All Aboard?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 1, 2003 by Michael Learmonth

Byline: MICHAEL LEARMONTH

Every September, 400 or so advertising executives from Detroit, Chicago, and New York descend upon Auburn Hills, Michigan to hear the gospel according to DaimlerChrysler. This pilgrimage, known as "Media Day," offers dual benefits: DaimlerChrysler gets to chat up its brand strategies for the coming year, and the ad execs get a little face time at the post-meeting banquet with the sixth-largest advertiser in the country.

Although it wasn't exactly traffic-stopping news - after all, word had been circulating for months - what jazzed participants at last year's meeting was this: Chrysler is bringing to showrooms two new models, the Pacifica and the Crossfire, both of which will be supported by massive marketing budgets. As the creative types furiously took notes, Chrysler brand manager Bonita Coleman Stewart held a briefing on the new target markets. For the Pacifica, the company will zero in on soccer moms who've tired of minivans. For the sporty Crossfire coupe, it will seek out men who make more than a hundred grand a year.

This annual getting-to-know-all-about-you event was hatched three years ago to accommodate the big, splashy, cross-media deals DaimlerChrysler now expects for its ad dollars. With "Media Day," the automaker gets all of its potential pitchmen in one room and offers up the info they'll need to concoct the one-stop-shopping extravaganzas Chrysler is looking for. "We love cross-platform [deals] when we can do something like that," Chrysler's Stewart says. "We will look at others, but this is much easier to orchestrate with one of the larger umbrella companies."

Once considered groundbreaking and exceptional, cross-platform deals have become a prerequisite when competing for the big bucks with advertisers the size of Chrysler. But this trend is now trickling down. The small and mid-size guys are clamoring for the glitz of an integrated deal as well, and, as a result, magazine publishers are being forced to rethink the way they sell their big and not-so-big ad packages. "Most of our clients have at least one multiplatform deal," says Peter Gardner, media director for ad giant Deutsch. And if you're not putting a multiplatform deal on the table, increasingly you're not in the running. "The reality is, the bar is continuing to be raised in terms of the array of quality offerings," says FCB director of media brand planning Tyler Schaffer. "You're at a huge disadvantage if you're print only."

While there has been some noisily expressed skepticism about the value and wisdom of multiplatform deals, they continue to proliferate. Proponents of these packages say this is what it takes to make an impression in today's advertising clutter, because, as media fragments and consumers are bombarded by more and more ad messages, any effective campaign must touch them in myriad ways. "The market is forcing this - not the advertiser, but the consumer," argues publishing consultant Lou Ann Sabatier.

Still, there is a little something in it for the advertiser. For Chrysler, a multiplatform deal offers the prospect of getting more advertising for less money; it also allows its agency, PHD Detroit, to contend with fewer proposals and to hold one media company accountable for the effectiveness of an entire campaign.

Meanwhile, agencies have their own reasons to push multiplatform. Massive consolidation has reduced the playing field to a half-dozen major agencies; the agencies, in turn, have used their heft to demand lower and lower prices from publishers. "But that became their only story - we can get you a better rate," says an executive at a major publishing company. Now these agencies are brokering ambitious multiplatform deals to convince clients of their creativity, that exec says. Agencies need to look like they're adding value.

Then there are the media conglomerates. AOL Time Warner, Viacom, and Disney, among others, are under tremendous pressure from shareholders to prove that their complex media marriages make sense and will deliver greater profits. "The media business is being forced by Wall Street to rationalize its bigness," says Joe Mandese, editor of "Media Buyer's Daily" (published by Primedia, which also is the parent of FOLIO:). "This means forcing synergy on the different components."

But not everyone on Madison Avenue is convinced that all this multimedia hoopla is a good idea, especially when both sides of the transaction expect to get more for less. "Basically, what everyone wants is a sum that's greater than the parts, and we're not seeing that," says Brett Stewart, senior vice president and director of print services at Universal McCann.

Critics argue that most multiplatform deals look better on paper than they do in practice. "I've seen a lot of these get struck, and they don't get struck a second time around," says former McCann media buyer Harlan Schwarz.

Others say the kinks are still being worked out, but, like it or not, integration is here to stay. AOL Time Warner - the battered poster child for multiplatform deals - has sold $50 million in joint packages with its magazines and CNN since the early days of the merger. And after a rocky start, the company is now churning out deals at a furious clip - albeit with a few minor tactical adjustments on its part. Under Michael Kelly, who is the new head of Global Marketing Solutions, the unit that manages multiplatform deals for AOL Time Warner, the company now sets certain conditions on these time-consuming transactions. Before agreeing to create a package, the company asks advertisers to buy in at least five magazines and to increase their ad spending the following year.