PHD Perspectives: On the Irrelevance of Screens - Ed Castillo - MediaBizBloggers - Ed Castillo - MediaBizBloggers.com

Published: July 16, 2010 at 09:49 AM GMT
Last Updated: July 21, 2010 at 09:49 AM GMT

Media agency work often involves "channel planning" during which we make assumptions about the role, significance and/or effect of communications given their channel (TV, radio, print, etc.). To inform their channel plans, media folks often look for idiosyncrasies in the ways their targets "use" various media... or "learnings" re: the roles these media (presumably) play in influencing brand awareness, consideration and transaction.

This strikes me as being a bit like judging the musicality of a song based on its source (e.g., disc-player, a radio or a record) or making claims about the impact of a movie by appeal of the DVD player, TV-type or iPad used to watch it.

The easy argument to make against a channel-planning mentality is to focus on the nature of the content itself as opposed to the medium (as in "that spot worked because it reminded him of something meaningful and funny, not because he saw it in 1080p HDTV."). The more elusive argument, however, is that what matters with content is WHY it is seen (and not how it was seen).

At a recent conference I heard a speaker say something simple (almost too simple to notice) which on reflection is a remarkable idea: "When your customer sees your ad…," he asked, "…does he even care that you are there?" While the speaker was making an argument for niche-blog-placements over portal-placement ('where everyone just expects to see you, making you invisible') I believe that his question is relevant to my distaste for "channel planning"…

When we take his question seriously, we are led directly to a place where "channel planning" (i.e., focusing on the 'canvas' that carries the message) reveals itself to be impotent when compared with, oh let's call it "significance planning" (or, "engagement planning") which focuses on why the message is seen in the first place.

How did you come to experience the message? What (meaningful) states of affairs led to your encountering it??

· Did a friend send you the content (and if so, what kind of friend; an early adopter? Someone who's opinion you trust/distrust?)

· Did you encounter the content in a place in which you would never expect to encounter such content?

· Have you connected with a new group of friends on a social network and now seem to receive new kinds of ads (and are conscious of this)?

These are only a few of countless 'conditions leading the reception of a message,' and while I realize that we can't always control for the vectors taken by the content that we deploy in the name of building our clients' brands, perhaps it's time to start giving the idea some serious thought.

How is your target likely to feel when she sees your content (based where, when and from whom it comes)? What is the impact of her path to your content (or your content's path to her)?

In this age, a given bit of content is just as likely to be seen in a magazine, online, on TV, on an iPod or and iPad (the "Is iPad content TV, print or digital?" question alone justifies my concern with the meaning and value of "channel planning"!). Therefore, shouldn't we go well beyond "channel" when planning to connect consumers with content?

Ed Castillo, SVP, Director of Account Planning at PHD Media, a Division of Omnicom. You can follow Ed @xandnotx

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Hi Ed,
I feel this is exactly the type of question we need to be posing ourselves right now.
Also working at a media agency my single biggest frustration has been the industry's inability to escape media consumption analysis as having too dominant an input on channel selection. To me not only are the assumptions involved in consumption analysis generally crass and clumsy but they then go on to effectively operate as a strait jacket for the development of communications strategies.
In order to give clients effective (rather than simply efficient) channel planning I think our first priority should be to examine how suitable channels are to perform the specific communications tasks we’ve set for them. This should include asking a lot of the questions that you posed above and working alongside creative agencies to establish which channels can provide the strongest execution of an idea. I think this latter point is crucial and entails that neither media nor account planning should precede the other but rather they should develop alongside each other through iterative processes.
Mark

Posted at 02:51 PM on Jul 20, 2010 by Mark Lester