Does Zero TV Signal The Winds of Change for US Television?

For decades, some 2% of American households somehow managed to live without television. When people would ask who they were most of us in agency media departments would say the very poor, young people who had just moved in to a major city or perhaps a college professor who never saw the need for it. I vividly remember reading about a few TV-less families who checked in to hotels or motels back in 1969 to see Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon! Finally, something important enough had occurred for them to want to watch TV.

Until 2007, the number stayed steady at about two million households or just under 2% of the U.S. household base. Well, things are changing. Nielsen, not some futuristic group, is now reporting that some five million U.S. households have no TV. This is quite a jump in six years as Smartphone sales have soared and online shopping continues to explode.

What is going on? It appears to be happening within a few distinct groups of people although thorough research has yet to be published. I have observed the following and confirmed it with a few other media observers:

1) Young professionals in major markets such as New York, Boston, Washington, DC and San Francisco. These people tended to graduate from elite schools and can afford anything. They have no interest in having a cable or satellite subscription. Most say that they get by with Hulu and Netflix streaming to cover their video needs. A few mentioned having Amazon.com as well. They lead very active lives and are the exact opposite of couch potatoes. Interestingly, billionaire investor and Revlon chief Ronald Perelman was on Squawk Box on CNBC recently. He talked of how Revlon has moved some of their TV and magazine dollars out onto digital platforms. Then he went on to say that a few of his eight children do not have television. They are fully engaged and in touch with pop culture but TV is not part of their very affluent lives.
2) Cheapskates, the frugal, and concerned adults. To some it comes down to dollars and cents. If you are spending $130-150 a month for cable/satellite, you are effectively spending $1500-$1800 a year for TV. Admittedly, internet, phone, and sometimes burglar alarms are often bundled with the TV bill. I have read and spoken to many people who say that with Hulu+, Netflix and an Amazon.com subscription plus the occasional film on You Tube, they save a bundle and their needs are covered. Many watch DVD’s, videos, and Internet video on their otherwise unused TV sets. Included in this group are a handful who feel that they watch too much TV and canceling their service is the right thing to do. They catch up with HBO shows a year later when Netflix has them and say that the savings are worth the wait.
3) The final group is older and struggling big time financially. With social security the bulk of their income, cable/satellite has become prohibitively expensive. I ran in to more than one such person at my local library fishing for vintage British videos that even Netflix did not have. One lady told me she uses the library’s free videos, and uses her grandson’s laptop to cover other viewing needs. She watches Masterpiece Theatre a day late on line and has yet to miss an episode of her beloved “Downton Abbey.” The Weather Channel online is also “more accurate than those local guys I used to watch.”

So, something is happening out there. This past month Comcast reported that 70,000 households had cut the cable cord with them in the last quarter but that was more than made up for revenue wise by people adding phone service or internet. They also are now serious content providers with NBC/Universal. Time Warner talked of making their product available away from home on a variety of devices and ABC Network announced a plan going in a similar direction. This is especially wise for ABC with conventional networks having an average audience age in primetime over 50 years old.

Another straw in the wind is with Netflix. There seems to be more buzz about Netflix bringing back “Arrested Development” on May 26th than there is about the networks fall lineups that are being announced.

It makes me wonder what will happen if this trend snowballs. Many have asked for a la carte billing of cable channels but, without packaging, many smaller networks would go under. ESPN would thrive as many people say sports is why they continue to keep cable or satellite.

Also, the Netflix and Hulu strength has to bother broadcasters and cable providers. Will that relationship have to change if Zero TV households take off soon? Clearly, most people will not give up TV unless their finances get desperate. Yet, the group to watch are the young upscales. If they hit 30 years old and are getting by just fine thank you with no TV, there could be a huge problem ahead. Newspapers could not get enough yuppies and hold them 20 years back and are now suffering the consequences.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

The Slow Death of Advertising

In recent years, there have been a number of articles on the general topic of the “Death of Advertising” or “Is Advertising Dead.”  Many were shrill, some were measured but all seemed to travel along the following lines--“Advertising is not dead, it is reborn!”, or “Advertising: Game Over”, and “The End of Advertising as We Know It.”

