NewsLine Column: Is Media Neutrality A New Name For An Old Idea?
Media Neutral planning is the industry buzz phrase of the moment, but is it just a case of re-visiting old mistakes? Naked Communications’ Will Collin explains……
Back in the late eighties when I began my career in the advertising industry, people were beginning to become very het up about something called “integration”. Clients in particular were becoming exasperated that their different agencies were reluctant to work collaboratively, instead preferring to come up with their own ideas: the “not invented here” syndrome. As a consequence their marketing campaigns often lacked consistency and coherence.
Cynics in the ad industry felt this all boiled down to clients having an anally retentive need for tidiness: having their direct mailshots feature the same pictures as used in their TV commercial. This perceived desire for “integration” led every big ad agency to join the rush to build a group of agencies from each marketing discipline, from DM to sales promotion to PR. That way, so the thinking went, clients could be sold a single campaign with consistency across every channel.
However, as we all know this has in almost every case failed to be the outcome. Clients cling stubbornly to the concept of working with whoever they feel is the best agency in each discipline, rather than going along with a bundled deal under one roof.
Fast forward 15 years, and a new buzz-phrase has emerged: “media neutrality”. This time there’s an awful lot of heat and light coming out of the media industry, as everyone lines up to parade their credentials in producing channel-neutral, platform-agnostic solutions. (I have honestly heard both of those phrases used in all seriousness.) Everyone is at pains to disavow any perceived historical bias towards traditional media, and to embrace every innovative communication channel under the sun. In one recent meeting attended by representatives from creative, media, DM and digital agencies, I was fascinated by the fact that every person had the job title “communications planner”. I am Spartacus!
It strikes me that the marketing services industry may be repeating the mistake of misreading clients’ true desires. Being so self-absorbed within the microcosm of the agency world (fascinating though it is), we tend to view the outside world through the distorting prism of our own prejudices. My theory is that what clients were asking for in the eighties is what they are still asking for today: effective campaigns designed around the needs of the consumer not the capabilities of the agencies. But we agencies are still too caught up in the arbitrary dividing lines that define the structure of our industry. So ad agencies saw in the eighties what they thought was a demand for integration, because they were looking for ways to increase margins by cross-selling additional services. And now in 2003 media agencies see a demand for media neutral solutions, because they want to elevate their role to become strategically central within marketing communications.
Maybe what’s preventing us from giving clients what they actually want is our continuing adherence to an ageing industry structure. Of course, deep-seated issues like that cannot be resolved at the flick of a switch, but surely it would make sense for the large agency holding companies to begin to experiment with new structures. For example, does it make sense for agencies in every discipline to go through the process of conducting their own research to re-create their own interpretation of the strategy, when at the end of the day all clients want is a single, coherent strategy and campaign?
Maybe in fifteen years time things will look very different from today. But I have a sneaking suspicion we will find a new buzzword emerges to describe this perennial theme. Joined-up communication, anyone?
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