Are Ego Buys still hurting your Media Strategy?

When I entered into the agency business as a web professional, I was most impressed by the kind of media clients were buying.  And, when I say impressed, I'm talking the shocked variety.  Many years before digital media was the 'It Girl" of the hour, traditional media reigned King with it's unmeasured "brand impressions" and marquee status.  Just get me in that magazine, on that channel, etc was the dialog of the day.  Part of the shift came from insurgent dotcoms creeping in on brick & mortar stores(and in tourism, the OTA siege).  They simply had to adopt digital media or die.  Too many did the latter, as a result of being reactionary instead of proactive.  

Today, counting everything has become the standard, but still Ego drives a good bit of media buying strategy.  The C execs hear about trending websites, and that grows to some esteem in their minds.  Before you know it, the media buyer is scooping up home page ads on a site that yields no real value, correlation to the consumer or direct purchases.  But, the C exec gets to brag to the board that you are running on ABC website.  Meanwhile, smaller organizations can't afford the hero ads, making them more nimble and smarter with their limited budget.

Self-serve media has alleviated a lot of the temptation to ego ads, but only to replaced with fear buying.  "OMG, we don't have enough presence in Facebook, so let's buy a lot of that" is the unceremonious beginning to many an org's social strategy.  Afraid that you're missing out, you buy.

Here's the thing, the real ego-boost will come from buying aligned with the right strategy in concert with solid research.

Media buying to boost your message is necessary.  Buying a publication/website/video ad because it "makes you look good" will inevitably set you up for failure.  In tourism, if your ad doesn't serve the visitor's needs first, you've not only lost them - you may have done brand damage.  A click is not a yes.  Unless you have a clear path to conversion or one heck of an Economic Impact study, a click is just a wrist flick and means nothing.

And on that note, if you haven't fully invested in Earned and Owned media, Paid media will continue to deliver milk-toast results.  And, nobody can afford that in today's highly competitive marketplace.

Summarizing this post, your media shouldn't really have an emotional connection to anyone but your audience.  Don't buy with too much marquee confidence, and don't buy in fear.