Sadly for the industry and for most marketers, almost universally these days, media agencies work in isolation from creative agencies – with the obvious exception of an independent agency such as ours.
This situation is far from ideal on many levels. Firstly there is an inherent disconnect between brand strategy, creative strategy and media strategy. How often do creative agencies find the budget and media strategy has been approved before the creative brief has been written? On the other hand, it is not uncommon to hear that the creative agency has written a TV commercial that the client has fallen in love with, before the most effective media channels have even been considered. Sound like a recipe for ineffective marketing?
Add to that the headache for clients of managing the politics and often quite separate agendas of a number of communication partners.
The tipping point for the current concern about the lack of effectiveness of the unbundled model is the booming interactive world. There has never been a greater need for media and creative brains to work together. Not only should we be channel neutral, we need to be idea neutral. Interactive media is so fundamentally different to traditional media that it is impossible to create innovative strategies without close consultation between media and creative teams.
Many in media agencies today lay claim to being channel planners. How is that possible in the interactive space without some influence over the creative idea? Conversely how can a creative agency create interactive strategy without an interactive media strategist involved in the idea generation?
So how to fix what’s broken? Like a shattered mirror, it seems impossible to repair – too many empires have been built on the unbundled model.
Fortunately for us and our clients, this is not a problem that we need to grapple to solve. However it will be very interesting to observe the industry try to superglue the shards of the broken mirror back together in the coming months and years.
