28 September 2008 VIEW on Marketing MEDIA INTEGRATION The Opportunity… A global pharmaceutical company engaged in the development, manufacture and marketing of its products had very specific marketing needs when it came to reaching healthcare professionals. For traditional media vehicles, such as medical journals, patient record forms, etc., the company relied on the extensive experience of its media planning agency to develop comprehensive highly targeted, and cost effective media plans for each of its brands. As the online media channel became increasingly important to the company, it engaged an interactive agency to handle the creative development and media planning needs for the same set of brands — for both their consumer and their professional healthcare audiences. The challenge became establishing a way in which these two media agencies could work together, if at all. The Challenge… The addition of a separate media agency specific to a “channel” immediately resulted in two important issues. First, because consumer focused campaigns dominated most brand budgets, the healthcare professional (HCP) audience was often the last consideration, and often simply assumed to have been reached through the consumer media buy. (After all, aren’t HCPs consumers too?!) The second issue related to pricing. Although the client’s media planning agency and its interactive agency of record may have individually selected media vehicles owned by the same publisher, there was no opportunity for negotiating combination buy discounts or taking advantage of free valueadded opportunities that may have existed. Media acquisition costs were higher than they needed to be, and brands risked unnecessary levels of duplication. The Solution… The media planning agency viewed these issues as critical to the client’s needs, and responded by committing the resources necessary to strategically plan and tactically execute interactive media opportunities in a truly integrated manner. The approach was to deal with interactive media as another channel for consideration, not a place that requires entirely separate objectives. The client immediately realized the benefit of integrating all Cross channel media buys focused on healthcare professionals. The client also quickly realized this necessitated a high level of professional promotion expertise, and a partner that understood cross channel media activity and that could also provide better pricing. The client could then consider journal, non journal, and interactive media options from the outset, and decisions to utilize any or all of these channels could be made in light of all the others. The Implementation and Benefits… From a practical standpoint, it made the most sense to transfer responsibility for all online professional media planning, buying, optimization, execution, and reporting to the media planning agency, while the client’s existing interactive agency of record retained all consumer media activity, as well as creative development. This also enabled the media planning agency to establish XML data feeds from its ad server system directly to the client’s brand website analytics systems so it is able to view site analytics across all consumer and professional media activity. The client will now truly benefit from having bestinclass services for its consumer and professional media tactics. # COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA, INC., (CMI) is an advertising media and promotions planning organization concentrating on the pharmaceutical industry. For more information, visit cmimedia.com.

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