Seventh Week July 18-22

Monday

I began the week working once again on my part of the intern project. To really get the slides pounded out for our presentation, we each had to get hard copies of our part of the media plan done. I spent the morning putting my part into slides which included: objectives, strategies, magazine selection, rationale, advertising schedule, and costs. I was also informed (a little later in the morning) that we needed to scale back our budget because even a large conglomerate such as unilever would not choose to spen 75 million in a year on just one brand. So we scaled the budget back to 20 million and kept the same ratio of spending. Our new budget:

Magazine - $5,000,000
TV - Network - $1,000,000
TV - Cable - $4,000,000
OOH - $5,000,000
Radio - $2,000,000
Internet - $2,000,000
Promotions - $1,000,000

TOTAL = $20,000,000

This basically required me to cut out a lot from my estimates, but it made decisions a lot easier because I could cancel all the magazines that were on the edge (content didn't quite match target, crosstab numbers were low, no opportunity for added value, etc..) and just concentrate on those large name publications that were sure to be seen. It made me wonder if print planners ever pay attention to small name publications (I doesn't seem like my group does!) and how the small name publications get advertising dollars then.

The second part of my day was enveloped by a project that sounds boring, but was actually a lot of fun and taught me about the world of inserts. As we do with everything, there is a file cabinet where all interesting or innovative inserts in magazines are kept so that the print group can pull them at any time and get ideas or call the rep and get estimates. Unfortunately, many of these inserts had not been labeled properly or recorded into their corresponding chart. I had to label these and learn lingo like: pull-out, pop-up, woven centerfold, cardstock, etc...so I could fill out the chart. The inserts were amazing to me and ranged from a fold-out shoe to an underwear model with a changeable underwear wheel. Needless to say I was entertained for the rest of the day!

Tuesday

On Tuesday I was introduced to a whole new realm of the agency. One of the strategic planning teams (ABC) lost their intern due to the fact that she couldn't get credit and it is California state law that unpaid interns get credit. Since this is the team my sister works for and she happened to leave for vacation this week, the team was really in need of an intern to help pick up some slack. I volunteered and was thrown into a project working with radio estimates on a spreadsheet. Going back to the whole "diversity management" concept, I found myself checking for stations skewed toward the minority audiences. These stations had to be formatted into another spreadsheet and faxed over to a company that keeps tabs on what kind of advertising goes toward minorities. I don't quite know why anyone would need to keep tabs. Could it be to measure our progress as a society toward including all races. It seems like one of those anti-racist/racist acts that the new corporate culture is cultivating in the work place (a dilemma similar to affirmative action at universities.)

While I was debating the purpose of the assignment, I had a deadline to complete and typing out a load of information into an excel document is not the easiest task. So I had to disregard the contemplation of the effects of diversity management in my workplace and get some work done!

Wednesday

Wednesdays are always exciting because they bring the prospects of meetings. I am a sucker for sitting and listening to reps sell and media workers fend them off. A supervisor on the Direct TV account invited two interns to come and listen to a meeting he was having with reps from the New York Post. Although Direct TV already advertises in their publication, the Post was hoping to win more advertising dollars from Direct TV due to their recent make-over. Since the New York Times and the New York are so established, they are seldom willing to work with advertisers on new concepts such as interesting inserts, or even different sizes and scales of advertising space. The Post wants to establish itself as the New York newspaper that is willing to accept out-of-the-box advertising, and in the process, they've been hitting up advertisers to get them excited about it. The Direct TV supervisor as well as, naturally, the New York post reps, were from New York. So the meeting was rather hard to understand. But the gist of it was that Direct TV as a client does not ever meet with reps and those that work on the account rarely do. The supervisor kept establishing that he was meeting with them as favor and then, after a lot of skirting the question, divulged to the New York Post reps that Direct TV was looking to do something with CD inserts and if they presented a plan for their publication to them, they might end up on top. This apparently was also a LARGE favor and the reps left rather pleased with themselves. We were left with Andy (the Direct TV guy) telling us we should go into dermatology.

Second meeting wasn't quite so interesting. It was about the resources at our fingertips. All different sorts of media programs that we can use or access and where. Interesting, but hardly pertaining to us since most interns are restricted from accessing anything outside of their own teams.

Thursday

More summaries from the Min and Delaney reports and media week. Nothing interesting enough to recall, but a general consensus that ad page rates are going up and will continue to. Included in my summary were results of the Delaney awards...marking Ebony as the best publication of the year and TV Guide as the worst. The reasoning behind these awards came from rate of change in ad sales and basic management choices. Intersting stuff! Also I filed more insertion orders from Infiniti today.

Friday

The first time in awhile without a summer friday, friday was slow as usual. I began a massive refiling project for the ABC team and got to learn about estimates, but most of it was just paper work. Confusing stuff, and I learned that every page of an estimate could be very important in the future. There was waaay too many baked goods in the office today. Ahhhh...don't feed the interns please! I left a little early and got to start my weekend