There is no way around it. Strategic media planning requires time to think.

Our media kit, which I’m overly proud of, includes a series of really good questions, one of which is this:

Is it true that thinking is going to be one of the “diminishing luxuries” of this millennium?

I know that strategic media planning is, in the minds of some clients, over-kill. On the other hand, we all have clients who want us to consider whatever was presented to them in the last phone call they took, whether the budget is committed and gone or not.

But strategic media planning is a process that requires a lot of information and lots of discipline all wrapped up in a process. And it requires some time to think. Here’s an example of what we might want to know from a client, right after they tell us the deadline.

• At what stage of maturity is this specific product/service offering?
• What about the category?
• What’s your estimated share?
• Can you name and rank the competition?
• What’s the sales trend for the prior 3 months/6 months/2 months and should we look further back than that?
• Tell me about seasonality? Why is it that way?
• Show me the service area.
• Have you tiered the service area by revenue levels or profitability or customer satisfaction?

These are some of the questions from PAGE 1 of our 20 page client questionnaire. We’re just getting warmed up. Once we complete the questionnaire, it would be great to think about what this pile of stuff means.

Making the connection between the prospect and the message is not necessarily going to come to us in a dream (although occasionally there’s a “EUREKA! moment” in the shower or while driving.) But lead time is getting shorter all the time – because the current economy makes everybody crazy and making a decision is getting tougher all the time. Senior management wants more data from the marketing department or the accounting department or operations. And the “Instant Media Plan” can (and usually will) change on a dime.

Is there a solution? Hmmm. We don’t know. We’re working on thinking faster, obviously. We’re collecting client information on the fly, of course. But we know that the time to think can make a huge difference in the quality of a media plan, and our goal, selfishly, is always a pretty media plan. We want the client to measure gains in double digits and then to tell us all about it.

Are you getting slammed by deadlines? Got any ideas on how to slow things down? The quote above was referring to no time to think in “this millennium.” At this rate, we’ll be meeting ourselves in retreat by the middle of this decade!