Media Buying and Selling

According to Adage, Discover Financial is putting its $85 million media buying account into review.  This is a great opportunity to touch on a huge difference between brands and their local entities.  Brands buy media through a media buying company while local businesses are sold media by local media outlets.

Why does this make a difference?

Because when a brand wants to change media buyers, it “launches a review” of its media buying account.  Local businesses do not have the luxury of a media buyer, they deal with dozens of salespeople from local radio, television, newspaper, printshops and more.  Moreover, they don’t “launch a review” they know these salespeople and have relationships with them; they are members of the Chamber of Commerce and do business with each other regularly.

Understanding this relationship is critical when helping brands to understand how their local businesses interact in their local communities and why, in many cases, programs aimed at helping local businesses end up failing.  A huge stumbling block brands and agencies fail to realize are that these relationships cannot be easily changed.  In many cases, local initiatives have strict rules requiring utilization of specific media types or fulfillment partners.  These rules ignore the long-lasting relationships that local businesses have.

Understanding the relationships that local businesses have are critical when evaluating local marketing strategies.  A local marketing strategy that understands this concept and supports it will ultimately be  successful rather than a solution that is tied to specific media partners or restircts media partners.

Tags: Creative Versioning, Discover, Launches a Review, Local Marketing, Media Buying