Erwin Ephron on Media

The first master of multichannel marketing in this mini series was Hurol Inan. He is from the online marketing world. Next came Kevin Hillstrom whose background is from direct marketing. So, in the name of multichannel consciousness, it is high time now to pick a guru from the brand marketing world.

Erwin Ephron is my favored guru and writer from that brand marketing world. I know Ephron only from his website EphronOnMedia.com. Watch out web analysts and direct marketers! This site is a dream come true with easy to read and understand articles that provide a glimpse into a media planners world.

Erwin Ephron is the father of modern media planning, as far as I understand. What does that mean? It means for example scheduling the frequency and intensity of advertising methodically so to drive up results. Given a budget constraint, should ads be scheduled frequently to hit viewers multiple times per week or should the budget be spread across the year so to reach as many first time viewers as possible?

Much research has been done on the topic. Ephron’s contribution seems to be especially in the area of analyzing the benefit of recency of ad exposures for driving results. He is sometimes referred to as the father of “recency planning”. Read how Ephron teaches tap to this elephant.

Media planning of course also means choosing the channels that will improve outcomes.  How is it done? With analytics of course! Multichannel analytics.

Clearly Ephron’s focus across his long carreer have been the traditional offline channels, TV, radio, print, etc. These are the ones he has written about. Not a bad idea, since TV is still  – today – the channel where marketers are spending the largest chunk of their budget, namely thirty to fourty percent.

Priceless Ephron moments include:

• The Brittle Bones of Media where Ephron concludes that TV advertising can be made more effective by flighting radio ads in parallel. Especially today when viewers can dodge TV ads easily.
• Quote from Ephron on Accountability: “Buying advertising is like buying a melon; you have to spend the money before you find out if it’s any good.” Hence the requirement for measurement!
• Finding the Other Half: Were you always wondering whether those big commercials turn into sales? What was the product again they were selling? (It was a good chuckle and commercial though!) Well, Ephron has been wondering too, and looking into the databases.

Maybe as a sign of the traditional media from which Ephron comes, his site is not a blog. But you can subscribe to his articles by email, and I highly recommend doing so.