Media agencies are best placed to lead content marketing, argues MEC CEO James Hier
The CEO of one Australia’s biggest media agencies, MEC, argues that it is media agencies rather than publishers, PR, creative or specialised content agencies that are best placed to lead the growth of content marketing.
James Hier CEO of MEC, speaking about the Australian launch of its new content marketing offering Wavemaker, argued that the insight and data media agencies have given them a competitive advantage in the space.
“We would also not have gone into this unless we thought we could do it better,” Hier told Mumbrella. “It is because we understand channel, where on the path to purchase they are, format and message.
“I mean we could could have gone into PR if we had wanted to, but it is not something we would would have a competitive advantage in doing.”
Hier says content marketing is a space that is well-suited to what MEC is already doing.
“MEC is already a content company,” he said. “It is about building media not just buying media and creating content around it. We already do this.
“What we are doing is not only creating an identity for it but spreading across the agency responsible for it. We now have three individuals responsible for driving it.”
The launch of Wavemaker for MEC is a global push across 10 markets, with MEC Australia’s Tim Flattery leaving Australia to head up the content push globally.
Flattery was MEC’s chief innovation officer and led a number of the agency’s recent content pushes, including its AANA marketer series, Marketing Dividends on Sky Business.
“Tim’s remit was across a whole lot of areas and he was part of a business development team,” said Hier. “What Tim would say is we have done is replace him with three people. He was expensive but it’s true.”
Andrzej Kowalski has been appointed managing partner of MEC Wavemaker Australia.
“Tim was working with Andrzej, who will be running Wavemaker here,” said Hier. “He is basically creative agency, production background and has the network to be able to fulfil what we need to produce.
“Right now he runs all our existing (content) newsrooms.”
Hier argued many marketers were overpaying for content and that a media agency could produce high volumes of content at a cheaper price than its competitors.
“It is also how we come to the content we create,” he said. “A media agency’s core competency is to come off data and analytics and into insight and channel recommendation and in this case content recommendation.
“The content clients are looking for is high-volume, low-cost and quick-to-market. That’s not something more traditional agencies have been doing and it’s not something that would be competitive to what that traditional product would be.
“That is where media agencies are competitive. We are incredibly good at execution; the high-volume allows us to be good at that.
“We would not have entered this (space) if demand wasn’t already being fulfilled by us.”
Nic Christensen
Examples of your content please?
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James could you give me one example of a media agency doing good content marketing now – not what they plan to do. Could be your agency, or another, I’d just love to see an actual example that backs up the claim.
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zzzz
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Accept your fate media agencies. You can’t do content but worryingly for you everyone else is getting skilled at data.
Any fool can plan and buy, when the big networks decide to fold you back into their creative shops the world will be a better place. That day is coming..
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Oh wow, another media/creative/social/pr agency with breaking news that that they, in fact, do something better than an alternative. Riveting!
Show us some actual case studies, please.
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Really? Sounds like a press release. I have never heard of a media agency doing good content. How can they when they look at readership as block rather than the rich and valuable niches for each audience.
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A lot of things make sense in theory.
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Also interested to see a single piece of ‘good content’ produced by a media agency.
Sub-contracting ideas and production to publishers does not a ‘content marketing agency’ make.
If marketers want content she should bypass snake oil like this and go direct to the content makers.
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Seems to me you still need a good story, last time I looked media agencies were not brimming with creative talent, and the data you speak off, we can get it also, access to data is not an issue
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I think this article should have come out on April 1.
Why do people have to write articles claiming they can do things better than everyone else all the time, especially when it’s outside of what they actually do.
If a media agency has a headline that says “media agencies are best placed to buy media than everyone else” – nobody will bat an eyelid and they shouldn’t.
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Nothing alarmingly false is being said here by Hier … the key to success isn’t always ambition but competency and execution. In theory media agencies do have access to a lot of information that gives them a huge advantage … but it’s how this is used and the culture that is facilitated to allow good content to occur.
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Content marketing is just garbage written by idiots. When will clients wake up?
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Really? Show us one example of good content that MEC have created…
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Smacks of a land grab for declining client fees. Would love to see some supporting content to back up the claims
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Bwahahahahahaha!
Let me get this right: CEO of media agency says media agencies are better at ‘content marketing’ that the actual people whose job it is to create ‘content marketing’ content in the first place?
Bwahahahahahaha!
Up next: CEO of company which makes take-away coffee cups says his company is better at making coffee than baristas.
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and in breaking news….the world is flat.
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Didn’t MediaCom win Content Marketing Agency of the year for doing this 3 years ago? Look how well that’s ended. Thought you were smarter than that James!
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