SITUATION:
A regional chain of restaurants had several agencies with each of them handling different responsibilities. Each agency had presented their own thoughts regarding media plans for multiple markets. The client needed an independent review of their markets and media budgets in order to develop objective annual media plans.
OUR APPROACH:
We began by reviewing all markets locations along with the demographics and current consumer media usage trends within each market. We also reviewed historical and seasonal sales trends in each market. We conducted this initial work before we reviewed media costs and budgeted media spending.
We conducted the project in this manner in order to make sure we had identified the individual characteristics of each market, both in terms of the target audience profile (based on demographics and media usage), and the potential ROI of media spending. At Spectrum One, we recognize that different markets may behave differently and the impact of media spending in each market depends on many variables.
OUR FINDINGS:
Based on current demographics and media usage trends, we recommended a slight change in their core target audience profile across all markets, with recommended secondary target audiences customized by market. Our review of sales data revealed seasonal differences in a few markets.
We then developed different annual media plans for each market based on a review of all available data and research. We also took the additional step of developing a second set of annual media plans for some of the markets where we saw the potential for increased ROI by planning incremental media.
RESULTS:
The client approved our recommendation on the target audience profiles, as well as our initial set of media plans. Due to economic reasons, the client did not proceed with any of the incremental media plan recommendations at that time. But the client agreed that once economic conditions improve, they plan to proceed with our second set of media plans.