We buy media (both time and space). We know that whenever you’re trying to create a change in behavior the first step is to educate your demographics as to the importance of knowing the reason why this change is beneficial to them. And, if we only buy media that’s available to us, we definitely need to know if our media partners and their available content is a great fit for our purpose. Does the media support this needed change? Does the media cover it with their news or editorial?
For one of our B2B clients we work in partnership with the American City Business Journals, in which we place ads regarding the importance of workplace safety. After many years of annual discussions about how important workplace safety is for a business, we finally succeeded in convincing the Texas publishers that it would be a good idea for them to get involved as moderators with our actual Safety Summits we hold across the State. These Summits host about 200 people to a morning of information about workplace safety. Our hope was that the dialogue created between the publishers and our Safety Summit panelists would provide the publishers with a unique insight, with this essential point being perceived: without workplace safety businesses can never thrive.
That was last year. What happened this year was extraordinary. In our planning for 2019, the publishers across the State decided to print a front-page story plus three pages of information about workplace safety on September 20th in every city they serve in Texas. This was not in any way paid advertising, but an informed decision made by the publishers to embrace the importance of workplace safety through educating their readers. American City Business Journals undertook a first hand experience that educated them as to the fact that workplace safety has an integral place in achieving a human centric and healthy business model. Their decision to provide this information about workplace safety to employers across the state aligns directly with the very best practices in the world of business.
As media investors for our client’s funds into the world of communicating to their demographics, we need to determine more than CPM (Cost Per Thousand) or CPP (Cost Per Point). In fact, it’s imperative that the media that we partner with supports the ideals / ideology of our clients’ endeavors. If this is not happening, choices have to be made: either create content that correlates these thoughts and ideology, or move on to another media partnership. It just has to be a great fit.