In our last post we talked about Yahoo! and OMD's findings of their recent consumer purchase pattern and behavior study. In it, Mike Hess mentioned a term that made me stop and think: Channel Planning.

I thought about this and thought Isn't this just a new buzz term for Media Planning? The only reason we re-name things is because the current term has developed a negative connotation. Does media planning have a negative connotation? Maybe it's because it's become formulaic and outdated to the point that it needs to be rethought.

On that same train of thought, I just started reading a recent Tom Peters book called Re-Imagine. A great guy from my former Y&R days recommended it, but I had put it aside until now. One of the main themes in Re-Imagine is "destroy and rebuild." As Peters notes:

It was easier to build Wal*Mart from scratch than to destroy and rebuild Sears It was easier for two geeky guys to build Microsoft from scratch than for IBM to re-invent itself

Additionally, while Microsoft is less than 25 years old, it might be already easier for Google to build itself from nothing than for Microsoft to re-invent itself and be an agile competitor.

Is this the case with the media agency giants? We've talked in past posts about the inability of the TV networks and newspapers to re-invent themselves, but the thought that the media agencies might be in the same boat is different and frankly scary. Lucky for you, if you're a client working with one of these large firms, you can quickly determine how up-to-date your agency has kept you and the rest of its clients in "channel planning." Simply look at how your agency spends its clients' money by medium, and compare that against your demographic's media usage. If it's in line, they're doing a fantastic job for you. If they're planning TV at 80% of your budget and your consumer only spends 30% of its media consumption hours with TV, email me - jay at goodwaygroup dot com - and we'll talk.