Media channel effectiveness for building brand equity has shifted significantly over the last 2 years. MarketingCharts compared the ANA 2007 figures with the ANA 2009 figures and concluded the following.

• TV (down to 64% from 80%)
• Magazines (down to 51% from 67%)
• Radio (down to 30% from 36%)
• Outdoor (down to 26% from 35%)
• Newspapers (down to 19% from 36%)

These examples confirm the massive landslides going on in the marketing communications landscape;

• from broadcasting to narrowcasting
• from offline to online
• from ATL to BTL

One of our mantras at MarketingGovernance.com is that most marketing departments struggle to cope with this shift. Marketers try to utilize the existing “traditional” marketing processes and systems to deal with new and complex challenges. They try to 'narrowcast' using an infrastructure originating from the broadcasting era resulting in a wide array of operational consequences and frustrations.

Barbara Bacci Mirque describes in her article The Digital Agency Compensation Paradox that "marketers are currently grappling with the fact that in many circumstances the production costs of digital media exceeds that of the media costs. Since production is something for which agencies need to be compensated, digital agency compensation costs are rising. What I have heard some senior marketers say is that their bosses don’t understand this situation since digital media was initially touted as being more efficient than traditional media. Some of this can be attributed to inefficient processes that currently exist in the digital media ecosystem."

All to often, operational & organizational marketing costs are secretly tucked away somewhere deep within the campaign costs. Only when a separate budget is allocated and invested in the improvement of the marketing organization, the advantages of cheaper media channels can become clearly visible and fully utilized.