The Roulette of Russian Reading

Russians don't read newspapers much. Which is a pity.

Not because reading newspapers is good for you. Quite the opposite. In most countries the biggest selling papers are the downmarket tabloids; The Sun in Britian, Bild in Germany & Fakt in Poland. And Russians do read. I am always amazed by how many people have electronic readers on the metro. So they are reading books instead.

It is a pity because buying daily newspapers is the most fun you can have as a media buyer. Especially on a Friday afternoon. Because on Friday the papers are "closing" three editions; Saturday, Sunday & Monday. So Friday afternoon is when they start dropping the rates for pages. Any client with a short-term budget can pick up bargains.

As a print buyer you first prepare yourself by going for a long liquid lunch. This is to steel your nerves before the buying frenzy of the afternoon ahead. Then if you want to look impressive you get two phones on your desk to make you feel like a commodoties trader.

Then you let the fun begin. As the minutes tick by until 6pm the prices start to drop. I once got a page in the Times for $10,000 when the normal rate was around $25,000. Even the Zenith print department was a fun place to work on at this time, and the fact that it was Friday helped as well.

But the most fun I ever had was when I was booking colour page spreads for AT&T. I had a budget of $750,000 and it came down to the Telegraph vs. The Sunday Times. It was winner takes all. And the best thing was that the rep from the Times was married to the rep from the Telegraph.

I gave it to the Times. They had a lower Cost per Thousand. Plus they promised me tickets to the Fleadh, the annual Irish music festival in London where Van Morrison was playing.

The Appliance of Science

Brilliant cinema commercial for fags in the headline link.

One of the people responsible was Mike Cozens who was later the creative director at Y&R London. What I loved about Mike was that the media planning was done by the creative department.

Account planning might recommend magazines, the suits would suggest TV & media research would highlight the role of radio. But the creatives would come up with a big cinema ad supported by posters.

So the media was decided by whichever creative idea was the strongest. Brilliant. This meant that we did posters & cinema for all sorts of products that wouldn't normally consider these media. Sugar Puffs cereal, Pirelli tyres & Colgate toothpaste to name a few.

The problem with using stupid computers & dodgy research to decide media is that it doesn't take account of the role of creative. The most important part of the process.