- The Collaborative
- Our Approach
- Tools
The Collaborative is a central team at Lintas Media Group that focuses on the development and application of knowledge and systems for next generation media planning & buying.
Media and the media consumer are both evolving side by side and the media practices can no longer be skewed towards traditional forms of communication. The Collaborative is re-defining the craft of communication design and implementation to deliver world-class technology solutions to create efficiency and value for the media planning & buying teams.
The primary pillars for The Collaborative rests are: driving “collaboration” across teams and offices; ensuring efficiency of media planning/ buying processes through process re-design and application of technology; and bringing the perspective of the evolving media landscape into communication design. To do this The Collaborative brings together expertise in the domains of - planning science, buying analytics, consumer & category understanding and automated application development.
The Collaborative is structured in the classical Hub & Spoke arrangement with a Hub team based at Delhi with all faculty experts and assisted by spoke members in every office that enable implementation and knowledge assimilation and dissemination. ‘Central’ the intranet for knowledge management forms the backbone for a two-way communication and collaboration between The Collaborative and the business teams.
The Collaborative cooks the following recipes and experiments with many more:-
- Providing a birds-eye-view of the media industry
- Definition of optimal methods and processes for media planning & buying
- Conceptualization, Development, Training and Application of automated tools
- Research design and implementation for central and customized research databases
- Support in formulation of media strategy for the serviced brands
- In-depth analysis of specific consumer segments, media and categories
- Internal Rate benchmarking
- Internal Audits in the area of process, strategy and buying
- Assistance in new business prospecting
- Internal skill evaluation and enhancement
The Exchanges Way!
Consumers today do not like to be ‘strait-jacketed’ into ‘stereotypes’. They have a plethora of ‘me-too’ products to choose from resulting to ‘quick shift’ in product preferences at minimal risk. Consumers are now constantly looking for value beyond price and demand constant improvement in products and services. What they take home is not just the product or brand, but the entire product experience as well.
At the Lintas Media Group approach to communication planning that is not media centric but one that integrates the perspective of the consumer, the brand and the medium. Exchanges is the defining philosophy behind our brand promise and work. It defines a clear process and is a framework for the development and mobilization of strategic media assets.
While, erstwhile models in advertising are ‘interruption’ based; Exchanges is based on creating ‘engagement’ resulting in an exchange of value between the brand and the consumer. Thus, making it a two-way interaction in which the consumer receives higher value from the media consumption experience while the brand gets a tangible benefit from the interaction. The exchanges process elements of ‘IQ & Insight’, ‘Strategy’ and ‘Innovation’ ensure that the resultant communication solution is targeted to delivering business results and not just visibility.
Accountability is an inherent deliverable in Exchanges as there is a significant importance to the measurement of business results and prescribes evaluation of the effectiveness of various elements of the media solution in affecting the result. Tools such as Improve which is a TV and Radio Optimizer and Matrix which is a response modeling system; both part of the Exchanges suite ensure that the media planning is efficient and effective.
Click to view the Exchanges Way
Our proprietor solution kit that facilitates insights for “Experiential Planning”
Connections | Crickipedia | Encounters | Engross | Exchanges | Expressions
iMix & Deal Manager | Improve | Kwikster | LinCin | LinRad | Logger | Matrix
Papermate | Path to Purchase | ProphSEE | Response RX | SAM | TV Audit System
Connections: A detailed survey based on an exhaustive list of media touch points (over 78) that helps us define communication objectives and select relevant media touch points for a particular brand or category.
Crickipedia our one stop shop for cricket ratings. Over a 1000 matches, 5 years of cricket, 20 countries, 18 target groups, the most exhaustive database on cricket with a super speedy software.
Encounters classify media based upon the way consumers actually sort, edit and use different media instead of assuming the obvious deliverable of each medium. It’s a content and context planning tool that aims to reduce the randomness of integrated marketing creativity and planning.
Engross, an in-depth study among urban & rural people – students, housewives & working persons to understand why they avoid ads and what makes them ENGAGE better with media forms
Exchanges: A channel planning tool that helps us marry the business intellect with consumer insight to arrive at core idea that can be integrated across 360 degree.
