MEDIA OWNERS, MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Media owners, mind your language

Language is the most important means of communication for human beings. It has been, it is, it will be. Besides verbal languages, we have non-verbal languages such as sign language, body language and so on. Without a language, no communication is possible.

When a pharmaceutical company hires a medical representative, it makes sure that the person being hired is conversant with doctor's  language; because a doctor cannot be convinced by a person who does not speak his language. When an engineering company hires a salesman to sell its equipments  it makes sure that the candidate selected is well-versed with the engineering industry.

How do media houses hire people to sell their advertising space or time? There are two types. One is the owner who does not want to invest in fresh people. Instead he looks around and finds a person who has already proved himself in the field. The is the type who believes in fresh talent ( which is really a good thing considering the number of unemployed graduates we have).

Unfortunately, the good intentions of the latter don't go much further because such media owners haven't recognised the need for professionalism.

They hire fresh graduates and push them into field with one-line brief: ' Go and get some ads '. These poor freshers who have had no exposure to marketing and advertising moving amongst advertising professionals without any direction. Worse, they don't even know language of the advertising agency, media planners or the product managers at the advertises' office.

They have been told that their job is to get some ads. So, they visit advertising agencies and advertisers and start telling literally ' give me some ads '.

Some of other demands which one often hears from media sellers are:
# How about an ad? ( just like that ).
# Give me an ad, my job is at stake ( happens about once a week ).
#You handle so many products; you must give something to us too.
# I saw your ad in X. Why was it not released in our publication or channel? ( occurs about once a day )
 
What should a media owner do to avoid getting himself the image of a " scrounger "?

First, recruit people with a marketing and \ or advertising background. In the case of fresh graduates, provide them with adequate training in marketing and advertising. This will eliminate to a large extent the reoccurrence of of the scenario mentioned earlier. When a media seller makes a fool of himself, through sheer ignorance, it reflects more on the media owner than on the person himself.

Media owners must familiarise his representative with media planning process in an advertising agency; so, when his representative visits an ad agency he is able to speak the media planners' language.

A good media seller, in my opinion, is the one who is familiar with inter-media comparisons. He is the one who understands the target audience for his client's products, understands nature and seasonal patterns of various products. And above all, he is fully familiar with the singular characteristics of the medium he represents.

Unless media owners understand the need for talking to advertising professionals in their own language, they will continue to be in a difficult situation; as most are today.