In 1969, at the age of 19, I came into advertising. At that moment, the media planning was limited to raising an estimate, drawing a schedule, and only upon client approval, release orders (RO) were issued.
A movement to professionalise Media Planning saw the birth of the first readership survey in 1971. ORG conducted the research.
The report had too many errors and not an error of judgement. However, over a while constant efforts to make media planning as professional as possible & we did reach there with Media Planners such as Roda Mehta, Ketaki Gupte, PRP Nair, Paulomi Dhawan, Lynn de Souza, Arvind Vinayak & Yours Truly.
In 1990s, Martin Sorrel went on a buying spree and managed to buy over 80% of Indian Advertising Agencies. With an accountant as the owner, Advertising was destined to see its lowest ebb. Which I am looking at almost every day.
Now, there ain’t any media planners left.
Recently, for one my largest account as consultant, The No. 1 agency presented The Effective Media Reach as The Plan Reach while presenting a media plan. When I asked them, “how did you work this out?”, the meek answer was “Software” to which I asked, “do you know the formula?” The answer was meeker this time, “No”.
May I say any more?
In 1970, when I joined advertising, advertising media was limited to raising estimates, drawing up schedules for client’s product, service or idea promotion and nothing else. The media went to the summit of planning. Now it is back to just drawing up estimates, schedules once again.
Happy Media Buying. Goodbye Media Planning.
ADnaama 