Also in this report:
– MBS is top enterprise: Survey beams shop into first place p.26
– Swain’s recipe for success: be firm but fair p.27
– Terry Sheehy gets the nod as Best Media Director p.29
– ‘Nice guys can finish first,’ say media execs: Sheehy’s supporters effusive in their praise of his understanding, responsiveness and integrity p.31
– Best Media Planners/Buyers p.32
– Publicite MBS voted best in Quebec p.35
In a confidential poll of media sellers in Quebec, Publicite MBS has been voted Strategy’s Best Media Operation in that province.
It’s the fourth straight year that the company has either won or tied for this title.
We asked Penny Stevens, vice-president and general manager of Publicite MBS, to account for her operation’s continued success and to offer some views on the changing nature of the media function.
Q. What would you define as your company’s guiding philosophy in its dealings with media sellers and clients?
A. Our guiding philosophy would be honesty, fairness and serious-minded negotiation. And when I say serious-minded, I mean that both parties come to the table understanding exactly what is being sold, what is being purchased and why it is being purchased.
Our philosophy with respect to clients is a strong service mentality – a mentality that demands that each one of us knows, or attempts to know, the client’s business better than he or she does. That allows us to negotiate not only best price but best value, and afford them the best strategic counsel as well.
Q. From your experience, what do clients expect today from a media buying operation?
A. I would like to say that they expect what we give them. They certainly expect best price.
Has that changed? No. Are their expectations evolving? Yes.
What they expect from us today is the absolute definitive answer on anything to do with any type of media platform. And in conjunction with that is the whole notion of critical counsel, innovative media utility, and the ability to demystify jargon for them.
They don’t want mumbo-jumbo and they don’t want to be fed back objectives and strategies that they’ve just delivered to us. They do want to be challenged.
Q. In what ways?
A. In many instances, we receive a briefing that would suggest ‘Our target groups are X, Y and Z, these are our key competitors and this is how we are going to go about the business of delivering an X% increase in sales.’
What I am finding, more and more, is that clients expect us to take a very close look at those objectives and come back with a refinement of them.
Q. So you don’t just accept what they are giving you in terms of their target audience?
A. Absolutely not. We could never take that as a given, because it always begs the question when we go in to develop media programs.
We have to be intimate with the client’s customer and their secondary and tertiary targets. And their target is not necessarily just a purchaser or a purchase influencer. In fact, what they may be wanting to do – and they might not realize it until we’ve had a conversation about it – is to increase distribution in certain markets.
Often, you don’t get to the nub of the matter until you’ve gone through as much data as they’ve got, or even done some proprietary research of your own.
That critical analysis is absolutely essential. And from my perspective, that is one of the things that distinguishes us from our competitors.
Q. Are clients today better informed about the media function – and therefore, more critical and demanding of media planners and buyers?
A. My clients don’t really know any more about [the science of] media than they did 10 years ago.
However, there is an incredible increase in awareness of media, in and of itself. They have come to realize that they are spending a whack of money in media, and the people who control those dollars had better know that not only are they getting the best price, but that they are deploying the dollars to maximum advantage.
The other thing contributing to this awareness is the whole technological explosion. Cable television, specialty television, the Internet, and this whole convergence of different communication vehicles is front-page news. And it has been that way for the last two years. So you’d have to be brain-dead not to be more aware.
From that perspective, the expectation is certainly raised of companies such as ours to be ‘in the know’ when it comes to understanding and interpreting what’s going on.
Are they more critical and demanding because of that awareness? Yes – but I think that’s endemic throughout the ad industry today. I don’t know that it’s necessarily just media planning and buying. I think there’s an incredible cynicism about advertising in general. So there is a tremendous responsibility on the part of everybody in the industry to be accountable.
Q. mbs has been making an active effort to elevate the status of media buying in the eyes of senior management on the client side. To what degree has this proved successful?
A. In terms of our clients, have we elevated media? Yes, by definition, because they are still with us.
For a lot of people, there is no question that media buying is still like buying stocks and bonds. We are stockbrokers, we are movers of space and buyers of space. It is a function that, in my mind, is still misunderstood.
I would not want it to be perceived that media is a second-class citizen, because I don’t believe that at all. But I do believe there is a fundamental notion among clients that while media buying is a necessary utility, there is not a lot of art to it.
Q. Do English-language clients, as a rule, now recognize the importance of working with a Quebec-based operation when buying media in that province?
A. I think we need further education on that issue. There’s no doubt in my mind that a Quebec-based operation can deliver a far better media program. I’ve seen it time and time again, both from a price standpoint and an understanding standpoint.
Q. On the advertising side, a convincing argument has been made that the mindset and culture of Quebecers is distinct enough to require distinct creative. Why is it difficult to convince clients they need a distinct Quebec media campaign?
A. I think the arguments haven’t been made very strongly.
With respect to media buying in Quebec, and particularly in Montreal, the rest of the world divides this province up into English and French, when in fact it doesn’t exist like that. People consume media regardless of language, and by and large, the province is bilingual. That fact is lost on anyone who doesn’t live here.
So when a client comes to me and says, ‘I only have enough money to advertise in Montreal French,’ my response is, ‘What does that mean? Does that mean you only have enough money to talk to francophones, or bilingual francophones, or bilingual anglophones?’
Media consumption habits are dramatically different in this province, and to a large extent that’s driven by language and demographics. But to a larger extent, it is driven by Quebecois culture and values. You can see that in television tuning, and you can see it in the magazine industry in this province.
Publicite MBS Billings: $50 million
Top clients include: Avon Canada; Canderm Pharmacal; CFCF 12; Hoeschst-Marion-Roussell; Nautilus Plus; Paramount Pictures; Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada; Rhone-Poulenc-Rorer; The T. Eaton Company; Unilever/Helene Curtis.
