Marketing Communications

MEDIA OBJECTIVES 253

   Category spending. What is the advertising spending in the product category, and how has

it evolved over the last five years? Did category spending increase, decrease or remain stable?

   Share of voice. What is the relative advertising spending of the different competitive brands

in the product category? Share of voice (SOV) is calculated by dividing a particular brand’s

advertising spending by the total category spending. Besides the share of voice, one should

also investigate the share of market (SOM) and how share of voice relates to share of

market. Some researchers assume that share of market follows share of voice, while others

argue that the share of market should always be smaller than the share of voice in order to

be able to maintain growth (see also Chapter 6 on budgets).

   Media mix. Identify how each competitor divides its advertising spending across the different

media and analyse the trend in media mix composition.

Target groups were extensively discussed earlier (see Chapter 4). Although all segmentation

variables mentioned there remain valid, a variable that needs special attention at this stage is

the media behaviour of the target audience. Do the target consumers listen to the radio or

watch TV and, if so, which programmes do they listen to or watch, at what time and on which

days? Do the target consumers read newspapers or magazines and, if so, which ones do they

read? Do the target consumers use electronic media, do they often go the cinema, etc.? This

information is indispensable.

Chapter objectives

Media objectives are derived from the communications objectives, and ought to be concrete,

measurable and realistic. Media objectives are usually formulated in terms of the character-

istics shown in Figure 8.2.

Frequency

Frequency indicates how many times a consumer of the target group, on average, is expected

to be exposed to the advertiser’s message within a specified time period. It is important to

know that frequency is estimated on the basis of the number of times one could be exposed

to the media vehicle, and not to the message itself. For example, if a consumer has a newspaper

subscription and a certain campaign has one ad a week for six weeks in that newspaper, we

could expect that the particular consumer will be exposed to the ad six times during the

Figure 8.2 Media objectives

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