Media Mind: Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be
Opinion
The old Media Mind contest featured those who helped revolutionise the industry. Perhaps today’s budding competitors will be just as inspired to reinvent this business.
Media Mind — the inter-agency quiz for the best media brains — is indeed back, but it’s now a competition for 2025 rather than 1985.
Since launching, we have been delighted with agency take-up. But we didn’t foresee the outpouring of memories some legends of the industry have expressed about their time in the original competition.
A quick scroll-through reads like a who’s who of the global media industry — the people who helped revolutionise the business and evolve it beyond a mere offshoot of full-service agencies.
From humble beginnings above pubs and in converted mews houses, these pioneers created the ultra-modern, multifaceted media agencies we know today.
Entrepreneurial streak
The great baseball coach Yogi Berra famously said: “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.” Media Mind 2025 isn’t about the past, but the present and the future.
But it is possible to see some portents of that future in these memories from the industry’s dawn.
For one, it is notable that early winners were not always media specialists. Early winners Yellowhammer, Colman RSCG and Leo Burnett were fiercely full-service amid the rise of media independents.
Past competitors include Nick Manning, Colin Gottlieb, Stephen Allan and Steve Booth, among many more. Did competing with the full-service establishment give these entrepreneurs the confidence to reimagine the industry and set up today’s global giants?
Hopefully, today’s budding entrepreneurs and industry leaders will also be inspired to deliver the constant reinvention that is a hallmark of our industry.
Complex landscape
Today’s landscape is immeasurably more complex than that era. That is why we are grateful to call on the support of our category partners to help us source the questions and answers.
None of 2025’s category partners were present in their current form in 1985. Amazon and Google wouldn’t exist for a couple more decades. The origins of industry bodies like Thinkbox, Newsworks and Magnetic still lay some six years into the future.
PPA and Radiocentre had different names and represented just a handful of print magazines and stations — not the thriving cross-platform digital sectors they champion today. Digital Cinema Media, a digital pioneer itself, was still Rank Screen Advertising: a resolutely analogue business.
The absence of the internet meant there wasn’t yet a need for upholding of standards online — something that UKOM brought to the UK market.
Ocean Outdoor wouldn’t be born for another 20 years. In 1985, the Piccadilly Lights site was showing static billboards for Sanyo, Panasonic and Coca-Cola. Who knows what 1985’s contestants would have made of the current digital ads for electric cars, high-end online retailers and, yes, Coca-Cola?
As well as our category partners, we are grateful to be able to draw on the support of our industry bodies. The support and training offered by Isba, the Advertising Association, IPA and Manchester Publicity Association has provided a bedrock that helps members constantly innovate and the confidence to test their knowledge and craft skills in such a public way.
Lifelong friendships and rivalries
As a pictorial record of the dawn of the modern media agency, those LinkedIn posts are both poignant and hilarious.
It is evident that lifelong friendships and rivalries were forged in often intense competition. And all done while smoking cigarettes inside, sipping warm wine and wearing garish double-breasted suits, accompanied by some outrageous mullets.
Could today’s contestants look back in 2065 thinking: “Did we really wear that?”
Equally striking is the preponderance of white males. A notable exception is the all-female team of Monika Brzezinska, Rachelle Dubovie and Gilly Fieldsend, who triumphed for Leo Burnett in 1992.
In an industry — and a competition — dominated by a boys’ club ethos, this team thought “anything you can do, we can do better” and went on to prove it.
Today’s contestants can take real inspiration from their determination to show that the industry is stronger when it truly represents the diversity of modern Britain.
Building the industry of tomorrow
Like the competitors of 1985 who supported the Leukaemia Research Fund, we are proud to offer a platform to Mind and the work it does to provide support for mental health challenges.
We can’t wait to get started on the competition. If you haven’t done so, sign up for the few remaining places here.
Media leaders, you owe it to your stars of today to help them build industry-wide friendships, make lifelong memories and find inspiration for their careers in the white heat of industry competition.
Simon Redican is founder of The Media Knowledge Company