MEDIA & MARKETING:Target audiences are increasingly hard to reach as media space gets more diverse

NEW ADVERTISING campaigns this week from Aer Lingus, Standard Life and Vodafone signal the end of the advertising silly season.

The new Aer Lingus campaign, devised by Irish International, marks a shift away from a pure focus on price. Standard Life is spending €600,000 on radio, press and online as part of a global rebranding exercise, while Vodafone has launched a new campaign promoting fixed-line telecoms services to business.

The three brands are in different sectors but one thing the marketing directors of each agree on is the increasing complexity they face in engaging with consumers. According to Anne Mulcahy, Vodafone Ireland’s head of brand and communications who formerly worked with Diageo and Coca-Cola, media planning problems can arise because marketing directors don’t focus enough on the planning themselves.

“Companies put a lot of money into making the ad but then hand over the budget to the media agency and don’t get stuck into the nitty-gritty of the planning themselves,” says Mulcahy.

"In Coca-Cola, we were trained to within an inch of our life on media planning. Fifteen years ago, there were six TV channels and if you bought an ad spot on Coronation Street, you would hit a huge amount of your audience. But now the audience can also watch it on Playback so it's not a simple buy anymore. Ads that are date-specific could be lost on the viewer because it's two weeks before they catch up with the programme. The whole media landscape has splintered so much that huge consumer understanding is required."

Vodafone has one of the biggest advertising budgets in the State and Mulcahy observes: “You can spend a fortune and you will get your target audience, but that is not a clever way of spending your money. We have a media plan coming up soon based on a very close study of radio stations.

“We need to be more rigorous in our analysis and try new things. The environment is what the media connection is about and environment has to become a much more important part of planning. It’s no longer about the biggest numbers.” She believes there is not enough alignment between clients, media owners and agencies. “It has to change, especially given how the media landscape is changing.”

Vodafone recently moved its creative account out of Dublin and over to London agency Grey. “It makes more sense if you have a global brand to have an agency network that is creating and building that brand. Otherwise how are you ever going to get a tone of voice and personality that is consistent?” says Mulcahy.

“I’m not in any way critical of the endeavours in this market. Everyone is facing a really tough and challenging time. Budgets are being slashed. The big brands spending money have their own global brand agendas. Vodafone is a global brand but we want to have it localised enough that people here in Ireland feel it is still for them.”

David Kelly, marketing and sales director in Aer Lingus, says reaching consumers has never been easier due to the proliferation of media. But engaging with potential customers is getting tougher because “people are so busy you can’t hold their attention”.

With the airline’s new campaign, Kelly says the communications objective is to increase preference for Aer Lingus and emphasise the equity the brand already owns with the new tagline “Great care, great fare”. Customer service is the foundation of engaging with customers. If I don’t get that right, nothing I do in sales and marketing is going to work,” Kelly says. “My focus has to be on the customer and that’s the brand. Media planning now is all about understanding segmentation and micro segmentation. The best brands understand how their customers are using media at a very micro level.”

Kelly describes himself as “platform-neutral” but adds that he is still a big fan of newspapers. He says he will be putting more money into radio and press going forward. “I am that person who still reads a newspaper back to back and there are still a lot of people like me. However, you’ll still see Aer Lingus on television. Some of the bundles being offered are at prices I can’t refuse.”

He has doubts about the effectiveness of social media as an advertising medium.

“Social media is important but what are its key performance indicators? Our media agency is furiously trying to get key performance indicators to show me social media advertising works. Banner ads used to work and then they didn’t and now they are back in favour again. That’s because the technology is better in terms of targeting. Now the banner will follow you as you switch between websites.

“But it’s the same as with direct marketing. If you reach people once or twice and it doesn’t work, then you ring-fence those people and offer them something different.”

Mulcahy is also somewhat sceptical about the effectiveness of digital advertising. “I still don’t think we are there in terms of how we measure digital. A few years ago, everyone was doing digital campaigns for the sake of it and that didn’t make any sense. Now we know digital is just a part of the communication mix and not an end in itself.”