Business Spotlight: Flood Media Group

Owner: Teresa and Pete Flood

Founded: November 1997

Address: 1737 E. Walnut St., Springfield, MO 65802

Phone: (417) 864-8982

Fax: (417) 864-5112

E-mail: floodmedia1@sbcglobal.net

Services: Electronic media planning and buying

Employees: 2

Imagine having a personal shopper. Someone who looks for bargains, knows what you need, where to buy it and how much it costs. This personal shopper knows your budget and is on a first-name basis with all the sellers.

While most personal shoppers save time, this personal shopper buys time. Airtime.

Teresa Flood is a business-to-business personal shopper. She’s been buying electronic media for 10 years as owner of Flood Media Group, 1737 E. Walnut St.

Flood and associate Suzanne Rains have worked together for more than 15 years, previously with Western International Media, before it closed its Springfield office. The duo, which Flood describes as “tenacious,” decide when and where commercials air for their clients, and they negotiate pricing in the complex media-buying world.

Flood says her company “functions as the media department for existing ad agencies.” She likes the phrase “strategic partner.”

Thinking like a client

As the founder and managing principal of Medical Consulting Group, Bill Rabourn is one of many ad agency executives using Flood to handle media buys for clients. Medical Consulting Group helps market health care companies such as Mattax-Neu-Prater Eye Centers.

“(Flood Media Group) knows us,” Rabourn says. “They know our style. They are an extension of our business.”

Flood moved to Dallas early in her career. She worked for marketing communications agency Young & Rubicam and spent three years at a CBS TV affiliate.

“She’s been buying media a long time,” says Kevin Scott, local sales manager for KOLR 10/KSFX. “She reaches target audiences from teens to retirees. She’s seen the business cycle up and down and sideways, which gives her a perspective that’s valuable to her clients.”

While Flood declined to disclose company revenues, she said Flood Media has grown from five accounts in 1997 to more than 40 today.

How to buy media

Media buyers must first have a plan. That plan starts with the clients’ budgets. Add the audience the client wants to reach, and Flood Media takes over, working to find the best media outlets to reach the desired audience or demographics.

Next comes the negotiation. TV stations have rate cards, but Flood says prices are still negotiable. Factors may include how often and how much the client buys, exactly where in the schedule the spots are to run and the time of year. For instance, spots cost more during “sweeps” months, when ratings and future rates are determined.

Flood then works with the sales staff specifying all these terms, and conditions are drafted.

Station traffic departments then enter the schedules into the log, which operational staff uses to play each spot during the specified time and program.

Finally, each station prepares invoices that match up with all the agreed-upon rates and schedules.

“The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is the invoice,” says Flood.

Rains reviews every invoice with a fine-toothed comb to ensure each spot ran when it was supposed to and that the rate was correct. When Nielsen and Arbitron books are released, Rains ensures that client have gotten their money’s worth.

The traditional model for media buying is a 15 percent commission, which is figured into the ad costs. On a $500 spot, for example, the station nets $425 and Flood Media takes $75.

In the case of a pre-emption, or “pop,” where the spot does not run as scheduled, Flood looks for a “make-good.” “If you do (pop), we want another equal or better,” she says.

Commercials for competing products are not supposed to air in the same break. Conflict codes in the traffic system keep one eye-care clinic spot out of the same break as another eye-care clinic.

Distinctly bucking advertising and media status quo, Flood Media Group does not have a Web site.

“If you want to know about us, I want that telephone call,” Flood says. “I want to speak one-on-one with the people who want to do business with us.”

Flood doesn’t buy much space on the Internet either. The typical breakdown is 45 percent TV, 45 percent radio and 10 percent print.