Digital Creatives Need Creative Media
Head of marketing at the Internet Advertising Bureau, Kieron Mathews, discusses why digital creative and media agencies need to find a way to work together to generate more effective campaigns…
There’s a lot of talk of communications convergence these days – from hardware like telephones to music, TV and online, through to agencies championing convergence in terms of integrating old and new skills and disciplines.
But are a majority of agencies getting it right? I think the void between digital creative and media planning and buying is still too vast.
Think about it. Often big network buys by traditional agencies or by digital media specialists isn’t integration, it’s lumping profit centers together in the hope that alchemy will occur, and creatives, media planners and buyers will work together to produce the ultimate digital campaign.
This isn’t a criticism, rather an observation that there are very few agencies – networks or independents – where all the right people sit under one roof or work together outside of advertising silos. Media – more so today than pure creative – is at the heart of great online advertising, and media agencies and digital creative need to work more closely. Some companies such as Carat and Zenith are making great strides, but is there more we can do?
For example, an idea for a TV commercial is largely unaffected by its placement. You might get a slight uplift by putting a TV ad that’s about football in a football match but the TV buy can be a little constrained.
A great ad is nothing if the right audience doesn’t see it. Relevancy and engagement are critical creative concepts, but media departments are not sitting down early enough in the process with the creatives or vice versa.
In my role at the IAB I’ve been exploring the relationship between online media planning and the creative side. It’s apparent that if online creative agencies work closely with media at the very beginning of the process you inevitably get better results.
The recent winners of the IAB Creative Showcase Grand Prix Awards in association with Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions are as much media ideas as they are creative. AKQA and Yell.com demonstrated an understanding of the way that consumers interact with media and used digital Outdoor to bring creativity to life.
The judges praised the campaign saying: “the Yell.com campaign shows what happens when a good agency thinks about the power of what we can do, using technology to liberate it.”
What was at the heart of the creative? Interactive bus shelters. Not always the sexiest of formats I admit, but AKQA pioneered their use providing consumers with Yell-sourced local services, shops, restaurants and bars information.
They also used ‘intelligent buses’ with GPS-triggered digital outdoor advertising. Location-specific messages changed in real-time as the buses travelled through London, and this media innovation ensured the advertising stayed targeted and relevant.
I believe that the best work both now and in the future cannot be produced without a bespoke media deal or integration of an idea.
When I talk with agencies many tell me it’s still common for clients to still brief media before creative, which largely means that ad agencies have to shoe-horn creative into a plan that is delivered before the creative agency has been briefed.
At the IAB Engage 2006 conference Niall Fitzgerald, the chairman of Reuters and former chairman of Unilever, said: “Forgettable ads online are the same as forgettable ads on TV”. He’s right, we get caught up thinking that the technology helps make better ads when it is in fact the entire media-relevancy experience that makes a better ad. Just look at the recent winners of the Creative Showcase and you’ll see ‘media meets creativity’ in action.
The challenge for media and creative agencies is to get together sooner and plan a single idea that excites the clients and consumers alike. Who should lead – clients or agencies, you decide, but what ever you do, decide.