The AdNews NGen blog: Time for media to stand proud

I feel that there's a growing issue in media agencies in Australia at the moment. It's got nothing to do with our ability to reach an audience (fragmentation has been talked to death and it isn't going away) and it isn't whether or not a particular brand should or shouldn't be active in social media. It's our ability to apply creative thinking to what we do.

We've come a long way since a media campaign was made up of 'dots and spots' and we now talk about how a campaign can be activated across a number of channels and we use terms like 'paid, owned, earned' and two-way to describe how brands communicate with people and vice-versa. However, at the end of the day, as much as we all talk about creating (meaningful) brand experiences rather than campaigns, most of the time this isn't as true as we'd like it to be.

We're definitely smarter about how we do our work though, we've got countless research tools, client databases, past campaign results, real-time campaign tracking all at our disposal but I wonder if we've become too reliant on data at the detriment of creative human thinking.

The biggest cause of this issue is that we still label ourselves 'media agencies', relegating our own status to the nerdy, numbers-focused cousin of 'creative agencies', thinking that we can't be creative because “that's their job”. We figure out the audience insights and which channels best to reach them and then hand over the reins to someone else to craft the message. I believe we need to rethink the role of media and how strategy, creativity and planning/buying fit together.

Media can provide a creative context for campaigns, superbly demonstrated by Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo which created a 'Lucky Switch' (http://www.inventinginteractive.com/2010/06/09/uniqlo-lucky-switch/) widget for their 2009 end-of-year clearance. The widget could be placed on any website/blog and when clicked, turned all of the images into Lucky Tickets. As you clicked on these tickets, some would be unlucky while others you could redeem for discounts on Uniqlo products. This is an idea which made the most of the channel and exploited its benefits, in turn creating incredibly unique, relevant messaging.

Another often overlooked creative use of media is how people are interacting with and using it - not just what they are using. So often we focus on how many people are using a certain channel (viewers for TV, UB's for online etc.) but we forget about how these spaces are being used. Everyone's heard of the Old Space campaign, however what helped give the campaign longevity was that the team at Crispin Porter + Bogusky realised was that not only were people talking about the campaign, but they were morphing it and using their own creativity and posting their own video responses. This likely helped them structure their 'Response' campaign, using the 'Reply' feature in YouTube much like many users of the site do.

There's a great amount of work coming out of a number of agencies at the moment - I am not disputing that, but my challenge to you is to start thinking differently about what media is and how we can use it. Because when you put a big idea first, you'll find that you can create some incredible work in ways you might not have thought possible.

James Drewe
Starcom