Expressions are the conscious or unconscious interactions around the brand where the consumer freely expresses himself/ herself. While GRPs give us the number of impressions that were successfully generated, Expressions is a measure of the outcome of those impressions. Once the ‘critical’ relationship between the expressions and disposition/sales is identified, then the media can be focused to generating specific types of expressions.
iMix & Deal Manager - iMix is a web-based media management system. Imix is an integrated system that offers planning, estimation, release, invoicing, payment and MIS functionalities to manage media transactions for clients. It enables managers to work from any part of the country on a centralized system. It is user friendly, fast, superior firewalls, scalable and has capabilities to build client interface for easy access to their media information. Deal Management Module of Imix enables real time updates of media commitments made on behalf of clients. In addition to tracking commitments, the module enables to pull in external research data to monitor efficiencies against set parameters. iMix is developed by Interpublic GIS, and is used by IPG’s offices in Asia and other parts of the world.
Improve as the name suggestsimprovestelevision plans at a very advanced level for multiple target groups and multiple markets, in direct sync with the raw respondent level data of any viewership database.
Kwikster: A software tool targeted to provide efficiency/ speed as well as standardization of the competitive reporting of the TV, Press and Radio spends. The system is built to read the data files of TAM Adex and processes the data into pre-defined competitive comparison templates.
LinCin: There is no syndicated data available for the Cinema medium. To ensure objective evaluation of cinema as an investment option; LinCin allows planners to do a ‘what-if’ analysis of the investment in cinema for their TG/ Markets and their defined Target Group. This ‘what-if’ analysis allows a comparison of the reach and frequency of different schedules to arrive at the most suitable plan for the campaign.
LinRad: In the absence of an All-India Radio - planning system, often the Radio investments are either curtailed or done basis personal comfort derived from general investigation of the markets. The syndicated data available is only for limited markets. LinRad applies the radio data from the IRS and derives the cover guides for the required TG and Markets for evaluation of the Reach and Frequency of the proposed plan at the All India (or select markets level). This ensures more objective planning of the radio investments.
Logger: Making TV logs is an extremely time consuming and iterative process. Making logs manually exposes it to ‘planner bias’ as well as to ‘manual errors’. The Logger makes the Log making process automated, structured and controlled thus benefiting in terms of correctness of the logs, quality control and of course allows the planners save time.
Matrix - An advanced response based planning software that allows us to model and evaluates the multi-media effect of a campaign.
Papermate: Unlike the TV and Radio syndicated tools available from Nielsen; the Print research available in the country is available from two different sources. While Nielsen records and provides the advertising incidence and spends data; the readership of publications is reserved with the Media Research Users Council (MRUC). This duality does not easily allow planners to generate Press GRPs as they do for the other media. Papermate is a tool that is a bridge between the Indian readership Survey (IRS) and the Press Adex Database from Nielsen. Basis the data of the two sources, Papermate matches the data and calculates the GRP data for any media schedule. It is extensively used for SOV analysis and for estimating GRPs of press campaigns.
Path to Purchase enables problem biased thinking. Being precise in directing the right marketing solutions to the right problems in the right measure using the right media.
PropheSEE: An online tool that enables us to ‘listen in’ to comments and conversations online by researching through blogs and other sharing content. Revealing what consumers are really feeling and thinking.
Response RX is a communications tool that aids in creating the right communication to generate the desired response for the brand. The same is applicable to Media, based on the desired response from the consumer, suitable media vehicles are selected. Works best when used along with Encounters.
SAM (Strategic Allocation Model), a user-friendly interface that enables extensive reports to aid budget allocation decisions. SAM based on comprehensive inputs such as advertising: sales ratio, market priorities, sales growth, competitive benchmarks, company focus, media costs, share of voice constraints, etc. is capable of budget allocation across countries, markets for a brand or brands in a portfolio.
TV Audit System (TAS): TAS is an audit tool that reads the pre/post evaluation run of any TV schedule from TAM Media Xpress. It analyses the evaluation results and provides the planner with an objective evaluation of the delivery of the plan. It also diagnoses the plan and reports the delivery of various plan elements in terms of campaign structure, zero spots, extent of frequency duplication, etc. This enables the planners to do quick iterations and improve on any weak elements of the plan.