I do not agree with any of the above statements. Perhaps I am just too much of a literalist but let us walk back to a definition of advertising. Looking through all too many textbooks and industry glossaries, a composite definition is as follows: “Advertising is any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, product or service.  Non-personal means that mass media tends to be involved. The advertiser, with help from its agency, controls when the message is seen and, to a certain degree, by whom.”

If you look at the above definition, then advertising is definitely in decline in so many ways. A key to me is the issue of CONTROL. As social media have soared over the last few years, control has gone out the window. You can monitor what people are saying about you, but you cannot control what is said, who is saying it, and who is seeing their comments. Also, it is user centered rather than product centered in most cases.  Social media is fascinating and is certainly part of a brand’s communication effort. It is not, however, advertising from my perspective.

At the same time, database marketing has moved to a new and much heightened level of control. Companies have a handle on how often you visit their sites, what you buy and in what volumes. They now often customize offers to lure you in to an additional purchase or two. Personalized media delivery such as this has great power. This is very advantageous but, again, I hesitate to call it advertising.

Commercial avoidance in conventional media such as TV, cable and radio continues to rise. This is especially acute with 45% of households now having a time shifting device and the rapid increase in second screen usage while viewing. Hulu and Netlfix also continue to stir the pot. TV is steadily losing its long term luster.

Magazine titles are struggling and the decline in that medium continues.

So where does that leave us? Well, to me, things will continue to evolve but conventional advertising will surely decline.

Many of the new areas of interest are not a rebirth of advertising. What they are is new marketing tools that will sharpen performance. The whole concept of “communal marketing” where brands ask customers to help develop advertising messaging, is really communal branding by real aficionados of the product.  And, it has to give ad agency people with a bit of foresight nervous stomach as brands go straight to consumers for ideas instead of the time honored geniuses at your long standing agency.

So, marketing will evolve, flourish and likely get a lot more precise. Advertising will not disappear but its role in Integrated Marketing Communications has to diminish and at a faster pace than in recent years.

In ancient Greece, the inimitable Heraclitus said "nothing endures but change." He felt that change was so swift that "it is not possible to step twice in to the same river." Those words were supposedly said in the 6th century B.C. Nothing last forever and, it appears advertising will trend downward until we call it something else.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Database Marketing--Big Brother on Steroids?

With each passing year, database marketing is getting increasingly sophisticated. Clever marketers are getting better every day and are reaping larger returns with lower expenditures. Our current era is unique as the low cost internet married with declining costs in computing power are coupled with vast arrays of digital information allowing marketers to aggregate and analyze enormous quantities of data.

If you say this out loud people nod and smile but do not really seem to grasp what is going on in database marketing. The best illustration that I have ever found was a remarkable article in the February 16, 2012 issue of “The New York Times Magazine”. In a piece entitled “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”, Charles Duhigg focused mostly on the giant retailer, Target.

Using a team of bright statisticians, Target engages in what is known as “predictive analytics.” Simply put, they examine sales data and combine it with other information to figure out who buys what and why.

The now famous story from this NYT Magazine article is that the statisticians discovered that pregnancy is a vital time for a woman to develop some lifetime shopping patterns. So, Target likes to find pregnant women and get them into their locations with increasing frequency.

The first screen Target looked at was breathtakingly simple.  They simply looked at their baby shower registry. Since they already told Target that they were pregnant, the analysts could do a deep dive on their buying habits.

Then, the last puzzle part fell in to place. Target soon realized that many other women who had the same shopping habits as those in the bridal registry were probably pregnant as well.

