Why media and creative should be back under one roof
As someone who has led strategy across both media and creative agencies for more than 25 years, Giorgia Butler, chief strategy Officer at Innocean Australia, explains why there's no joy in division.
I’ve seen the devastating effects of the division in our industry first hand, too many times, and for far too long.
Katy Perry might say we’re hot and we’re cold. Lady Gaga might call it a bad romance. Someone younger than me might have a less dated music reference. No matter which way you roll, the relationship between media and creative agencies is still a bit of a toxic on-again off-again situationship.
Once upon a time, we were unified, working seamlessly under one roof. The industry thrived on collaboration and cohesive strategies that produced some of the most memorable campaigns in Australian history. From Dougie the Pizza boy to the Gobbledok, the work was working, but many of the industry players were ‘Not Happy Jan’.
The demise of the media commission system in the ’90s saw big holding companies split media and creative, so media agencies could attract new, previously conflicting, clients and new sources of revenue.
Media landscapes were growing more complex, even back in the ‘90s, with early digital platforms emerging and spooking the horses. The role of media planning and buying began to split away from creative, and then split further into newer digital specialties, including social. Today, TV, audio and out-of-home can ALL be simultaneously planned and bought by digital and offline teams within the same organisations, while no consumer has EVER sat down to watch a bit of BVOD after work, or cared whether a billboard was digital, programmatic or classic.
Fast forward to today and some commentators are calling the separation “The single worst blow the agency business has ever sustained. Instead of a comprehensive view of the brand, the marketplace, and, most importantly, how to best reach the consumer, agencies stopped acting as seamless brand stewards and became pigeonholed as functional specialists.”
Look, nobody is saying things were perfect back in the day, but when media and creative development went hand in hand, more often than not, the message and medium worked harder together. Surely that’s what we all want, now that everything else is becoming so fractured.
It’s time we got the band back together
This problem reared its ugly head again earlier this month, when Youngbloods brought together a panel of chief strategy officers, myself included, to chat, share scraps of wisdom and generally pat each other on the back for making it this far, while looking ahead into 2025.
It was cool. I got to sit alongside an impressive crew, including a beloved former boss, with whom I now share a title (wild), and two heavy hitting CSOs I have long admired and respected from afar. The result was one of the most nuanced, unguarded conversations you might ever hear among c-suite strategists from competing agencies in media, creative, and me: a hybrid.
But the highlight of the discussion, IMHO, was the awkward bit where we had to talk about our own unsuccessful work – the good thinking that didn’t deliver results, and why.
Among the answers given (I’m paraphrasing):
- The idea was brilliant, but the media investment was so low that nobody saw it.
- The media spend was massive, but so was the target – ‘all Australians 18+’ – so too many people saw work that wasn’t relevant to them.
- The client got sick of the work before it had a chance to ‘wear in’; using the fear of ‘wear out’ as a reason to move on. So the work didn’t get time to deliver results.
- The KPIs were related to business challenges beyond the scope of marketing or media. It was impossible to meet them without internal solutions, not creative or media ones. We were doomed to fail.
All four scenarios speak to frustrations we’ve all felt, no matter which side of the fence due to the lingering, unnecessary divide between media and creative.
Giorgia Butler
Divided we fall
The problem with a divided approach is a fundamental misalignment of efforts.
Creative teams can come up with brilliant ideas that don’t quite fit the media platforms. Media planners can pick channels that don’t sync with the creative vision, or budget. Strategists can feel forced to identify lofty ‘human’ insights that capture sweeping audience profiles, rather than pinpointing killer truths that are hyper-relevant to niche groups who consume specific (often affordable) media touchpoints, and drive fandom.
CMOs might gain a sense of control by splitting media and creative, but at what cost? Sure, everybody is an ‘expert’ in their field (and we all keep each other honest) but it also creates more work for brand managers who then have to manage a litany of expert partners and become quasi-experts themselves in a vast array of areas. And that’s to say nothing of the potential for problematic interagency relationships.
Worst of all, this disjointed approach can lead to mixed messages that confuse consumers and weaken a brand’s position in the market.
Back to the future
As the lines between media and creative continue to blur from a consumer point of view, I reckon agencies that embrace a generous, collaborative approach will be better positioned to deliver bold, impactful and effective solutions; in other words, work that works.
Even better if they can deliver end to end, under one roof. Imagine how much clients could save on parking alone.
Reunited and it feels so good
One of the most famous sentences in literature is the opening of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Forgive the literary reference, but it seems to me that the inverse may be true in our industry.
All happy client/agency relationships are happy in their own way, but a surefire way to have an unhappy one is by keeping media and creative agencies operating independently of each other.
Or as Al Green crooned, Let’s stay together.
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you seem to have a somewhat inaccurate view of how agencies charge and it’s scary to see people liking that comment
1. no agency ever sends that many people to a meeting.
2. that approach would be counterproductive because almost always the agency’s fees are agreed up front at the beginning of the year or project, so sending a ton of people to a meeting actually does the opposite of what you’re suggesting and makes the project less profitable.
3. I can’t for the life of me understand how an agency makes more money off a 90sec TV ad? 90 secs can cost more in production budget and media spend but that isn’t reflected in an agency’s income.
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Don’t make out it is all about delivering for the client when you come from an industry that sends 15 people to a meeting to get your billable hours up.
Are you advocating for media and creative to come back together because you are already seeing the impact AI is having on creative fees?
Or is it because once you have the media remit you can finally push through that 90” TVC you have always wanted to create? How lucky for you it is also the thing you can charge the client the most for.
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I’ve been in this business 30 years – do you know how many times I’ve walked into a Telstra meeting when they arrive with a cast of thousands two speak the rest say nothing . Fix your own pnl before accusing agencies of any largess .
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What a great article!
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How can ideas be ‘brilliant’ if they’re not right for where they’re meant to live? The only good idea is one that works.
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Great article. Separating media and creative was always a big mistake.
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Please stay a client – you wouldn’t last a day in an agency .
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We can all agree that the relationship between creative and media is fractured. BUT, I do not see how one full service agency would be able to do both disciplines effectively. The first challenge is the fact that the payment structures are just so different, there will always be a conflict over creative and media profitability. Secondly, media agencies require so many different specialties under the one roof now than they did 30 years ago. A media agency in 2024 can now offer strategy, client service, ATL planning and trading, programmatic, performance, SEO, research and data & analytics which is already a challenge in itself trying to get them to work altogether let alone adding in creative into the mix. I think we need to find other ways to create better collaboration other than making them operate under the one agency which has the potential to water down both disciplines.
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