When they wanted focus on a specific, younger audience for the Nissan Sentra, the marketers decided they better start experimenting with the type of media being used by younger people. To their surprise they found it was not only less expensive than network TV, but easier to track in terms of performance. Their only complaint was that now the campaigns have many moving parts to keep up with–which will hopefully lead to more engaged customers as well.

NY Times: Living the Promotional Life, 2006-Oct-6, by Stuart Elliott

These days, the media plan must be as creative as the creative part of the campaign — if not more so. “We’re looking at how people consume media, not how we think they should consume media,” said Jan Thompson, vice president for marketing at Nissan North America in Gardena, Calif., part of Nissan Motor of Japan. “We’re inviting them, not interrupting them.”