Media Agency Report: Wild Postings

Get Off the Phone Looking for their next hog, motorcycle buyers surfing the Yellow Pages will soon see an unusual reminder of the perils of their passion under the heading "Motorcycles": an ad for Progressive Insurance. Likewise, car shoppers will see an ad for Geico Insurance under the heading "Autodealers." And under "Movers," Yellow Pagers will be enticed by a message from MCI. These nontraditional media buys are the first under a new initiative from the Yellow Pages Publishers Association to reposition the listing directory as "a book of ideas," according to Neg Norton, YPPA vice president, national marketing. The organization's members collectively already carry almost $2 billion in national advertising, but they are typically retail ads for mufflers, moving companies, automakers and the like. The challenge is to convince national advertisers of the Yellow Pages' ability to be a creative branding medium--that is, to advertise in the books without using a telephone number. Can antacid ads in the tax-preparation section or pickles in the OB-GYN listings be far behind? K ------------------------------------------------- Horizon's New Hires Horizon Media has added a trio of executives from the media, consultant and agency communities. Jim Shanney, formerly of Arthur Andersen LLP, has joined the New York media agency as chief information officer. He heads a process that in recent months has included re-cabling for increased bandwidth to support more complex applications, and installing new servers to handle higher volumes of data and all new switches to maximize the shop's network efficiencies. David Ludewig takes over as director of business development/Western region. Ludewig, who last worked in Chancellor Media's Internet division, will oversee Horizon's dot-com business pursuits. The agency also hired Barbara Davidow as senior vice president, director of human resources and employee initiatives. Davidow most recently ran human-resource functions at TN Media. ------------------------------------------------- A Perfect 10 Marketing consultant Arthur Anderson sees 10 trends affecting agency compensation in the next five years: - Agency compensation/contract methodology is becoming global in scope. - Activity-based compensation based on scope of work is resulting in annual fixed-fee contracts with pay-for-performance. - Clients are demanding full disclosure of agency costs and benchmarking of agency economics. - Management and negotiation of agency contracts is increasingly done by purchasing/sourcing people rather than marketing executives. - "Total accountability" is creating compensation tied to defined business objectives. - In time, agency compensation may not cover all of the agency's costs, resulting in greater risk but potentially greater reward if advertising "works." - Agencies are becoming "general contractors," using specialty resources that do not include sibling shops unless they are demonstrably "best in class." - Conflicts will continue to be strictly construed. - Clients will increasingly demand that agencies demonstrate affirmatively that they are efficient as well as effective. - The "agency" roster now includes custom relationship firms, strategic planning firms, Internet incubators and consultancies as well as advertising agencies--and any one of them can "lead" marketing efforts. ------------------------------------------------- Surf and Scan New research from TN Media breaks with conventional wisdom regarding Internet use and television viewing. The consensus says that online use correlates with less TV viewing. But the media agency says such data from Nielsen and others do not compare Internet users with demographically matched non-Internet counterparts (i.e., younger, more educated and more affluent). The TN Media data analyzed Simmons databases and found that Internet users consumed traditional media at a greater rate than their counterparts. TV usage was 6 percent higher; magazine readership was 9 percent higher than non-Internet users; and newspaper readership was up 25 percent over non-Internet user levels.

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Media Agency Report: Wild Postings

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