MEC CSO calls for better agency and publisher collaboration
The Week’s Kerin O’Connor and MEC’s Verra Budimlija
MEC UK’s chief strategy officer has said that agencies are “appalling” at giving publishers enough time to put campaign proposals together and that it “needs to change”.
“It’s absolutely appalling the way agencies sometimes work with media brands,” Verra Budimlija said at a joint Mediatel and Magnetic event on Thursday.
“Agencies have got to stop throwing out briefs to publishers and expecting a turnaround in two days when actually not every brief is relevant to everyone. [We need to work] much more collaboratively with magazine brands and then work more closely with them.”
Budimlija was speaking during a panel debate looking at the relationship between marketing brands and magazine media, where she also said agencies should be using the data magazine publishers have about their audiences “much more effectively” – and that doing so would give them better insight into the people they are trying to reach.
“I think it’s a crying shame that all the magazine brands are sitting on a wealth of data,” she said.
“We take on client data, we have our own data sources that we look at, but we don’t necessarily go to magazine brands directly and say, ‘can we get more insight about this audience’.
“[Magazine brands] understand this audience better than anyone else and yet for some reason we struggle to come to [them] on big briefs to get closer to the audience. I don’t think it’s magazine brands sitting on this data and not wanting to share it, I just don’t think that [agencies] do it enough.”
Indeed, Jane Wolsfon (pictured), director of Hearst Made, said publishers and agencies need to form better partnerships to avoid things getting “lost in translation”.
“[Agencies] hardly give [publishers] any time…We want to feel the time and effort we do put in is given the correct sales push at the other end,” Wolfson said.
“Some things do get lost in translation; if you’re expected to respond to a brief and send it over email and hope someone interprets correctly what you’re trying to get across, that isn’t ideal.
“Hopefully that will evolve – it is getting better with some agencies but not all.”