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Hugh Cameron, Joint
Managing Director, DFGW
The original
letter I got form the APG asked for a vision of media-neutrality and how
practically such a vision might be achieved. This seemed a good startpoint
from which to consider how planning might fit in.
This integrated,
media-neutral discussion is an odd thing. It has of course been raging
for years. HHCL reinvented themselves in 1993 as a 3D communications company.
Most of the agency super-groups have spent the last decade or so ago acquiring
all the specialists required to put together an overall integrated offering.
Its something most client organisations want in theory. And historically
most of the world's great brands seem to have demonstrated that media-neutral
integration is effective; Coke and Marlboro spring to mind. And Niketowns
are surely one of the most potent brand communications vehicles devised.
Odd perhaps that in an industry where there seem so many reasons to practise
it in whatever form the debates still go on. Maybe its because we're just
not very good at it.
The barriers
that seem to prevent a world where all brands are approached and planned
with a seamless and open-minded media-neutrality seems to lie in three
areas; control, cash and creativity. If clients desire a media-neutral
approach and integrated brand solutions then many agencies, from whatever
specialist discipline, have a desire to influence or control the process.
This is natural. The marketing services arena is generally oversupplied.
Our clients like us to be competitive, and encourage pitches. The industry
thrives on competitive people. And then there's the money. In an era of
fee deflation of course we all look to extend our field of influence in
order to increase our income (we hope). Any agency with growth on its
mind gets a little paranoid if another marketing company is wielding too
much brand/client influence.
Marketing
services companies build reputations by creating ideas. Adapting, integrating
another agencies idea in your specialist medium is not reputation -building.
People don't enjoy it as much as originating. It is also often rather
crude; the re-framing of an image or line, carried out in the crusade
for integration, rather than effectiveness. So although many marketing
services get the vision of media-neutrality, the practise of it seems
almost impossible when attempted within the conventional confines of working
practises, remuneration and specialisation.
Some agencies
have pursued the integrated route. But it seems fraught with complexity
from the start. How do you get the finest specialists under one roof?
Do clients feel they can entrust you with the full communications mix?
Can any agency cope with the intensity of big launches in multiple media/channels.
Generally only more budget restrained companies seem to have felt comfortable
taking this approach. The super-groups meanwhile are held back primarily
by financial structures and discipline silos. So how can it be done?
The first
thing we all have to get over is this control thing. In many industries
it is recognised that big, complex tasks need a variety of specialists
who collaborate together to pull off some grand vision. Too often I think
we believe that creative businesses are different. I'm not sure they need
to be. Most films we see are often ideas shaped by several people; writers,
directors, producers, studio bosses etc. There's a broad idea, then they
all work their magic in their own specialist areas. You get the odd precocious
writer-director but they seem the exception not the rule as film production
budgets increase in scale and risk.
Collaboration
is the word for this. Not collaborating simply with clients, desirable
though this is. Instead recognising separate specialist skills and embracing
them. A collective of smart practitioners from the disciplines any brand
might need to flourish. A design person. An advertising agency thinker.
A media /communications expert. A PR person. People that understand brands
and the part their particular channel or discipline can play in achieving
success and that understand in principle and practise how the different
parts can play together and interact.
Who orchestrates
these specialists together? There's been a tendency for agency people
to think they are the natural candidates for this, particularly advertising
agency folk. We've always thought we're the supreme brand guardians and
idea generators. As Jeremy Bullmore has pointed out in the past however,
many marketing executives and brand managers see the management of brand
communications as the central function of their job. Our challenge on
the agency side must be to work with these marketing/brand managers to
make their management of this mix as successful as possible.
But the
initiative in media-neutral planning must lie with client companies. Managing
talented strategists and creative thinkers from a variety of disciplines
takes confidence, leadership and if not vision then a desire for it and
an ability to recognise it when it rears its head. Marketing People everywhere
should encourage brand forums that pull together the individuals who will
be genuinely responsible for creating and shaping brand ideas. Ideally
these team members should have the opportunity to share in the development
of the brand direction and proposition. This seems the model that is proven,
if sporadically practised. Orange emerged in this way, as did Channel
5 and our own Daewoo.
Playing
agencies off against one another doesn't achieve this. Refusing to pay
for appropriate upstream agency time from all sides won't help the cause
either. What helps is an agenda, an ambition and putting together a team
that can instinctively work together. Strategists that try to push endless
proprietary tools and brand development processes, whether pyramids or
Christmas trees, probably won't be constructive. We need to be grown up
enough to recognise we've all got these to flog and that it's the thinking
around them and behind that count. Then weed out any part of that team
that in practise seems less inclined to share and build on ideas.
And then
we all need to talk about it less and get on and do it a little more.
(c) Account
Planning Group 1995-2002
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