Mike Collinson is Director, Marketing & Product Strategy, Mazda Canada Inc.
When will brand marketer dollars finally shift online in a way that syncs with the overall time spent online versus other mediums? – For example, when there are better attribution models perhaps?
MC: This is a complex question, I’ll try to be succinct. Budget allocation by media is largely dependent upon brand strategy for the coming year – is it a launch (or model change) year or a sustaining strategy. We try to let the overall strategy set the brand development objectives (upper or lower funnel) and then have the strategy determine the best way to reach the target. For example, 2009 is a launch year for Mazda3 so the majority of the buy was focused on the upper funnel, since we have 2 distinct targets to reach with Mazda3 we utilized a broad media strategy (i.e. Cinema to reach the younger target and TV for the older demo) along with strong digital presence in both upper and lower funnel sites. Better attribution models would help moving more budget to on-line, but our target is very broad and our experience demonstrates we need to utilize multiple media points to get the awareness levels we need. Another layer to this discussion is the automotive purchase cycle is very long, so we allocate a portion of the budget to reach in market consumer, this is most effectively executed using SEM and automotive portal sites.
Can you see brand marketers taking more of their media buying and planning (digital-only or cross-channel) in-house in the future? Why or why not?
