Television Would Be the Primary Advertising Medium

A key objective of the media plan was to visually show the product and give the hearing aid user the motivation to buy this new solution. This is a very visual product, and it was decided to use videos to show its benefits.

Television was selected as the primary advertising medium for EZ Change. The hearing aid category had never been advertised on a broad-scale basis on television before, so EZ Change would be implementing a totally new way to communicate with users of hearing aid batteries. The goal was to reach 90 percent of all hearing aid users with the TV advertising once, and to reach 65 percent of the target audience three times.

Senior citizens are fairly easy to reach through television because they frequently watch network news and game shows. They also watch programs like those on the History Channel. The media plan targeted these shows, which was less costly than trying to cover many different types of television programming. The plan was for EZ Change to become a consistent advertiser on these types of television programs. The television advertising would be shown more on national than on local programs.

Television would be supplemented with print media. The print media would include magazines such as Readers Digest and the AARPs Modern Maturity. Parade and Sunday supplements would also be used. Newspaper advertisements would be included through retailer promotions. The plan assumed that EZ Change would have to keep advertising on television and in print because it would take a long time to develop the brand and change the behavior of these aging consumers. Hearing aid users traditionally were not very brand-conscious and often were not even very aware of what brand they actually bought.