Pregnant women, for example, started to buy vitamin supplements, and switched to unscented lotions. Many bought large bags of cotton balls for the first time. With this knowledge Target began to send both groups pregnancy related coupons in the hope of making them customers for life.

The article then told an amazing story. In their hometown of Minneapolis a very angry gentlemen stormed in to a Target store wanting to see the manager. He told the manager that his daughter was getting many pregnancy related coupons from Target. “She is still in high school and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs. Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager did his diplomatic best to smooth things over with the irate Dad. A few days later he called the gentlemen to apologize again. The father stunned him by saying, “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of”, said the father. “She’s due in August.”

It is a great story but the point is that the Target statistical team had figured out that the young lady was pregnant before her family did.

Think about this for a moment. A savvy marketer knows a great deal about you. Every time you get a special online deal, do you think millions are getting the same offer? Or, have they been tracking your multiple visits to their site in recent weeks and want to push you over the edge with an irresistible offer?

On the benign side, watch what Netflix does. I am a serious old film buff. Over the last several years I have rated over 3200 films for Netflix. They know what I like and don’t like. When Neflix recommends a film to me, I invariably watch it. With such a mega-deep profile of my tastes, they now have an unerring touch on what films of recent vintage that I will like.

Long term, this will have a profound effect on conventional advertising in some categories. By tracking our purchases and online visits, sophisticated marketers can put together highly effective models to forecast future purchases and dollar volumes as well.

This is far more cost effective than advertising where you do not get a pure play demographically most of the time. Clearly, this is one more nail in the coffin of conventional advertising. By shifting more emphasis on database management and marketing, companies will be in a good position to save money and simultaneously increase sales.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Does AM/FM Radio Have a Future?

I talk and correspond with hundreds of young adults. Many are students, some read this blog, and a few I meet through consulting. I always make it a point to ask them about their radio listening habits. As a general rule, people under 35 (the infamous 18-34 demographic) tell me that they are abandoning AM/FM and switching to Pandora or some other streaming service. Yet when one looks at top line Arbitron data, it appears that approximately 93% of us are using AM/FM radio each week.

There is no question that streaming is affecting radio listening levels. Recently, NDP Consumer Research stated that 23% of average weekly listening time among Persons 13-35 is transmitted via some form of streaming. Clearly, the Smartphone is driving consumers to the net either at home, work, and in the car.

All this leads me to a larger question--what is the future of AM/FM radio? I have spoken with dozens of people in recent weeks, sent e-mails out to panel members and have contacted a number of radio salespeople, general managers, and a few station owners and station owner wannabes. A limited number of ad agency personnel who are active in radio rounded out the sample.

My findings are a bit surprising and I will share them at length with you.


Background

Radio used to be a great business. Profit margins were lush, the business wasn’t complicated, and management and sales teams could make a very good living. Not so any longer! Three things popped out from virtually everyone that I contacted:

1) Morale at radio stations stinks! Only one person, a buying service operator, said he knew of a market where people seemed happy. All said that radio used to be a great place for young people in their 20’s to make a good income and accumulate some capital. A great and deeply experienced radio salesman described the current environment to me as follows: “Every year, we bring in a bunch of young kids, offer them a few days training, and then essentially toss them out in the street. They make a very low draw and are given a tough lists of directs to contact. Many quit very quickly. Perhaps one or two make it past the first year. It is close to immoral to me.”
2) There is no pricing power anymore. Many stations and radio metros are only getting the same rates that they did years ago. A strong plurality do not even get rates equal to what they had in 2007 just prior to the economic meltdown. Some are selling inventory at rates that were common 15 years ago if they are in a depressed market.
3) New York, aka corporate, has to meet their huge debt service payments and care about little else. If the local economy is down the toilet, they don’t cut you any slack. You have to find the money!

