Agencies Must Evolve To Strike Balance In Digital World
Media agencies will not be able to get the right balance between on and offline media until the next generation of planners who have grown up with digital come through and take senior positions.
This was the view of Mark Howe, country director, UK Sales at Google, who was discussing the evolution of the communications agencies at MediaTel Group’s Media Question Time in London last night.
Howe stressed that there is a real talent base within network agencies, but pointed out that this was “to some extent hampered by the old school and old media thinking.”
He said: “There’s not the currency, there’s not the debate yet as to how search, social networks, how online all contribute to the overall communication mix.”
Howe suggested that a return to the basic disciplines of marketing and communications planning was needed, and that the media planning community has got to really understand how consumer habits are changing.
Fellow panellist, Emily Bell, director of digital content at Guardian Media Group, agreed, stressing that understanding audiences and behaviours is “absolutely key”.
She said: “There’s a narrowing window of opportunity where we can get our acts together,” adding, “Unless we get our acts together really, really, really quickly, the future is pretty dusty, it’s not great.”
However, Mark Cranmer, CEO Of Research International, was more upbeat, expressing his optimism about the future of communications agencies, but also pointing out the need for a shift in the way the industry works.
“We can’t be lazy, we can’t be opportunistic, we have to be far more strategically driven in any of the media behaviour we recommend clients spend their money on,” he pointed out.
Cranmer added: “As an industry, as soon as we get out of those lazy comforts of looking at the price, or looking at a tracking study, the richer the industry will be.”
He questioned: “Do I think media agencies have seized the opportunities that have come their way? No.”
The ownership structures that the agencies are now in and the changing dynamics of the communications industry mean that it’s been hard for the media agencies to sell a different vision within those ownership structures, he said.
Cranmer added that machismo was still embedded in the culture of the business, which has “helped to drive some of the intellectual and higher brow opportunity out of the market.”
Howe said that when people tell him that digital is at the heart of their business he doesn’t believe them.
“It’s not at the heart of your business, it’s ultimately a peripheral part of your business because you haven’t yet necessarily worked out the business model to ensure that it is at the heart of your business,” he explained.
Richard Eyre, chairman of GCap Media plc and of the IAB, felt that the key to the future is recruiting people that know what’s going on in the real world and that are aware of trends in society.
“It’s more complex now because the customers/viewers/readers/audiences are moving in much smaller groups,” he said. “They are doing things that are much more individualised, much more personalised than they were before, because they can.”
Eyre added that there is a continuing role for people who are “exceptionally good at putting their finger on social trends and understanding what it is that particular target audiences want from products and how best they respond to advertising.”
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