How come media owners are the new creative force in advertising?

Greg Grimmer says ensuring creative and media are linked is an absolute necessity – one working without the other is a surefire shortcut to failure…

Despite watching Cannes from the comfort of a Twitter screen this year, or perhaps because I engrossed myself among the exhibitors at MediaTel Group’s Media Playground event last month, I am returning to one of my favorite themes: the shifting sands of creative power.

Cannes was once again dominated by the global digital brands, using La Croisette to ply their online and increasingly mobile technologies. Google, Facebook, MSN and Yahoo! were joined this year by Twitter – Jack Dorsey, its founder, replaced Zuck as the Media Person of the Year – and the likes of Spotify, anxious to ride on the coattails of their bigger binary brethren.

Meanwhile, in the slightly less sticky surroundings of RBS towers in Bishopsgate, I joined the next generation of wannabe digerati millionaires plying their wares and showing their stuff at MediaTel’s Media Playground 2012 event.

The common link between both events is the disappearance of the traditional creative (sic) agency from the forefront of creativity.

They are still out in force in Cannes but the real money is at the Google Sandpit. International Googlers lushing CMOs of Fortune 500 client companies, together with the CEOs of their media agencies, who just happened to have their quarterly EX-CO meeting at Eden Roc.

Back at Media Playground with the new school of UK technological media companies, the likes of Rovi and Tapjoy are doing the same thing, albeit with a different expense account strata. Again media agencies aplenty, but this time represented by their head of video technology, head of mobile, head of emerging platforms, head of screen (there is a joke here I’m sure, but I will avoid to keep the lawyers happy).

Unlike at Cannes I wouldn’t necessarily expect to see Ogilvy, Mother and BBH represented, but as in previous years I was struck by the amount of conversation from the speakers, panelists and audience about creativity (or at least creative formats). It is this last point that both worried me and also got me thinking.

The creative fragmentation that different technologies have brought about means that quite often while the media planner, media owner and client are aligned in the usage of a particular channel, the thought of how to creatively use that channel is often left to the last minute.

Anyone who has ever worked within creativity or with creative people will know this is almost always destined for failure, despondency and disappointment.

That is not to say that media owners cannot be powerful and effective creators of commercial content. For years good media owners like Bauer (nee Emap) was at the forefront of this (HMDG’s very own Lisa Rokny cut her teeth in this department!).

The Bauer commercial creativity department now led by the ex-agency staffer ‘The Lucy Banks’, remains a creative force due to its ability to leverage its powerful editorial brands in harmony with the needs of advertisers.

Likewise their radio rivals over at Global, who (neatly circling my twin themes) picked up a radio Lion at Cannes, courtesy of Jo McCrostie’s in-house creative talent.

But somehow these Old World examples (even though they now happily include the latest technology channels) still don’t address the real creative format problem – delivered by the technology-led media owners who control little or no editorial content.

Google is building an impressive array of in-house creative talent (and is also collecting a fine set of creative awards for its “brand films”) but we are yet to see the result of its output for its clients in its no editorial environment.

Meanwhile, Twitter proudly announced the first ever TV campaign at Cannes, which to be fair does practice what the digerati preach in terms of bespoke online video, but one of the elephants in the room at Media Playground (and there was a whole herd at one stage) remains that no-one can tell you their favorite banner ad.

One of the great hopes for digital media and its ad-funded freemium economy business model is of course “viral” video.

Unruly Media’s Phil Townend made an effervescent case for the reappraisal of viral. In fact Unruly’s “social video advertising” seems like an intelligent re-marketing of a much-abused moniker, but Phil then got himself into a Twitter world of pain as Nigel Walley of Decipher (and others) questioned the overall reach of campaigns – and I’m not sure the Cravendale cats did the same reappraisal job for creative standards.

For those that missed it, skateboarding ducks in Ray Bans is still the comedy gold required for a social video advertising hit!

But Unruly (and indeed YouTube) do accentuate the point that creative excellence is always going to be necessary to create impact (and therefore effect).

Luckily long gone are the days when a creative director lamented to me that a team said they had cracked the digital brief “by uploading the TV ad onto YouTube”.  Ensuring creative and media are linked is an absolute necessity, whatever the format and message delivery system. One working without the other is a sure fire shortcut to failure.