In-Car Listening

One area that most people who weighed in on the subject agreed was a continued strength for conventional radio in-car listening. A long time radio sales executive put it nicely,-- “I believe that as long as people drive to work in vehicles with radios, and traffic continually worsens, radio will have a future.  The March, 2013 PPM data from Arbitron shows nearly 30 stations with listening in my metro area.  That is a lot of choices.  There also are other choices for listening beyond broadcast radio.  Stations with good content I believe will continue to survive, especially if they are programmed with local news, information, or content of interest that is not available through other means. were. The bottom line is, if you can attract and maintain a good audience, and sell access at a reasonable cost, you are in a much better position to stay in business”.


Debt Problems of Larger Groups

This was an issue that generated some strong opinions. Some general managers have said that Clear Channel and Cumulus will have a hard time rolling over their multi-billion dollar debt in a few years. They will have to sell off stations and three told me that they just might step up and buy them on their own.

I was surprised as these comments came from people thousands of miles apart and they were not with the same group.

The first said that he has lined up friends and relatives plus his own funds and when, the station group falters, he will make a low ball bid and buy the station outright. I asked him if he truly thinks that he could go it alone locally. His response was interesting and he is letting me quote him--“With no debt, you can operate very efficiently.  Some years will be better than others but there will be no bean counter breathing down my neck each month. Remember, that time 20 years ago when we had lunch and talked about what solid businesses water utilities are? Well, this will be the same thing--slow and steady with limited growth.”  I responded that a water utility had a Public Service Commission that generally granted rate increases every year. And, you may cut back on the frequency of washing your car or watering your lawn, but you still had to wash clothes, cook, do dishes, and shower. People do not have to buy advertising time on your station. He saw my point but said that I was becoming a grumpy old man. Maybe so.

The second wants to go to a sports format in his mid-sized town. He says the nation is full of talented kids who all want to be on ESPN. That is not going to happen. For a modest sum, he can pay them and their passion for all sports, particularly local sports, will work in his market. If one really catches on he will give him a hug and let him move up to a bigger market and there will be no shortage of people waiting in the wings. I warned him that with no major league franchise in his metro, it could be tough sledding.

The third says he really dislikes his current owners and will make a low ball bid and buy the station on the cheap when they need the money. He may have modest financing but not much. With great candor he has said that he had confided his game plan to his pastor who told him his strategy was scavenger economics.  He laughed and said he told the sincere clergyman that it was simply economics in a free market. Inefficient producers had to be weeded out of the landscape. He said the big companies borrowed to put the chain together on the assumption that they could raise rates faster than inflation forever. As the media world has changed they are now holding the bag and must pay the price for bad judgement.

A reasonable old pro had this thought about the big guys. “The larger radio groups that purchased many stations and have huge debt service are probably in a very difficult situation, as the economy and increased competition since 2008 have reduced the rates that were commonplace before 2008”.

Another radio maven had this comment   “It’s hard to say what will happen with Clear Channel and potentially Cumulus when the big debt comes due in a few years.  Some are predicting that Clear Channel will be broken up, which I would love to happen.  I would think though that the big market stations are never going to be within the reach of anyone but very large companies or very wealthy top management/top shareholders who could start a group.

Right now, the big companies are cutting as many people as they can because of the debt.  However, technology that makes possible running a station with hardly any local people is here to stay.  In small markets, subscribing to a satellite service is a lot less expensive that hiring air talent with the possible exception of mornings.  I know firsthand that making money in a small market with just 1 station is very difficult”.


Audience

Media Researchers stubbornly told me to forget any anecdotal evidence and go back to Arbitron and crunch the numbers. Consistently, they all said that Pandora and fellow travelers had made gains but over 90% of us still listened to radio each week.

A final salvo from a long time radio hand was--“Radio, however, still has far more audience than Pandora or anything else, even in the youngest demos.  Pandora is the #1 station in a number of markets according to Triton, but its overall share is small compared to over-the-air radio.  And I believe that 25 years from now, FM stations in large and medium markets will still be doing well.  The reason is the transmission system.  All you have to do is turn it on, and it’s loud and clear”.

