There is a difference between buying and planning. The planter puts together the buy; analyzes the market; analyzes the station; analyzes the clients, the audience the client is trying to reach, and the product the client has to advertise. Then the planner tries to come up with a plan for the amount of money budgeted, the schedule that has been established, and the time period that has been set, putting everything together in the most cost-efficient way.
In TV they give you what are called avails. When you know you're going to buy something, you call the TV station and say, "I want four to submit avails," which is basically a proposal stating what the station thinks is good for your client and for the product you are advertising. They will give you programming that is available for your client.
I'm specifically interested in TV; I have only a vague understanding of print. It takes a while to learn what is really important about TV buying and print buying, but they are relatively the same. You know that you have specific goals that you want to achieve, and you take the time to negotiate them well, so that the things that you buy run, they run on schedule, and you've paid a market price for them.
There's quite a lot of socializing involved in buying. You're constantly being entertained by stations, representatives, and by salespeople from the stations coming into town. We buyers have a responsibility to see these people, have lunch with them, and visit with them after hours. It's fun for a while, if you like that kind of thing. It is part of the job, because you want to know as much as you can about their station, about their news personnel, and you want to develop a good rapport.
(MR) The stations control the inventory. I contact the stations and say, "This is how many units the agency will buy, but I need them at this rate. Can we do it, or can't we?" Then they advise me, and I advise the agency. I'm selling for the station. I tell them what I'd like to sell, and they tell me whether I can do it or not.
Many hours are spent on the phone with both the reps and stations solving problems, negotiating, and so forth. At night I end up spending time doing my work that needs to be completed. Sometimes I feel there aren't enough hours in a day to get the job done and done right.
Q - What other groups do you work within the agency?
A Since planning and buying are so interrelated, I have continued contact with the planning department. Since the planning group determines the media mix and budgets, they rely heavily on the buyers to supply market and pricing information. Depending on the nature of particular situation, I also get involved with the account group, the traffic department, the accounting department, as well as the client.
Q - How do you spend an average day?
A - Assorted planning projects are always coming up, those always have a higher priority in comparison to the buying. The buying you get done. You have certain deadlines, and you just make it. A lot of the buying you do afterhours, because there are a lot of computations involved, so you find yourself making numerous lists and getting back to people the next day to finish negotiating. If you have a planning project due, the client usually has a deadline on it, and it's usually immediate so you have to drop everything and switch over to that. A lot of my days; is like that, helter-skelter, picking up one project, putting it down, and moving on to another.
When I'm executing buys, it's a matter of appealing to sales rep and working out the specifics on the buy. I know I have a certain amount of money to spend in a certain way, and I know that I have deadline: demanding that I do certain things with that money. So I'm working with these constraints.
I write a lot of memos to internal personnel and to clients. There are numerous meetings, and there are a lot of required training seminars. They are good, because, for one thing, it's a break in the day and, foi another, you pick up a lot of good knowledge that you wouldn't have time to read about in a book. And, it's first-hand knowledge from people already in the industry.
For a buy, the first thing I do is get avails for TV. For radio, I usually call up the station and tell them I've got a buy that I'm going to be making and that I'd like to consider their station. I ask if they can put together a proposal. I tell them, for example, my audience is between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, and I want to run eighteen spots per week. Then they come up with a proposal, and I take that proposal, go to the Arbitron books, and look up how that station rates. After I finish that kind of work, I then put together a recommendation based on the information that the station gives me and what I got out of the ratings book. There's a lot of paperwork involved, a lot of figuring and that kind of thing. I include my tapes from the adding machine. Then I send draft after draft until the account person accepts it.
