(First published Jan. 25/99)

If anyone thinks that after 30 years in the media business, 1998 ACA Gold Medal winner Sunni Boot is about to take things easier, forget it.

Maybe in another 30 years or so.

A whole world of challenges stretches before her. She's planning to use the many developments taking place in media, promote them, and, if past performance is any indicator, initiate many more.

Boot is an innovator, open to applying new research and using new media tools to give her clients the edge. She's opinionated - one gets the feeling that she wouldn't 'suffer fools gladly'. It's experience talking. And she's full steam ahead, fast in speech and definite in thought. Passionate?

"Media is the centre of the universe," she says, and you have to believe her. It's rubbed off on her family. Not only were her father-in-law and her husband in the business in the past, but one son has now entered the field and the second is showing interest.

With forecasters claiming that half a dozen media companies will control most of the world's media planning and buying in the future, Boot wants to be sure that Optimedia is among them. Having formed it as a stand-alone media management company in 1992, she moved with Optimedia when the name was repatriated from FCB by Publicis in 1998 and subsequently added $80 million of business within a few weeks.

With trends seeming to confirm the forecasts, her aim now is to make sure that the company and its staff are equipped with all the top-of-the-line management tools and to make sure that employees know how to use them.

Senior Media Should Do Broadcast Buys

'Media consumption is changing," says Boot. "Everything is a medium today. In a lot of areas, there's no research and it's needed, because dollars are precious. You want to be able to provide a strong relationship between what you're investing and what you're getting."

But with no research in some areas, experience counts, and Boot feels that it's the experienced people who should be the ones spending the client's broadcast dollars. They're the ones who also can go beyond buying by numbers and go with gut feel and some risk-taking on the client's behalf.

While there is a lot of tracking data available, it also takes experience, recognition of competitive sets, and time period knowledge to be able to recognize a new show before it's a hit and be able to buy in early at a low price point on the client's behalf, she says. Part of the media person's job is to predict, but to expect a new buyer to be able to stray out the box and do more than buy by the numbers wouldn't be fair.

"Clients are pushing media people to get new tools probably quicker than what they'd embrace on their own," says Boot. "They're sending the message that the status quo won't do. And they're pushing the new media. They want to be sure that their agency is on top of it. They want it to investigate and know what's going on. But with a few exceptions, they're still gun-shy to move tremendous amounts of dollars to it."

Managing Media Like Managing Finances

Boot likens media management to managing a financial portfolio. You wouldn't advise a client to get rid of all his IBM stock and put it all on Internet companies, she says, but you might tell him that this is a good time to take some of that blue chip stock and put it into them. But you'd want a plan on what percentage to put in, how to measure, when to get out.

"In the same way, good media people should be counselling their clients on putting what percentage of money into new media, looking at their total communications package, their above the line spending, below the line, through the line, and managing their portfolio. They must look at the investment and see how they can get higher returns. Sometimes it's a case of 'the higher the risk, the higher the return'.''

But in terms of investment in new media, some advertisers hear the message and don't understand, she says. Or they may have a product manager who is aggressive but knows he or she will only be in that job for a short time and doesn't want to make any move for fear it will show negatively on the bottom line.

The fact that media people can now manage such a variety of complex media and even create media and media research tools is a long way from when Boot joined Ronalds-Reynolds for a summer job at the age of 17, disappointed that she hadn't been hired by her first choice that paid $5 a week more.

"In those days, media was being handled by women, so I went into the business with no preconceived ideas that only men ran companies," she says. "I think the on-the-job training then was superior to what there is today. Business was smaller, slower, so there was time to nurture and train people. It gave you a better affinity for the business you worked on. You wanted to learn everything you could about your clients.

"Today, training might be better in a formal sense, since there are industry-run and community college courses. People are better educated. But it's not necessarily more effective. Colleges want to give students a broad base and touch everything so they can then choose a specialty, but the students don't really know how to do anything.

First Two Years in Media is Post-Grad Course

"I tell people coming into the business, whether they come with a community college course, a B.A. or an M.B.A., that everything they've learned to date was their undergrad years. For the next two years, it's their post-graduate course for which they'll room with 20 people and be paid a paltry sum. You weed out quickly if they're not interested in the media business."

While media used to be the low man on the totem pole in the advertising business, it's no longer the case, says Boot.

"Media is the centrifugal part of business today. What's happening with the National Post, the Globe and Mail Report on Business, Telemedia, Torstar, CanWest Global is all big news, so it catapults the whole idea of media management way beyond ad agencies and creative. The focus in traditional agencies is the creative product, but the brand custodian now is media management. Senior media executives are running companies and are the best links between the consumer, media and product."

Media Buyers Will Gain Importance

In fact, with new tools like TV optimization, Boot sees the roles of media people changing.

