Dean Shell established his Melbourne-based agency Shell Media in 2019 after working with big agency groups such as IPG, Group M and Zenith.
Shell’s agency was among the 80 independent agencies that joined the Independent Media Agencies Australia (IMAA) last year.
With more than two decades of experience, Shell understands what it takes to deliver a successful campaign and spoke to Mediaweek about the dos and don’ts of media planning.
Do
To start, he explained that successful media campaigns have a clear brief from the get-go, which both the client and agency work on together.
Along with a clear brief with data, relevant research, and anecdotal data from the client, Shell said the most important and central part of any brief is the target audience.
“If there’s no synergy with the client and agreeance on who the core target audience is, then it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said, adding that the audience is “the basis of any effective advertising campaign.”
Media planners should get to know their client’s market and the commercial side of media channels, in addition to dealing with strategy and audience data.
“It’s all well and good to come up with a fantastic media recommendation and a strategic offering, but if the market conditions aren’t right, it kind of amounts to nothing.”
Collaboration is another point media planners should consider – working closely with their clients, the creative agency, and media suppliers. As Shell put it: “The best media plans are very rarely created in isolation.”
“It ensures what you’re trying to deliver has all the checks and balances in place. Everyone’s on board. The client knows along the way that this is the check-in point; these are the metrics in place. So, when the campaign does go live, there are no surprises,” he added.
Extending media partnerships to include data and cross-channel assets should be considered, if possible, Shell said. Planners should enable more innovative and relevant audience targeting in a cookie-less climate.
“If you can extend your partnerships and collaborate more with the media to provide deeper audience insights and identify audience behaviours, I think that’ll go a long way to producing a strong media plan.”
Planners should also have a clear role of each channel across the entire consumer experience and measure the earned response, if possible. Shell noted: “There are a lot of metrics involved; the main point is to make sure each channel’s role is specifically defined, so the client understands what each one will deliver and contribute to the overall media plan.”
One of the last things media planners should do, according to Shell, is to broaden the campaign success metrics beyond the reach to include engagement, attention, and interactions with the same audience for the client. He noted that this would depend on what the client wants to see and their level of understanding regarding media metrics.
Don’t
While there are several dos to consider, when it comes to don’ts, Shell recommended media planners should not wait until a campaign is complete to evaluate it and see if the results worked.
Instead, he noted that monitoring or optimising a campaign should continue ideally on a weekly or a monthly basis, adding: “That will then ensure client for that the campaign has delivered value to the client. You can make any adjustments to the plan or any tweaks whilst it’s still in the market.”
“Ultimately, there might have been tweaks or programming changes, or creative changes, which might have made a campaign more effective whilst it’s been live,” he said.
Shell noted another essential aspect media planners should try to avoid – depending on the client, category, and budget – is being hung up on achieving big numbers in total reach.
“Everyone would love to run an ad in the AFL Grand Final, the Olympics, or another huge property that draws a lot of viewers when we’re talking TV. We can get hung up on that, which can deflect from the real task at hand.
“As normal people are considering more and more brands, we might be better off recommending the client build a deeper media partnership and sacrifice some potential reach they might receive from a larger property. As opposed to taking part in a share of voice war, where there’s less relevance for that brand,” he said.
He also recommended that media planners close enough to their clients should not wait for the brief to come from them. Instead, they should identify and proactively produce a media brief.
“The key point here is to know your client well, be close to them so you can pre-empt when a brief might come up. By the time brief does come up, there could have been an opportunity, and it’s already past that you could have taken advantage of,” he said.
Another don’t was for media planners to not feel restricted by what clients have always or previously done. He said that respectfully challenging a client’s idea comes down to their working relationship.
“In my time working in the big multinationals, I found that often you would try to appease a client to keep the client happy. But it always wasn’t the best thing to do from a campaign perspective. Clients that are bold, brave, innovative are willing to be challenged by the media agency and the creative agency. They’re the ones who want you to put up an argument and to fight for what your beliefs are,” he added.
Shell said media planners should test and learn new environments and channels to give the clients a fresh perspective to consider. “They’re not paying an agency to be your booking agency and do the same thing as previous years. That is the only way that a lot of advertisers will grow and evolve as well,” he said.
He highlighted the trend of brands attaching themselves to a social cause that gives short-term commercial gain or some brownie points within their marketplace.
“That’s a good example of how it can cause a brand more harm than good,” Shell said, noting that there must be careful consideration when looking at attaching a brand to a cause and that it must be relevant to the client’s brand.
“A really good media recommendation should focus on the talented hand, different environments they operate in and the moments that match the brand’s values. If there’s a clear synergy between a brand and the company values and the social issues, there’s alignment there,” he added.
Shell’s last don’t was not to let smaller media budgets stifle creative opportunities when evaluating a campaign’s channel selection for a strong media recommendation.
“That shouldn’t deter the media agency from thinking creatively, thinking aggressively, and still thinking about how they can stretch and maximise the value that the client can receive from the media partners,” he said.
Conclusion
Shell concluded with advice to up-and-coming media planners, agencies, media suppliers and even clients – to be willing to “adapt and evolve.”
“We know that as consumers change within society, their consumption of media channels changes and that, in turn, has a flow-on effect where the media suppliers will then have to change the inventory offerings to maintain that engagement and that reach with their audience sectors,” he said.
