The average person remembers 30% of what he sees, 15% of what he hears, 60% of what he sees and hears, 80% of what he touches, and 93% of what he is touched by. Submerged as it is in this multisensory swamp, media is a very complex subject. Discussed -- as it usually is -- in terms of technical abstractions such as reach, frequency, and reader exposure units, media becomes an arcane science lost, like Odysseus, in a sea of numbers. It is well to remember that the reality of media is still to be found in the sweating palm and the living room.

The most powerful use of media in this example would be the bluebird singing on TV and then suddenly stopping when fallen upon by the tarantula. Dropping toast on the bluebird would achieve some of the same effect but would have to be regarded as a near miss. The bowling ball would be more effective on TV and the rifle shot on radio, depending of course on the product being advertised.

Media Strategies

In Practical terms, the foregoing theoretical considerations are omitted from the basic document of media selection -- the media strategy -- which is essentially a numerological treatise prepared to render the budgets of advertising agencies opaque to the scrutiny of corporate controllers.

As we have seen, advertising media are primarily sensory. However, this crucial fact is commonly aborted and orphaned on the conference table. Since media directors cannot comfortably discuss the intimate personal details of sense experience, they generally resort to the secondary media factors, which can be dealt with in numbers. This endows media directors with a certain quasi- professionalism since even a modest set of numbers can be divided by each other more or less indefinitely, producing more and more new numbers, called ratios or quotients, which in turn can be divided by each other to make coefficients or indices. Though random, these numbers are quite precise and take on impressive complexity because there are so many of them.

For example, a radio commercial costing $50, and heard by two listeners, ages 22 and 82, with incomes of $28,000 and $32,000, has a cost-per-listener of $25 or a cost-per-thousand of $25,000. This may be expressed as a cost efficiency of 2 on a scale of 1,000 with a theoretical maximum efficiency of $50 per thousand or 20 listeners per dollar or 5 cents a piece. This is just the beginning of a typical media efficiency analysis, but, already, one commercial and two listeners have generated 13 rating and quotient numbers, each of which can be extrapolated into 13 more, or 26 more when compared with the same figures for the following day, by which time one of the listeners has died and the other has had a baby, changing the averge age and income of the audience.

These averages are called "demographics." The first day's demographics rate as "upscale" because age and income data are above average. The second day's data show a marked downscale shift, indicating that this campaign may be in trouble.

Targets and Markets

Since advertising is intrinsically aggressive, its language tends to be military. Use of a narrowly selective medium such as Dakota Farmer magazine or a billboard outside a big customer's house is often referred to as a "rifle shot" as distinct from a broader "shotgun approach." In reality, it would make little sense to kill the farmer before he has a chance to buy your product, for example hog feed.

 
 
 

Still, marketing and media "targets" are selected before a "launch" or a "blitz," and several "flights" of commercials may support a "roll-out" in a "target" city.

In truth, "rifle shot" and "shotgun" are exaggerated claims for advertising's precision. "Strafing runs" might be more accurate, militarily (or, in some cases, "Fourth of July Fireworks Displays"); technically, "random walk" computer models might well narrate the path of an advertising campaign through society. For single ads and commercials, the appropriate image is that of a pin-cushion.

Still, like any inexact science, advertising must be quantified in order to be funded.

The typical advertising budget, with built-in sacrificial proposals which can be harmlessly lopped off. For obvious reasons, budgets are not normally presented to management in quite this fashion. "Entertainment," for example, is split up under headings such as "sales promotion," "directory advertising," and "postage."

Media Selection
and Budgeting

Anyone who can mix a half-decent martini should be able to devise an irreproachably integrated media schedule. Since the media strategy is prepared at the advertising agency -- and since the agency's income and stature depend on the size of its billings -- the principal budgeting objective is one of girth. Although prudish outsiders find this disturbing, it is actually quite proper. Advertising is, after all, intended to stimulate sales; thus maximum budgets are presumed to yield maximum sales increases. Since advertisers can never afford all the advertising their sales departments could use, as clients they are apt to cut any budgets their agencies propose. To minimize the damage this would inflict on sales, the agency must in good conscience recommend excessive expenditures so that, after budget-cutting, the pitiful remnant will be more than ample.

To achieve this objective, it is necessary merely to call in the representatives of various media and ask for their recommendations. TV reps will immediately perceive that TV is the total answer and will propose schedules calling for at least 80 percent of the estimated budget. Newspaper, magazine, and outdoor advertising (billboard) salesmen will do the same. Purveyors of airport dioramas, matchbook cover advertising, imprinted ballpoint pens, executive gifts, unique calendars, travel contests, self-liquidating sweepstakes, bus cards, trade show directories, skywriting, beetleboards, and drive-in theater commercials each will offer unique opportunities to turn the market on its ear.

It is the job of the agency media planner to believe every last one of them and to have an asistant media buyer faithfully compile all salesment's suggestions with an equal quantity of demographics into a veritable toteboard of a media schedule which, as every account executive knows, is unassailable as long as it is unintelligible.

Budget Cutting Made Simple

For the client, the task of trimming this ruinous extravagance is no less elementary. There are two approved methods and any number of stylistic or bombastic flourishes usable with either method:

A.) Redline all elements which were not in the previous year's budget, or

B.) Go to the bottom line, find the largest number on that line, and move its decimal point one place to the left.

Protocol requires four meetings with various levels of agency management before either of these techniques is employed. Following the budget cutting, it is customary for agency and client personnel to go to a hotel for lunch and praise each other. (Agency picks up the bill, which can be reimbursed out of "postage.")

Summary

As we have seen, media is a perfectly simple matter, overlaid with mathematical mysticism in order to perserve some semblance of dignity in the otherwise unthinkable process of rendering august corporate decisions on Jingles and Jokes.

Since there is nothing intrinsically harmful in these occult rituals -- and since the taboos of advertising are as jealously enforced as those of, say, the Senate, -- all such protocols should be unswervingly adhered to. Threatened with an outburst of common sense, an account supervisor or media director will fight like a cornered grocer.

To find one's way through this labyrinth, it is necessary simply to decide on a gut media selection before any analysis begins, and then stick to it so that all subsequent numbers can be properly arranged.