A New Way To Buy Media For Greater Returns

The Medill School of Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University just released an interesting analysis of the BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey (SIMM). It points to eight clusters of media consumption that can help strategists and media professionals plan more effective campaigns. Often, marketers are restricted to planning campaigns around product consumption behaviors. The problem with that methodology is that it still leaves a considerable challenge trying to figure how to reach and affect people who are using the product.

SIMM measures the consumer usage of 31 different media, and the Medill School analysis breaks this down into eight clusters that can be used by planners to help ensure that the consumers of the product and the consumers of the media are one in the same. Three factors were used in determining the cluster profiles:

• How much media people consumed and what part of the day/night they interacted with media
• The amount of simultaneous media usage behavior, i.e. on the Web while also watching TV
• The amount of influence the various media options had on people’s purchase behaviors

The eight clusters that the analysis revealed included:

1. Old School: This group had high mass media influence (TV, magazines, newspaper) and they were low in their usage of search media (online). They had average media consumption and simultaneous usage.
2. Active Explorers: This group had high promotion (inserts, coupons, direct) and search media influence. They engaged in average media consumption.
3. New Mediacs: This cluster was low in their consumption of mass media, promotional media and print advertising. However, they were high in their usage of electronic media.
4. Simultaneous Readers: They were average in overall media influence. They had higher simultaneous usage of media, and they also scored high in print media consumption.
5. Independents: This group was low in total media consumption, but online search usage was higher.
6. Ravenous: This cluster had high consumption in almost all media categories.
7. Persuadables: They had high mass and search media influence, but only average promotional media influence.
8. Opportunity Minded: This group was highly influenced by promotional media, but overall they had average to low media consumption.

The goal of the analysis is to assist marketers by improving their return on investment. I feel this is an interesting approach to improving marketing returns because it allows planners to schedule campaigns not simply by total demographic exposure, but, more specifically, by what type of media has the most likelihood of affecting a sale.

The Simultaneous Media Survey polls 15,000 consumers twice per year to identify changes in the media landscape. The people involved in the analysis for the Medill School at Northwestern University included Martin Block, a professor in Integrated Marketing Communications, and Don Schultz, professor emeritus at the university.