SUCCESS FACTOR IN EFFECTIVE MEDIA PLANNING: REACH OR FREQUENCY

Media Planning is the process of identifying the media through which a perceived sponsor’s advert could be exposed to a target audience, with the ultimate aim of eliciting patronage or buying action.

It is important to note that targeting is the only effective way to approach today’s fragmented audiences. This underscores the imperative of understanding the concepts of reach and frequency as tools for planning media campaigns, especially on radio.

Reach is the total number of people who are exposed to a station, while frequency is the measure of how many times an average listener to a station is exposed to the message. I am a proponent of frequency as an important factor in advertising effectively, because I believe that reach could be deceptive. For example, if Kapital FM has a reach of one million people, and an advert is broadcast on the station once in a week with the assumption that all of them heard it once, that single spot is not enough for them to assimilate, understand or even recall the message when the need arises.

The advertising world has long believed in frequency of three theory : that three exposures to a message achieved better result. Steve Mark and Pierre Bouvard, revered broadcast marketing professionals in the United States; describe frequency as the basis of effective advert scheduling. Based on empirical evidence, the two scholars arrived at 3.29 as a constant to their Optimum Effective Scheduling {OES} formula. According to them, the target audience of a station must listen to a message 3.29 times in a week to recall the advert at the point of purchase. The OES achieved for 7am Network News in the last quarter of 2007 is shown thus:

OES = Audience Turnover {T/O} x 3.29

T/O = Cumulative Audience ÷ Average Quarterly Hour

= 13, 295, 357.00 ÷ 10, 962, 247.00 = 2

OES Number = 2 x 3.29 = 7

What this means is that seven spots of a particular commercial were needed to be exposed in a week to effectively reach those who listened to the 7am News and create a success story for the advertiser. It is therefore important for broadcast marketing professionals to have the OES of their stations on the tip of their fingers, to be in a good stead to advice clients and help them realize good returns on their ad spend. Comments please!