That great cartoon-strip philosopher Charlie Brown once said: \u201cI have been repeating the same mistakes in life for so long now I may as well call them traditions.\u201d Had Charlie Brown ever grown up he may very well have enjoyed a successful career in advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a fine line between harking back to \u2018the good old days\u2019 whilst sucking on a pipe and criticising those who\u2019ve come later; and referencing the past with the aim of avoiding making the same mistakes again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, it\u2019s become rather fashionable to believe that many of the problems facing the advertising industry today started with the break-up of the old-style full-service agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those of us who worked in full-service agencies, and there are one or two of us left believe it or not, don\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Certainly it\u2019s easier to work in an integrated fashion when you\u2019re all in the same space, but the distance between certain media people, and certain creatives had less to do with physical distance and more to do with attitudes and states of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, the best media people today have no problem working closely with the best creatives, regardless of where both sit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some, like MullenLowe\u2019s MediaHub and VCCP Media have fine-tuned the old model and made it fit for purpose in today\u2019s world. Others will no doubt copy them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Media agencies started and flourished because those running full-service agencies (in the majority of cases account people) under-valued the media department\u2019s contribution and growing importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agency managements didn\u2019t spot the coming storm \u2013 and to the great surprise of account people everywhere advertisers did. Hence the massive media agency business of today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ignoring something because it doesn\u2019t fit your own narrow narrative is dangerous. Account people saw themselves as guardians of the client\u2019s business. I could fill a book with examples of arrogance, condescension, threats and worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The account guys saw themselves as running the business, everyone else was there to do the colouring-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clients, even then, wanted access to those doing the colouring-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, media agency managements are in danger of making the same mistake when it comes to planning and research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the era dominated by deals and trading, media planning became a front-of-house irrelevance to many management teams, crucial at pitch time, but to be subsumed into agency deals the rest of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that we\u2019re in the data era there is an equally dangerous focus on automated tools, often at the expense of creative human thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clue is in the word \u2018tools\u2019. The best media strategies and plans mix creativity with data; data is accessed by tools. It\u2019s dangerous to pick up a tool without knowing what it can and can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may not know how it\u2019s constructed, but you have to know what it\u2019s for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Audience measurement is a key tool \u2013 you can\u2019t do your job without it, but if you pick up the bargain pack from the basket by the till the odds are you\u2019ll find it\u2019s the wrong thing for to the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyone who\u2019s tried to bash in a nail with a screwdriver will know what I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Audience measurement might be arcane, and complicated, and the people responsible for it don\u2019t exactly make the subject accessible but it is the bedrock of so much of what media agencies do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Media agency managements don\u2019t need to understand the ins and outs of measurement but they do need to encourage and provide support and leadership to those who do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If they don\u2019t do this (and most haven\u2019t, and aren\u2019t) then they give up the right to complain that the tool created doesn\u2019t meet their needs. In the vernacular they become rule-takers not rule-makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Too many media agency managers are like the account men of the full-service era. They\u2019re blind to changes in their clients\u2019 priorities, believing that above all else what he or she wants is the old model, the only question is what colour they would like it in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clients want integrated thinking across communication forms and disciplines. This used to be so obvious a statement as to be un-necessary (anyone else remember Y&R\u2019s \u2018whole egg\u2019 approach, or Leo Burnett\u2019s ICS?), but today\u2019s over-siloed industry needs reminding of its importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this point we can cue every conference speech ever given or trade press article written by a media agency CEO over the last five years. Everyone loves talking about integration, but what many don\u2019t enjoy quite so much is explaining how they intend to go about achieving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A cross-media approach to audience measurement plays a vital role in the delivery of integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It might sound arcane and complicated \u2013 and to an extent it is but try building a house without the right tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The early media agency entrepreneurs were helped to succeed by a lack of vision from full-service agency managements, combined with the foresight of their clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would be ironic if their successors made the same error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charlie Brown never grew up, of course. His creator just shuffled off to that great pumpkin patch in the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That great cartoon-strip philosopher Charlie Brown once said: \u201cI have been repeating the same mistakes in life for so long now I may as well call them traditions.\u201d Had Charlie Brown ever grown up he may very well have enjoyed a successful career in advertising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}