MediaCom’s Stephen Allan was joined on stage by PHD’s Mike Cooper and Initiative’s Jim Elms to discuss what the future media agency might look like.
In today’s connected world we need to look at the interdependent relationships between channels and how they affect the whole system, says Stephen Allan, worldwide chairman and CEO of MediaCom.
Speaking at the Festival of Media Global in Rome, Allan was joined on stage by PHD Worldwide CEO Mike Cooper and Initiative Global CEO Jim Elms, to discuss what the future media agency will look like.
Today, media agencies need to guide their clients not just through an ever-changing media world but an increasingly complex marketing landscape.
These are really changing times. The dialogue we’ve had in the last 20 years has been a lot about focusing on scale, said Allan.
“We ourselves at GroupM have a saying: ’The intelligent application of scale.’ But I don’t think thats relevant anymore - it’s more about scaling the application of intelligence.”
There is a growing need to identify and understand connected audiences and consumers across this increasingly fragmented media system, believes Allan.
Clients want a bigger picture to understand what drives their communications. At MediaCom we stopped calling ourselves a media agency we are a content and connections agency.
“I think in today’s connected world we need to look at the interdependent relationships between channels and how that effects the whole system,” said Allan.
MediaCom are re-purposing all parts of their business to stay relevant, including the training of their staff to understand how each channel impacts the communications system.
Keeping in theme with the idea of change, Cooper had a few strong opinions about how agencies should be adapting.
“Traditional media planning is dead - in agencys we need to think like marketing strategists and make full use of assets at our disposal,” he said.
Tech inevitably played a big part in the discussion, with Cooper putting the changing market heavily down to this.
In order to stay ahead we need to be at the forefront of tech. We need to be employing people who are at the forefront of tech. We need to be employing people who are creative technologists.
In conclusion, Cooper declared that media planning “is not dead” but that it has to ”adapt and evolve.”
Jim Elms took the reins on discussing how brave agencies should be today in their marketing, explaining that Initiative got rid of their own tagline and replaced it with one set of principles: be Fast, Brave, Decisive, and Simple.
”Fast and responsive to the changing world of business. Brave in tackling serious issues. Decisive with our insights, opinions and recommendations and committed to making marketing complexity simple.”