Ad Agencies and Radio

A senior sales executive on the West Coast raised a few disturbing issues regarding ad agencies and the future of radio. He said that an account executive asked him to meet a buying director of a key agency. At the meeting he and his sales person made a few innocuous comments about one of the stations that they represent and, a junior buyer attending the session, asked whether the listeners were loyal. “With a big smile, I said loyal? Look at our time spent listening!” The buying director asked what that meant. I was stunned but took the two of them through the time honored formula. She responded “this is really interesting.” How had she gotten her position and how did she oversee several million dollars of radio advertising each year?”

Another problem that he found with agencies is that a number of young people said that they do not listen much. So, if media planners are putting together a media mix, they may use radio less if they do not like it or use it much. He then went on a long and funny rant about how overpriced ESPN was because planners love it and want to be on it. His conclusion was that he would have no interest in buying a station going forward as the ad community will not be supporting the medium as much in the future.

Conclusion

Radio is here to stay. However, as is true of all media types, it is going through a big transition. If the big companies do shed a number of stations in a few years, local radio may indeed become a viable locally owned and operated business in many localities. N.B.-- turning a buck will not be a day at the beach as it was 25 years ago.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Do You Trust Your Customers?

Last year, I had the privilege of spending some time on some beautiful islands off the coast of the state of Washington. As I passed a local farm, I noticed a fruit and vegetable stand that by the side of the road. No one appeared to be there but a customer.  A few months later, I “googled” the islands and read a story about the farm stand and how payment has been made on the honor system for generations. At the end of the day, the farmer goes to the stand, collects the money and any unsold produce. I had to smile as I read it, wondering how many locales in the United States one could take such an approach and succeed. The farmer showed complete trust in his island neighbors and visitors.

Reading the article sent my mind racing. How many businesses are built on complete trust and do they succeed? As a New England native, it did not take me long to think of a great example.

Sometime before the beginning of World War I, Leon Leonwood Bean , a passionate Maine hunter, had an idea. He wanted to develop a hunting shoe that would keep his feet warm as he trekked across the frigid Maine woods. A shoe store manager, he approached the town cobbler to help him develop the perfect shoe for hunting. Jointly, they came up with a new shoe with strong leather uppers and waterproof rubber bottoms. By 1912, he tried to market it via a direct mail campaign to out of state hunters.
The prominent line in the direct mail effort was “We guarantee them to give perfect satisfaction in every way.”

Shortly after the mailing, things looked rosy. Over 100 pairs of The Maine Hunting Shoe were sold. Not long after, disaster struck. The new shoes fell apart after very little use and 90 of the original pairs were returned. At this point, most people would have quietly closed up shop. Not Leon, who soon was to become known as L.L. Bean. He borrowed money and promptly returned payment for the shoes to each customer.

Undaunted, Mr. Bean did perfect the shoe, branched out in to other areas, and today L.L. Bean of Freeport, Maine is a household name. And, importantly, the company still maintains its 100 percent guarantee. Virtually every year in my adult life, I have purchased either a pair of top-siders or moccasins from Bean. As they age, I change their use and the oldest pair is used when I am (rarely) doing yard work. I know that despite their age I could return any worn pair for a full refund, but I never do. Why? L.L. Bean has trusted me to behave honestly and I plan to do so.

Is this unique? Well, several retail players have aped the Bean approach but others have not. It has been rumored that Home Depot, Barnes and Noble and Wal-Mart have sophisticated software that tracks consumers who make frequent returns. Some stores allow managers to refuse returns to these customers using their own judgement.

Bean does get ripped off now and then. But, I would bet that the number who return worn out items if very small. Somewhere in the cobwebs of my memory is a quote from a Roosevelt cabinet officer who said, “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”

As online retailing has grown, marketers have to make many quick decisions around the holidays. People call and say that their order has not arrived yet. Do you send another knowing that, at some point, the customer will have two orders?

