in fact, a medium; choosing one font over another
is conceptually like choosing one medium over another.
Only here, the evaluation is not based on reach and frequency
but on which font best conveys the intent of the message.. |
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The
dramatic evolution in the media landscape has only pushed
media even more into isolation. It is a code language
that specialists whisper to each other while everyone
else in the room furtively looks at their watches.
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Typography
is a good way for us to grasp the full conceptual meaning
of media. Like all media, a font is a carrier of a message,
but one that transforms the message itself. Imagine the
Sony logo in a thin elegant typeface; it would forever
alter the meaning of that brand, without any change in
any other message.
In a similar
way, the cartoon is a medium. It has its own language
and produces its own distinctive effect. A mouse beating
the brains out of a cat is considered funny, for one.
A music video is likewise a medium for a similar set of
reasons. By the same token, a 30-second commercial is
a medium and, that too, one distinct from a 10-second
commercial.
When we define
media in terms of tangible carriers of messages, we inevitably
focus largely on numbers. Since it is assumed that the
only effect media has on people is that it faithfully
transports a message, the evaluation is quantitative:
how many people it reached how many times. Even the qualitative
parameters used
— finding a
fit between the environment and the message or ensuring
that the message is delivered at a time when the receiver
is most receptive — are not derived from the transformational
role that the medium itself plays.
And this role
is critical. Walter Ong uses the example of orality and
literacy to make this point. The medium of writing has
profoundly changed the world. Writing allows us to separate
thought from action, logic from emotion. It allows us
to not react instantly but to formulate our thoughts and
place them in a structure. It robs our reactions of their
immediacy and hence postpones emotion.
Oral cultures,
on the other hand, do not separate thought from action,
and respond instantly and with emotion. The oral-written
difference is at the heart of the East-West divide in
the way each think and what they respond to. The implications
of this perspective are quite interesting. Given the fact
that India has been an oral culture, what kind of message
do we as a people respond to? What narrative styles are
we instinctively more comfortable with?
The Hindi film
structure tells us that we certainly do respond to a unique
narrative style. Befitting an oral culture, our films
are dramatic and decidedly non-linear, unlike western
films. The power of music is another pointer to what we
respond to.
The challenge
for us is to understand the full scope and power of media
and to cascade it back on to the message strategy. Currently,
no one in the communication planning process understands
how media and people interact.. |
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We
could segment the audience on the basis of how they
consume media, how they process information. We know
for instance that different children learn differently.
Some learn by rote, others by writing, and yet others
by analogies. Why not use this understanding in defining
media segments?.
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This
could lead to completely new perspectives. For instance,
we could segment the audience not by demographics or psychographics
or even in terms of what they buy or watch but on the
basis of how they consume media, how they process information.
Again this is not really new, but we know for instance
that different children learn differently. Some learn
by rote (oral culture strikes again), others by writing,
and yet others by analogies. Why not use this understanding
in defining media segments?
This would conceivably lead to defining people from a
true media perspective, which is not from the transmission
but at the reception end. It would also take media into
the heart of the strategic and creative processes where
it rightfully belongs.
Is this a point
of view that makes sense conceptually but is not really
relevant in the real world? Not really. We all know that
the 30-second commercial is no longer the cornerstone
of the communication mix. The brand will increasingly
communicate through non-traditional means. Already events,
promotions, brand ambassadors and their ilk are eating
into budgets of what we traditionally define as media.
We must be able to evaluate whether Rs 3 crore are better
spent on a commercial or on roping in Shah Rukh Khan as
a brand ambassador. If the media function stays stuck
in its narrow definition of what it calls media as well
as in evaluating everything primarily on the basis of
numbers, it will find itself addressing an ever-smaller
share of the communication pie.
The basis for
evaluation has to shift to determining which ‘medium’
produces the best effect. The media strategists of tomorrow
must become focused on how people receive messages, regardless
of which source they come from. It calls for a radical
overhaul of the media mindset, a willingness to acquire
new skills and a desire to embrace a new intellectually
more challenging role.
The medium is
the message, but are we listening?. |
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