Medium Rare.

Recently I had lunch with a friend of mine who also happens to be my banker. I know he’ll be reading this, so I have to be nice. I don’t want my interest rates to go up.

After catching up on our personal lives, we began talking about marketing, mainly because talking about banking while I eat gives me indigestion.

Half way through his quesadilla, he stopped in mid bite and asked me which media works best.

It’s a question I get asked quite often by my clients, usually followed by, “I’ve tried ‘such and such’ media and it doesn’t work.”

Some weeks ago I wrote a column encouraging advertisers not to blame the media but instead question the message. In some ways, this is part two of that same topic.

While the message is critically important, understanding each media and how to use, is just as important.

Contrary to what many advertisers think, all mediums are not alike. But let me reassure you, they all work.

If newspaper advertising didn’t work, you wouldn’t be reading this column, because there would be no more newspapers published. If radio didn’t work, there would be no radio stations. If TV didn’t work, Survivor wouldn’t exist and Mark Burnett would be grilling burgers and asking drive thru customers if they’d like fries with that.

It all works; TV, radio, print, the Internet, busboards, billboards, magazines, map guides, even those little one page coffee readers in coffee shops everywhere that treat you to important trivial facts about women in Cleveland with cantaloupes growing out of their heads.

Where things tend to fall down is when advertisers make the assumption that every media is digested the same way by all consumers.

Take TV and newspapers, for example.

TV is an entertainment media, that is if you don’t include shows with Tori Spelling in them. It’s an escape, where viewers tune in to be stimulated and entertained. Even TV news is more entertainment than news. When a consumer is in entertainment mode, advertising needs to follow suit.

In contrast, newspapers are embraced for their news and information value. Readers want content (and that includes advertising) that is informative and current. Newspaper creative should therefore be developed with that in mind.

This can be extended even further to individual media outlets within the same media and the differences between them.

I remember years ago, working in radio, advertisers would often produce the same piece of creative to run on three different radio stations. With the same commercial running on a country station, a rock station and a news/talk station, advertisers would wonder why their ads weren’t as effective as they’d hoped.

What works on a twenty year-old heavy metal listener doesn’t necessarily work on a forty year-old academic listening to a program discussing the psychological ramifications of polyster on society.

Want to create an effective TV ad, it had better be entertaining and stimulating. Want a great newspaper campaign, make the message current and create urgency. Plan on spending some money in that little coffee shop one-pager? Keep it short and compelling... it doesn’t hurt to throw in the odd picture of a woman with a cantaloupe growing out of her head either. And if you’re running advertising on two or three local radio stations, consider developing different creative to appeal to each unique audience.

That’s this week’s tip. And if my banker is reading this, since I wrote my column about it, do you think I can submit my club sandwich as a business expense?