What if creatives spent the media budget?
Jun 23rd, 2007 by Simon
(Image from Visual Spacial on Flickr)
Hell, what if account Planners got involved too?
Rory Sutherland posed this question on his blog within Brand Republic. I don’t know if you have to be a user to access it, so here’s a snippet or two…
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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU LET THE CREATIVE DEPARTMENT SPEND THE MEDIA BUDGET?
This to me is the great unasked question of our age. And I have a fairly good idea what the answer is. But it isn’t quite what you expect.
The Cannes Direct Lions shortlist has not yet been published. But, without giving anything away, I can reveal that it contains quite a few entries in which are found lines like this….
“One million downloads”….”garnered PR coverage worth 1.5 times the initial media outlay”… “headed the country’s podcast charts for five consective weeks”….”1.5m unique visitors to the site….”
Now what would happen - just as an experiment - if you took the whole media budget and gave it to a creative department to spend how they wished?
My final verdict? Three times out of four they would fare worse at spending the media money than the media people. But the fourth time they would do ten times better.
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That’s a a horribly hacked and reduced version of what he said - it really is worth reading it yourself to get the full intent and surrounding commentary, but it’s an interesting question, isn’t it?
One of the things that is shifting at the moment (among many!) is the strategic importance of the media planners - as fragmentation has made the media landscape both frighteningly complex and superbly exciting, the need for someone to navigate through and ‘find’ your audience has become ever more valuable. At the same time, the majority of creative agencies have let (or pushed) their media departments out on their own. That’s not all bad - there are media agencies who still work really well with creative agencies, but there’s also a loss of connectedness. And, more importantly, there’s a sequence thing that has an enormous impact - can you really claim media-neutral ideas when the media agency developed the media plan independently and probably a month before the creative idea was even discovered?
And, so, do we need to find a way to return media thinking to the idea generation process. Sorry, that sounds like marketing BS! What I mean is, do we need to be more open with our media thinking - what if we did counsel the creative teams for thoughts on it? And the planners/account people who are working on it. In co-operation with the media company - but never before the creative idea had actually emerged! We’d need time and that’s a commodity that we don’t have. We’d need to be pretty laid back about the ‘roles’ each agency is playing (this wouldn’t work if there was a little power struggle for recognition going on at the same time, would it!). But it could be interesting…
Rory Sutherland has been at Ogilvy since 1988 - for that alone, he is remarkable (in an industry that sees little loyalty like that), but he’s also a rather smart fella - worth reading his blogs…
I echo the praise of Rory’s blog.
It’s funny, and his post highlights one of the things I could never understand - the media/creative split. If you get the media spend right, it amplifies the message beyond all belief. Yet it’s often so pedestrian.
Sad really - the best work needs the best platform, and even mediocre work can shine if the media spend is on the money.
I’m on the record as a McLuhan fan and I think Rory’s post is fresh. Reminds of the time I did a media workshop with Paul Feldwick in Singapore and we got creative about media for MacDonalds.
My suggestions were ideas like using street marketing types to carry take away bags filled with burgers and fries around lunch time in the elevators. Smell and proximity being powerful motivators.
Tactical Trojan horse marketing if you will, and appropriate for elevator cities like Singapore and Hong Kong but I think creatives getting into media suggestions is very fertile area.
In my experience of working in media agencies the media is more likely to be planned some time after the creative idea has been developed. And more often than not they will illustrate the idea with a TV and press ad (that could also work outdoor, obviously). That problem/debate/issue is another story but it would be great if the media planner and account planners worked together from the outset, developing strategy that not only included the content of the communications and what we needed to say, but also the context in which those messages should be conveyed. It would save a lot of time and money for both agencies and client. Which is probably why more agencies are trying to bring media expertise back in house.
Great post by the way Simon.
Cheers.
I agree with the point made on loss of connectedness, case in instance being, a creative team would prefer using media budgets in releasing ads that can serve their purpose of entering awards while the media team would want to use the money in creating impact that furthers their chance of making it to media awards. We have come to operate on terms dictated by our vested interests and have forgotten the larger interest…partnering the brand in meeting the challenges set forth. There is also a great deal of reluctance amongst all concerned in getting all stakeholders together from step one.
nice post, but i find it incredible that folk are still questioning the need to have media people around.
I was amazed to learn recently, and maybe I was just being naive to think otherwise, but a major global media planning agency working with many global clients is paid entirely based on the media they plan & buy. So larger media buy means more commission fee (read: profit) for that media agency.
This inherently will lead to larger media deals, more mass media, and less innovative smaller efforts. Less experimentation, less new & cutting edge, and more size. And of course its easy to sign a piece of paper contract with a big media seller like MTV or CNN than a smaller website or media partner.
Likewise its a cut and dry off the shelf media deal that’s being bought, thus limiting creativity, versus a smaller more nimble smaller media source. that will create bespoke solutions in partnership.
You would think with all the talk, these old media agencies would be doing it differently, sad to discover they are not.
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