Issue 14: Media and The Art of War
Know Your Ground

In the book "Art of War by Sun Tzu," he discusses nine varieties of ground: dispersive, facile, contentious, open, intersecting highways, serious, difficult, hemmed- in, and desperate ground. I will use these concepts to show how media can be approached, and show there are parallels between strategy in war and media placement. Due to considerations of length and your reading time, I will discuss this subject over the next few newsletters.

The Battle Lines Recently, we placed a 60 second and 120 second direct response ad on a national broadcast feed (over 150 US markets), and on local cable systems in 10 medium sized US markets. The strategy was to provide exposure on a national basis, and to concentrate exposure in ten local markets as well-on local cable systems such as the History, Weather, HGTV, Golf, etc....channels. The product appealed to an older male demo, and was loosely related to the 9/11 event. Further the product had been offered (in the past) to a targeted mailing list of 40,000 buying customers, and a 5% response in sales was generated from that list. A 5% sales response is by any standard an excellent return, however in this case it turned out that only 700 people actually purchased. But they bought big time! So in reality, the 5% sales response translated into 1.75% of the people actually purchased. On television, we will not be reaching targeted past customers-only approximate or potential "customer profiles" based upon the client's estimation of who the customer is, what his tastes/behaviors are, and where he maybe located. On TV, if you get 10 people to buy for every 1000 viewers that is a good response. Further, given the cost of the product we were selling- we needed to get a minimum of 4 orders every time we ran an ad to create a moderate profit. Learn more...

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles On television, we will not be reaching targeted past customers-only approximate or potential "customer profiles" based upon the client's estimation of who the customer is, what his tastes/behaviors are, and where he maybe located. On TV, if you get 10 people to buy for every 1000 viewers that is a good response. Further, given the cost of the product we were selling- we needed to get a minimum of 4 orders every time we ran an ad to create a moderate profit. This situation can be likened to Sun Tzu's definition of "difficult ground." Ground that is hard to traverse, because it is peppered with mountain forests, rugged steeps, marshes and fens-everything is tough to travel. The strategy he recommends when you are on "difficult ground" is to keep "steadily on the march." However, in this case our media client chose to stand and fight, which was a direct violation of a cardinal rule. Learn About The Author