Return of Media Mind: Why agencies need to get involved
Opinion
There is no better time to celebrate the talent in our industry and the craft skills they bring to media planning and trading in a spirit of fierce but friendly competition.
Michael Gove was widely quoted back in a post-Brexit haze that “people have had enough of experts”. Looking at some of the wilder discourse infecting sections of social media at the start of 2025, it may be tempting to think he is right.
But look elsewhere and expertise is definitely back in vogue.
Take a look at the podcast charts, where political journalists, historians and sports stars rule the roost, with insights and opinions garnered from distinguished careers in their respective fields.
The TV schedules are awash with high-rating quiz shows chaired by intelligent and humorous hosts, from Victoria Coren Mitchell’s Only Connect to Bradley Walsh’s The Chase to the continuing popularity of Countdown, with its triumvirate of brains: Colin Murray, Rachel Riley and Susie Dent.
Radio has always loved challenging the listener’s knowledge and Ken Bruce’s PopMaster goes from strength to strength, now on Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio.
A little closer to home, Isba’s Bobi Carley reports that a recent session about client priorities for 2025 discussed how access to agency generalists who can advise on the bigger picture is much needed.
Celebrating talent
With Sir Martin Sorrell warning that agencies will be looking to AI to trim staff numbers, we can think of no better time to celebrate the talent in the industry and the craft skills they bring to media planning and trading. Skills, experience and intuition cannot be easily replicated by machine-based learning.
As we announced last week at The Year Ahead event at London’s Waldorf Hilton, Adwanted UK and The Media Leader will be partnering the newly launched Media Knowledge Company to bring back Media Mind — the inter-agency quiz for the best media brains.
With the support of Isba, Advertising Association, IPA and Manchester Publicity Association, we are seeking Britain’s most knowledgeable media agency. Agencies will compete against each other in person, leading to a grand final in the second half of 2025.
Agency-hosted quizzes will celebrate industry knowledge and promote fierce (but friendly!) competition — all while having fun and inspiring colleagues with the depth of knowledge agencies have in their ranks.
One of the strengths of our industry is the interaction between media owners, agencies and advertisers. Quite rightly, there is fierce competition to persuade clients of the best place to spend their marketing money.
To reflect this, we have partnered sponsors (see below) across various sectors to source the questions for our contestants. Media owners and industry bodies are perfectly placed to know the key stats that make their offering so important.
Once spaces are booked, we will be in touch with practical details, including face-to-face briefing sessions. These will help competing agencies swot up on all the key facts, with a suite of online assets including Adwanted Connected, articles from The Media Leader and recommendations from our category sponsors.
Having collated all of this information, we will have a wonderful framework of knowledge to offer competing agencies that they can share with their staff. The context this provides will hold them in good stead for those big client discussions.
Finally, we want to continue the industry’s great tradition of holding events that bring us all together. From battle of the bands and Channel 4’s five-a-side to the Nabs Rugby Sevens and institutions like the Media Business Course, the industry has a proud record of providing forums for people to grow their network, develop their career and support a good cause. Media Mind will provide such a forum.
Both Nabs and the IPA have been promoting support for mental health, so it gives me great pleasure to announce Mind as our charity partner. With one in four of us facing mental health challenges and these issues doubling for young people since 2017, Media Mind will help raise awareness of the work that Mind does and give the charity a platform to share the practical support it can offer people.
How can I be so certain that the quiz will be a celebration of knowledge, competition and fun? Well, more experienced readers may recall that the dream team of David Fletcher, Simon Cox and yours truly are the reigning Media Mind champions when we represented CIA in the late 1990s.
I am sure Kelly Parker and her team at Wavemaker will be keen retain the title, but it is certainly high time we passed the crown on to a new agency team who will need to know far more than we ever did and possess those craft skills and knowledge that clients value so much.
It only remains for me to urge you to get involved. Click here to book your place. Entry is open until 31 January. Don’t wait too long, though, as spaces are limited.
Greg Grimmer is CEO of Adwanted UK