MEDIA COUNCIL

About creative capabilities

Laying their cards on the table:

WRITER

Pip Brooking

ILLUSTRATIONS

Warwick Kay

»

‘TOPIC‘

Industry dynamics are changing; price squeezing is forcing media owners to become master of all trades and take on many of the jobs traditionally associated with full service agencies. Is this the start of a beautiful partnership between the two, or more a threat?

It is clear there are tensions between agencies and media owners, heightened by the way price guarantees have pushed their way down the chain, putting pressure on media owners to meet demands for lower costs. At the same time, media owners

have upped their game. Although the term “creative solutions” gets bandied around, their sophistication in being able to deliver to a client’s brief, with or without agency involvement, is growing. So I (PB) caught up with four

international media players: National Geographic magazine’s Charlie Attenborough (CA), MTV’s Liz Nunn (LZ), CNN’s Max Raven (MR), and the Financial Times’ Jon Slade (JS) over a Charlotte Street lunch to fi nd out the realities of these industry dynamics.

PB: Why are media agencies equating themselves with full service agencies?

LN: We will reference ourselves as a full service media owner because we’ve got our own resources and our own media. JS: We’re off ering creative, big ideas, execution, media, campaign fulfi lment, data, research – all the bits really that seven storeys of an ad agency used to do. I think agencies are a little freaked by that because they think we’re doing what they should be doing. CA: Maybe agencies are looking to us for that. They cannot necessarily compete on resources, so they’re coming to the big media owners for the content solutions, and then disseminating that through other platforms.

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PB: What does that mean for how you work with agencies?

JS: We’re not just talking at a transaction/buying level; we are talking

at a planning level. It is now more of a partnership. LN: We fi nd more and more agencies will come to us with an idea to activate central money. There’s no brief, they’re just using us for the idea. MR: We have to earn our right to an earlier conversation with the agency. We often need a way in, whether that’s great work we’ve done, or with the client direct. JS: …and you can lose that right pretty quickly as well. If what you come up with doesn’t add value you get few second chances.

PB: So why the tension?

MR: It seems that we have fi lled the void that all those agency silos made over the years. Some agencies have recognised that is not what clients want and have learnt to harness what we can off er. I think quite a few others have seen it as a threat.

PB: Did you notice a diff erence last year, with cuts at agency level?

LN: Not really. Media agencies turned to pure media and the need to prove ROI; comms planning didn’t come into it. We then needed to react, but it wasn’t about creative, it was about how many eyeballs the campaign delivered.

PB: So creativity did suff er last year?

LN: No, but we needed to deliver both. CA: When an agency is pitching for a business a creative solution won’t win it, as the conversation is more focused on getting the procurement side right... LN: That is how agencies are now winning new business. CA: …then they look to us to come up

with the creative solution, rather than spending a lot more money on creating something themselves.

PB: Are you picking up the pieces?

JS: We can’t race to the bottom with them, or you risk media owners becoming indistinguishable from each other – you see that with digital advertising at the moment, where CPM decline is meteoric. MR: The long-term strategic solution suff ered last year. Most of us have had longer standing relationships with our clients than their agency. We need to return to the consistency that we know will deliver the right kind of results.

PB: But how are you better placed than the agencies to do that?

MR: Agencies have more tools; we have simple, clear thinking. We obviously

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