IMM09: Imagining the future media agency
By Leo Ryan February 8th, 2009
In Media · Online business · conferences
Partly inspired by Jeff Jarvis’ recent experiment at CUNY we thought it would be interesting to take the IMM09 participants through a guided brainstorm imaging what the future media agency might look like.
To set the scene we painted a scenario;
“It’s 2012 and you’re on a corporate retreat for your agency. You come down to breakfast to find that overnight all the senior management have committed hari kari en masse in a dramatic show of remorse at the last quarter’s dismal trading results.
You are now in charge.
You have 2 hrs until a press conference to announce your plans to turn your agency around. This IMM09 session is to prepare you for that press conference.”What followed was about 45 minutes of brainstorming, handwringing, posturing and postulating - and that was just from the three of us on stage. I’ve captured some of the thoughts from the floor that jumped out at me in this post but in addition Paul and I have started a blog to anchor what we hope will be an ongoing discussion around The Shiny New Agency and its possible offer and business model.
So we then took it to the room of future agency management; in 2012 what role could they imagine their agencies fulfilling;
- Edit and curate: Aggregate audiences of specific demo / psychographics / hobbies and interests across different media environments. Aggregate multiple micro media brands and give then the assistance that the major media brands have access to; expertise, experience, research and access to brands and content deals that they can’t assemble or realise on their own. Yes - Gawker / Federated but assembled / assisted by the media agency.
- Research: Collating all of the information generated across al media. Pioneering new models fo research and types of research - there was talk of providing buzz/conversation monitoring services like Neilsen.
- Data warehousing and analysis: Tracking and aggregating all of the media metrics, providing analysis and delivering effectiveness across media. Matching that against a global tracking of the audience.
- Go back to the 80’s: Centralise creative and media and actually make things - yes that’s right - do stuff.
- Global comms skills database: Introducing and vetting new skills and services
- Client training and education
- Business analysis: Showing the impact of marketing on sales
Regardless of wether you work in or with a media agency - these are all services that clients should or could be using to communicate bettter with their audiences. No doubt there’s an interesting internal discussion to be had around the pros and cons of commission vs fees. However more importantly, and of greater use and hopefully interest is a discussion of how to provide some of the servcies listed above and how they are going to improve the business of communicating.
Tags: conference, IMM09, media agency
1 IMM09: Shiny New Media Agency Model // Feb 8, 2009 at 8:16 pm
[...] clients that inspired me here, I’ve posted the ideas from my notes from the actual session here and we’re hoping that we can continue the discussion on this [...]
2 Marc // Feb 25, 2009 at 12:47 pm
As I said let go back to the 80s.
Cheers,
Marc
Ad agencies are reintegrating the industry
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Lara Sinclair | February 23, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ADVERTISING agency JWT and media agency MindShare are experimenting with reintegrating the advertising business.
They are creating a joint K1 team to handle the $50million Kellogg account.
The team, launched on January 1, is headed by K1 director Paul Spriggs, the former Kellogg director at JWT, whose salary is shared between the companies.
The arrangement has led to a drop in the number of staff working on the account to about 25 by reducing work duplicated between the two companies.
But the main goal has been to combine media or channel planning, research and creative idea generation at the beginning of the advertising process — much as it was before media agencies split from their creative agency parents a decade ago.
MindShare Sydney managing director Tracie Michael said the two agencies and Kellogg went through a review to make the communications process more efficient. “It’s about having idea generation and channel planning leading the process.”
JWT chief executive Noel Magnus said the new structure created a “single, neutral point of contact” who had knowledge of all aspects of the Kellogg account.
Kellogg has joined advertisers including BankWest and Commonwealth Bank in putting media planning and creative thinking back together. Media and creative agencies have had a sometimes rocky relationship since the deregulation of the Australian advertising industry in 1997, after which almost all media planning and buying functions were in separate companies.
Media buyers, revelling in their new-found independence, have gradually found themselves elevated to the front of the queue in dealing with marketers due to the size of the budgets they control. The proliferation of media channels has encouraged them to be more creative and put them into more direct competition with their one-time parents.
Creative agencies are increasingly looking at ways to regain control over the media planning function, which can dictate the form of an advertising campaign.
And advertisers are looking for ways to reduce costs while ensuring their agency partners work well together.
BankWest recently appointed creative agency Host to its creative and media planning duties, while BMF performs a similar role on the CBA’s youth business.
DDB has a department called Touch that houses brand and channel planning, while creative agency The Campaign Palace has been winning awards for its media thinking for the past two years.
Clemenger Melbourne has hired engagement planners — its term for people trained in consumer research, media or channel planning and even direct media use. “It’s no longer enough to have an idea — it’s important to know how it engages people,” deputy managing director Elizabeth Fulcher said. “It can’t be a separate discussion any more.”
At K1, JWT and MindShare may be working closely but they still disagree over how to describe the new structure.
“Arguably it is a reintegration of the communications discussion,” Mr Magnus said.
“I have always felt that as soon as media companies separated from agencies there has been a tension as to who owns the relationship (with the client),” he said.
“Doing it this way … there’s no turf war.”
But Ms Michael said the word “reintegration” suggested a return to the days when media buyers were considered backroom number crunchers.
“Really we’re going forwards,” she said. “We’re concentrating even more on having media planning at the front of the process.”
Kellogg marketing director Fraser Taylor refused to comment.
3 The role of the media agency in social media // Mar 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm
[...] of the conclusions from Leo’s workshop at IMM ‘09 was that creative/PR and media agencies could join back together. But what might this partnership [...]