#4: Media plans are journeys.

Things about advertising I’m pretty sure is true number four

Media plans have to be built on consumer journeys.

The media buy should be the most expensive part of an advertising campaign. You only have to pay once to make an asset, like a TV commercial. But you have to pay every single time you show that commercial. Creation is a fixed cost. Distribution is flexible and open-ended. It has to be this way because messages need to be shown to a prospective customer several times for it to become effective.

There are, of course, glaring exceptions to this. Apple only paid once to show the 1984 commercial. Let’s leave the exceptions aside for now and assume you are working on the overwhelming majority of campaigns that do, in fact, need to be strategically planned.

We call that number-of-times-the-message-needs-to-be-shown “frequency”. As in: “how frequently does the person need to see the message for it to sink in?”. To be efficient, you can ask the question this way: “what is the minimum number of times the message needs to be shown for it to sink in?”

When the brief (and briefing) was done well, there is more than just a single asset that communicates the message. There are videos and social posts and billboards and emails and content sponsorships. Campaign planners have a set of assets they can use to execute the campaign. Remember: frequency is not about how many times a particular asset (such as a video) is shown. It is about how many times the message gets communicated.

This is the big evolution that has happened in media. It’s why progressive companies don’t just have media buyers. The have communications planners. These are people who look at the life of a consumer and, using the assets they have, create a plan for the person to see the message the required number of times to be effective.

This is why communication planners start with consumer journeys—documents that map out a person’s life and how they move toward making decisions. That shows moments where the asset can intersect with the person’s day. The plan, then, can be to strategically lay out assets in a way that not only hits the frequency goal but also builds a broad base of awareness.