 When you insist on credit card or certified check or money order and granny sends you a personal check do you ship the order before her check clears because that is the only way she will get the item before Christmas Day? Most retailers seem to say it depends on the size of the order.

Each year a few research outfits track who gives the best customer service in the U.S. Recent leaders have been Zappos, Overstock.com, Amazon, and Land’s End. But as far back as I can track it, the gold medal often goes to, you guessed it, L.L. Bean.

It appears that trusting customers and communicating that fact well is a big brand builder. Do you truly trust your customers? Think about it.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

The Only Sure Fire Industry for the Next Two Decades?

In 1967, Mike Nichols directed a now famous film called “The Graduate.” Nominated for a fistful of Oscars, it told the story a young man named Benjamin who had just graduated from college. He was a little bit uncertain about his future. Nichols won an  Oscar for Best Director that year and the film made Dustin Hoffman a star.

There are many famous scenes in the film but the one that is perhaps most frequently replayed takes place at a graduation party for young Benjamin (Hoffman).

It goes like this:

Mr. McGuire--“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.”

Benjamin--“Yes, sir.”

Mr. McGuire--“Are you listening?”

Benjamin--“Yes, I am.”

Mr. McGuire--“Plastics.”

Well, these days I meet with and talk to with many young people in different settings. Invariably, someone will ask me where the prospects are best for their upcoming careers. I suppose that they expect me to say get a job at Apple or Google or suggest that they take the ultra-safe route and go into nursing. Nope. I take a page from the fictional Mr. McGuire and say just one word to them. That word is agriculture.

The reaction is one of shock, sometimes humor and occasionally disgust. Few want to hear my reasons. Perhaps you will take a moment or two and read them.

On October 26, 2011 I published a Media Realism post entitled “Seven Billion and Counting.” According to United Nation projections, the global population was about to hit  seven billion people. By 2025, they forecast eight billion people. With 12 years to go, we seem to right on forecast with the eight billion people projection.

My question to you is simple--“How are we going to feed them?”  Well, there is no question that there will be better technology over the next decade in seed, irrigation, and pest control, and, at the same time, fertilizer and farming methods will improve. The big challenge is that approximately 700 million people have entered the middle class around the world in the last decade and that trend particularly in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe is likely to continue.

When people join the middle class, they eat more meat whether it be chicken, pork or beef. And, significant resources are used to grow such products. Some say that at times the growth in grain demand as one jumps from subsistence to middle class can be 10 to 1 as compared to their earlier, humbler lifestyle. Some 441 gallons of water are used to produce  a pound of beef. There are four pounds of soy and corn to produce a pound of pork. And, the newly arrived middle class around the world is not going to return to a meat free existence one they get used to the western diet.

So, it would appear logical that despite the gains in technology and farming methods that the price of grains would have to rise. Productive farmers such as those in America would have to be in a good spot.

Right now, the average age of the American farmer is 58. In Canada, I have seen estimates as high as 62. Young people need to get in to this industry if it is to meet its potential.

Someone wrote to me recently and suggested a good investment hedge for me would be to buy a farmette in Manitoba province in Canada. I could grow my own food on my five acre spread, live in an extremely safe location and occasionally make forays in to bustling Winnipeg. Well, at my age and personal lifestyle, that is probably not a good solution. Winter on the northern plains has little appeal to me. Farming, however, may be a viable and workable career choice for a great young people.

You do not have to be a conventional farmer to get in on the action. Could a bright young man or woman sell equipment for John Deere and Caterpillar? Or, would a sales or marketing job at Potash, Agrium, Syngenta, or even controversial Monsanto make sense for young adults with marketing training? What about a job at Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra or dozens of other companies across the globe that sell foodstuffs?

No matter what happens, people will have to eat and it appears that there will be a lot more people going forward. Agriculture seems nicely positioned given that many commodities still sell way under their all time highs. Sugar is a great example.

