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Zephrin Lasker is the co-founder and CEO of Pontiflex. He has been involved with online marketing since its inception more than a decade ago. Zephrin is also a serial entrepreneur, having successfully launched two start-ups prior to Pontiflex.

In the course of his career, Zephrin has played a key role in shaping campaign successes for a variety of clients such as Sprint, Cendant, Earthlink, and eFax, helping them acquire over 8 million new customers.
Prior to co-founding Pontiflex, Zephrin founded The North Road Group, an interactive agency. He has also worked as Vice President of Business Development at i33 Communications, where he managed sales and technical teams to help deliver new customers, launch state-of-the-art websites and deploy cutting edge marketing initiatives.

Prior to i33, Zephrin worked at Commerce One Global Services managing Sprint's new web initiatives. He has also co-founded the e-commerce company Beautility, where he served as Chief Operating Officer.

Zephrin has a background in corporate finance. He has worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson in the areas of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions. Zephrin began his career as an Equity Analyst at Creditanstalt in Prague. He is an avid fly fisherman and is currently learning how to spey cast. He has a BA degree from Reed College.

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Features

Media Plan ’08: Look Out of the Window

Written on
October 10th 2008
Author
by Zephrin Lasker  |
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crystal-ball.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — It has been many years now, but there is one moment from my ad agency days that has stayed with me.

One morning, as I walked towards the conference room, I saw our media planner buried nose deep in figures pouring forth from the monitor and the giant SRDS handbook open in front of her. On the other side of the aisle, I saw our Creative Director, feet on the desk, staring blankly out of the window.

The Creative Director, I remember thinking to myself, sure has a sweet job. The entire world that lay outside could be used as a canvass for her brand palette. On the other hand, the role of the media planner full of figures and numbers seemed so mechanized and boxed into a little cubicle with very little room for creativity.

How the times have changed!

Now, it seems that the options available to the media community to be creative with their marketing plans are limited only by their imaginations. This is undoubtedly the direct result of the proliferation of custom interactive venues over the last few years. An increasing number of media professionals and marketers are using community sites, newsletters, reward programs, blogs and micro-blogs to interact with the end consumers in relevant ways that reinforce the brand value proposition.

The market intelligence numbers bear testament to this shift from “announcement-oriented” push strategies to “engagement-oriented” pull ones.

According to Advertising Age and TNS Media Intelligence, the top 25 companies with the largest advertising spend over the last five years cut their spending last year in traditional media by about $767 million in 2007. They moved their dollars towards more unconventional or “non-traditional” forms. To give just one example, in the 2003 -2006 time frame, Nike increased its “non-traditional” media ad spending by as much 33 percent, to $457.9 million, according to Advertising Age data.

Take a look at how JetBlue has engaged consumers with its Twitter Forum, or how Threadless.com frequently makes its site more useful to end users based on continual feedback from its e-newsletters. In all of these cases it is the media plan that has infused creativity into the brand marketing effort by enabling users to express their individuality and interact with the brand in relevant ways.

So what is the defining characteristic of the 2008 media plan? How is it different from the media plans of yore?

Here are three key areas where the 2008 media plan differs from the 2007 one:

• Media planning: The 2008 media plan does not focus on demographics. It places a high premium on intent - be it the intent to sign-up for a newsletter, intent to visit the site again, or intent to buy a product or service. It does this by incorporating elements that encourage interactions with the brand at multiple touchpoints and facilitating mechanisms for an ongoing dialogue with end consumers.

• Media Buying: CPM pricing models are relics of an older, print and broadcasting era. Interactive advertisers with compelling tactical executions frequently find themselves shortchanged by pay for view models.

It’s no wonder that the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that gap between CPM pricing models and search advertising are steadily increasing. In fact, the article says that the spend on search advertising in 2008 is estimated to be twice as much as display. In another report, IDC estimates that with 71% YTY growth, CPL advertising is the fastest growing segment. The writing is clear on the wall – a growing number of advertisers are utilizing pay-for-performance models to build a pipeline of unique, brand-specific marketing leads cost-effectively to build out a wide variety of interactive venues.

• Campaign Optimization: The 2008 media plan will not be optimized on the basis of metrics like click-through rates and CPM. Rather, the 2008 plan places a great emphasis on marketing metrics that can be closely tied in to business results. These include newsletter open-rates, cost/registration, cost/repeat visit, cost/conversion and cost/sale. Advertisers can co-relate marketing metrics and business results more easily, which is critical, especially in tough economic times.

The media plan of 2008 is more accountable. It’s more effective. And it allows ample room for creativity. So the next time I am at an agency, and see a person with a thoughtful, far-away stare, looking out of the window, I won’t be quick to assume that she or he is a Creative Director. For she or he could very well be a media planner, with the world for a canvas, putting together the media plan of 2008.



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