Creative work not fit for purpose without media thinking and the problem could get worse, says Hero COO
Hero chief operating officer James Greet has told Mumbrella that a media mindset is required of creatives now in order to produce work to a modern standard.
Greet made the comments while being interviewed with Hero owner and creative chairman Ben Lilley for an upcoming feature.
“At the end of the day, I really don’t understand how you can create creative work, fit for purpose, without media thinking. Grown up, informed media thinking being baked into that process,” Greet said.
“You just can’t stitch the two together anymore. You get the wrong parts and it’s too timely and costly as well. And also it’s probably a divide of objective, transparent thinking as well.”
Ben Lilley
Lilley added that the media service offering is “one of the fastest growing parts of our business”.
He said that media integration was a growing part of the McCann business before he departed in 2018, however after he left, the investment that had been made “didn’t continue” for the couple of years that he was away.
Hero CCO, James Greet
“Being able to start again with the benefit of a couple of years, so many aspects of our market have changed so quickly anyway, so having a bit of a fresh start, which is kind of what we’re doing with Hero now, can be hugely beneficial as opposed to necessarily having to try and evolve a legacy model,” said Lilley.
“It’s kind of the most recent addition to our business,” Greet added. “But where we’re seeing it getting just great traction with a lot of existing clients and a lot of new clients as well who aren’t incumbent with old models or old systems. The ability to just integrate that creative thinking into the planning process and the creative product and output is just a no brainer.
“Our viewpoint is very much that we’re in the business of using creativity to help clients grow. Media has a clear role to play in that. It’s not there for media and creative in our world. It’s about how does media inform creativity and how does it ensure it comes to life and shows up in a relevant way in the right time and place.
“It’s really hard to do that when those two philosophies (media and creative) are removed, and separated from one another, and I think that issue is only going to get worse as media agencies, and agencies responsible for creativity, actually find it harder and harder to connect at the right time at the beginning of the process.”
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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