Some of these developments may not effect advertising but others will. Branded food companies will almost definitely have the wind at their backs as hundreds of millions join the middle class. Major food processors with global powerhouse brands will be in a very good place. They will spend billions in advertising and promotion, largely outside the U.S., to capture the new middle class. It will not happen overnight and commodity prices will fluctuate year to year but demographically it appears a certainty that smart farmers all over the world have a brighter future than they have had in many decades.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Are You Still Media Agnostic?

In the past few weeks the Roman Catholic Church elected a new pope. He is Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina. As the first Latin American and first non-European pope in hundreds of years plus being the first Jesuit to be named Bishop of Rome he has generated tremendous interest. News accounts continue to track his every move and talk radio has not been out of the loop. A panel of “experts” discussed the new pope on a popular program last week and wondered how Catholics around the world would respond to Pope Francis as everything he says is infallible.

At the time I was driving on an interstate so I grabbed the steering wheel a bit harder than normal and tried to focus on my driving. A few minutes later a caller got through who sounded off on the ignorance of the panel. The host cut him off and that was that. Why were the caller and I so heated? The pope is only considered infallible when he speaks ex cathedra which means “from the chair.” Only eight times in the 2000 year history of Christianity has a pope spoken ex cathedra meaning that the statement is a formal belief of the church (the last time was 1950 and the doctrine of infallibility was not clearly defined until 1870 at the First Vatican Council). It is highly unlikely that Pope Francis will ever deliver a ruling that will be considered infallible. So while whatever the pope says should be weighed seriously no practicing Catholic is under any obligation to agree with his statements on a wide variety of subjects.

Why do I bring this up now? Well, with the gaffes about infallibility rampant, I thought that it was time to address a misrepresentation that has popped up repeatedly in media departments and by agency principals when pitching business over the last several years. When talking about their approach to media mix or communications strategy many people will say,“we are MEDIA AGNOSTIC.”

I see and hear people do this and it really grates on me. Do you know what an agnostic is? The term was coined as best as I can tell by British biologist Thomas Huxley in 1869. His basic premise was that the existence of a deity or god is unknown and cannot be proven. Others have refined it to say that we humans simply do not possess the knowledge to provide sufficient rational proof that a supreme being exists.

Back when I was a student at a New England Catholic college, we were required to take a semester of theology and one of philosophy each year. Some of it was interesting and it was a usually an easy A or B. I never will forget how near the end of the term a student told the priest that he resented the theology requirement as he was a nonbeliever. The priest asked “are you an atheist or an agnostic?”  “Agnostic”, replied the young man. The normally genial priest got very red in the face and said something along these lines--"If you are an atheist, I could respect you. It takes courage to face the end of your life and say this is the end. There is no afterlife. When you call yourself an agnostic, you are saying there may be a god and maybe there is an afterlife, but I am too damn lazy to think it through.”  That certainly grabbed our attention and the young lad was a lot quieter going forward.

So, do you really want to say that you or your firm is media agnostic? Using the classic definition, it connotes that you do not have sufficient knowledge to make a clearcut media recommendation. Using the angry Irish priest’s definition you are saying that you are too lazy to sort it out.

In conversations with people I often say that I try hard to be lukewarm about media selection going in to a project. That is impossible as we all have certain track records especially with traditional media and, once you have some years behind you, there are a bagful of tactics that tend to be proven winners as well. Also, only say lukewarm. If you write it, the term looks dreadful on the page and comes off as indifferent.

So what should you do? Try the time honored zero based planning approach. Start with the proverbial blank sheet of paper and don’t allocate 75% of your budget before you start. Get back to the target and see where they are spending their time. What should you call this? Some like “media impartial” or “channel neutral” and I have heard “target preferred media.” Use whatever you want or invent your own term. Remember, of course, that strategy comes first and then the media allocation.

Please, my friends, do one thing. Give the term “Media Agnostic” the death that it deserves.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com