Amita Srivastava, National Head – Account Planning, Reliance Broadcast Network

A media consultant plays a crucial and distinctive role in the entire brand building and communication strategy process. With the challenging media landscape, all brands are trying to leverage media to position their brand positively. In such a competitive scenario, it is essential to have clear goals with a strategic approach and a thorough set of guidelines. Given the fast paced nature of the media environment, a logical approach and expertise to outperform others and project the brand with the desired eminence is key. Being well equipped with the market trends allows for a media consultant to ascertain the target audience and accordingly devise communication strategies thus enabling efficacy and efficiency. Hence, in recent years the trend of hiring media consultants or media agencies by brands keen to have a voice has become more relevant. Media consultants provide a much needed macro perspective by taking into account all aspects of media today - not just paid, owned, earned, but also tech. In the past, brands were able to get their desired presence felt through traditional advertising and marketing campaigns. However, digitization and social media platforms gradually gained importance due to ease of access and inclination towards digital content.

While currently in India, TV and print are larger than digital, the medium is expanding exponentially and we are expecting it will soon have a higher share of the ad spend pie. This requires talent; hence we have specialists in this field who cater to different aspects of the overall media landscape. However, while there are specialists in every field, there has to be one person holding it all together. For a brand’s success, it is important that all aspects of product, consumer understanding, marketing and communication come together and media is a vital part of this mix. Thus, it is equally important to have an experienced media professional on board.  

5 Cornerstones of Successful Media Consulting

• Constant Innovation: There is an enormous clutter in the market – everyone wants to talk about their brand. Every consumer is inundated with a lot of communication from various brands. Unless you are innovative, you will not stand out. The brand has to offer something different and succeed in impressing the consumer.
• Measurability: Every advertising dollar has to be measurable. The consultant has to guide the brand to optimize marketing spends. Your goals, the means to achieve those goals and the metric to measure success, have to all be measurable.
• Efficiency and Efficacy: While measurability is important, how well you are spending the brand’s investments is what determines excellence. At every step of the process, it is imperative to understand and monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of the money spent and advice accordingly.
• Overkill: Share of Voice is a very popular term. And a lot of brands believe in higher SOV as a measure of a successful campaign. Watching and weighing how much is enough is critical. The consumer has a low threshold for repeated stories and this leads back to the point of innovating constantly.
• Convergence: To deliver the best experience to the consumer, brands strive to be at the convergence point of the consumer’s interaction with the brand, the medium and the content.