"In the next 18 months, TV optimizers will be a part of everyone's arsenal to conduct business," she says. "They will move the influence from the planner to the buyer. The buyer will be the one saying to drop an ad in Chatelaine and put more in TV, because the buyer will be the one with day-to-day knowledge and have more influence. I envision the planner as becoming more part of big picture planning and account servicing."

With media management companies taking such a strong role and media becoming the most significant part of a client's business plan, media's role is evolving, says Boot. It's moving out of the protected area of full service agencies to work side by side with many different companies.

"We have to seize the opportunity and make it successful," she says. "It's a challenge. Media has to be moved upstream. It's important that media people sit at the table from day one and pick the media mix before the creatives start work so they know what media they're creating for.

"If the client has the media there at the inception, the media person is an equal part of the team. You come to the table as a respected person, have a stronger voice and your counsel is taken. By branding and standing for something, your influence is greater. And I'm a believer that people rise and exceed the level of expectations."

Boot is one of those who is respected as a business person and whose counsel is taken by many of Canada's biggest advertisers. But she didn't start out with the idea of proving anything.

Media is Seductive

"I sometimes have to pinch myself to realize my success," she says. "I just love media. I love the product. It's seductive. I got caught up in the business and pulled people along with it. After 30 years, my life is linked to the industry and its people And I feel I have more to contribute."

In addition to her position as head of Optimedia, Boot was the founder of Programmes Inc., an advertiser-supported child syndication program unit set up to respond to client needs for a stable, year-round child television market place. This and her personal interest in child advertising and programming led to the establishment in 1987 of Concerned Children's Advertisers whose mandate is to promote positive social messages to children through TV.

And she currently sits or has sat on the Boards of Directors of the BBM Bureau of Broadcast Measurement, Canadian Film Centre, Canadian Circulations Audit Board, Canadian Media Directors Council and Broadcast Executive Society.

With such a hectic schedule, Boot still finds time for family, her beloved golden retriever and cats, and her friends.

"I cycle in summer. I try to get away to our chalet in Collingwood when I can. I enjoy home design, travel, and I love to entertain friends for dinner - although if you're there more than five times, you'll be starting a repeat cycle of meals that I cook well.

"But I don't have a lot of time. Work comes first, although one of the perks to the job is that if I'm travelling, I can sometimes take a few extra days and maybe have my family join me. But in media, you can't plan on life with a regular schedule."

Boot sees her own greatest strength as that of being a good motivator of people. Staff usually stay with Optimedia a long time. She is, she says, very committed and a deal-maker.

But she thinks that she isn't a good administrator. "I'm too emotional," she says. "Emotion doesn't have a place in business."

The Client is a 12

Boot is demanding of herself and others. "I ask for total dedication to the client's business," she says. "On a scale of 1-to-10, the client is a 12. You must be involved, and competitive. You have to get it better, more creative. It means hard work and sacrifice."

It also means knowing the media well, and thinking beyond circulation and audience figures to know editorial environments and program contents. Good media people will never allow numbers to eclipse environment, she says.

"Numbers can camouflage good media execution. We all know we can create a cost, but that doesn't make a relationship. Cost alone is a poor discriminator of media performance and campaign smarts. It is a benchmark. But you have to understand what premium is about. If you're only trying to drive price down, that's terrible. But you can't only be wrapped in quality either. Both are poor.

"The fact that there's more media fragmentation today means that media people must be more cognizant of more options, so the job is ever more complex. But it also means that clients can target better and get a better price point.

Lack of EDI Means We're a Laughing Stock

"Media companies must manage smartly. They must get good people and must pay them better and reward them better and invest in tools to help them. Tools are still lacking. The fact that we still don't have EDI (Electronic Data interchange) as an industry is terrible. We're the laughing stock of industry. It's frustrating. And it's draining on staff, asking them to check thousands of paper contracts and invoices."

Agencies and media companies aren't up-to-speed in terms of the Internet, either, she says, and so they're going to start buying the small web design companies to get that expertise.

Boot says that clients aren't taking money from traditional media for the Internet, but instead are creating new budgets. And as the medium gains more importance and becomes more transactional, it will work hand-in-glove with traditional media.

"Internet media is accountable and measurable," she says. "It's not threatening traditional media. It's replacing the below-the-line sector. Catalogue shopping may go away. But companies still have to tell people they're out there. They still need traditional media for branding."

With keeping on top of all the new media, the industry changes, and management of Optimedia, is there a real challenge left?

"In five years, I want Optimedia to be known as the most creative media management company in Canada, one that attracts and keeps the best people with the best brands. I want us to be known as pioneers that build substantive media programs that stand the test of time and make a contribution that lasts - and to have lots of fun doing it."