When I started at McCann Erickson, as a TV buyer, the media department was seen as the ugly side of the full service agency.
Clients would be enamoured by the Creative Director's genius (and pool table), and be pampered by the Bag Carrying account service teams.
A visit to the media department floor normally involved a swift passing through the press planning section (for some reason close to the lift), whilst the TV buying team (as far from the lift as possible) never seemed to warrent any visits at all.
Meanwhile, when it came to the inevitable meeting of the Media Buyer and Client in a Review meeting, there was often the look of glazed disinterest as I bored the audience senseless with a parade of complex charts with hundreds of figures, and stating the classic line "As you can see from this chart"...
Clients didn't understand media, and media folk in full service agencies were either not exposed to / not interested in / not given the opportunity to focus on the bigger marketing issues.
Things have moved on somewhat. Steve King, at the IMM09, rightly stated that more and more clients are looking to the media agency to take a seat at the Top Table of companies. It is true that Media Agency folk are sharper and more skilled at promoting their cause with clients than back when I started. It is easy to imagine folk like Steve King, Nick Brien and Mainardo de Nardis sitting at that Top Table with their clients.
But there is a big but.
The buying of media space still has to be done. And it has to be done brilliantly. Just like it was done at the McCann Erickson TV Buying department in the 1980s (so I might be biased!).
Last year, a French media agency person, when asked for clarity by a client on what their role was, openly stated that their role was to but TV space only. That's it. Not even press, let alone digital. Don;t even consider SEO, social media or mobile buys...just TV spots. Don't even think about strategic planning, holistic planning, integrated planning or even being a 'content jockey' ((c) Nick Brien at Venice Festival of Media 2008). Just the buying of TV spots.
So first on the list of things a media agency has to do in 2012 should be the buying of media space right? Or should someone tell that French Agency person about google...?
Paul
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