The media gorilla versus the TV butterfly: a score draw

Channel 4, Group M and, most importantly, its clients, will be mighty relieved the trading dispute between the broadcaster and the media agency was resolved last week.

We don’t know the precise terms on which peace has been negotiated, but the speed with which the two sides have come together – and the emollient-sounding joint statement – suggests both knew a prolonged dispute would do neither any good: C4 because of the loss of revenue, estimated at £30m a month; and Group M because a continuation would have not done it any favours with its clients.

The finer points of the TV trading market are usually lost on most clients, except when it means their ads don’t run where and when they want them to. For any client embarking on a major campaign that is time-sensitive and tightly targeted, boycotts of this kind don’t make any sense. Yes, Group M could more or less have replicated the C4 audience elsewhere, but with nothing like the precision or efficiency.

Such high-profile stand-offs also make a nonsense of media agency claims about the importance of strategic and channel planning. If agencies make a big deal to clients about their super-whizzo planning capabilities – and charge them accordingly – then the role of channel planning is devalued when they say “You know that expensive plan we produced which said we were going to spend all that money on C4 – well, now we’re not.”

It brings fresh credence to that old adage about media agencies ‘planning the buy’ rather than – as they should be doing – ‘buying the plan’.

That is not to say we won’t see more such spats. Winning business these days often means making ‘optimistic’ promises about prices, which in turn means throwing your weight around with media owners.

As the 800-pound gorilla of the media buying world, Group M is more susceptible to this charge than others. The bigger they are, the more they feel the need to willy-wave.

But the size of media buyers can also count against them: for one thing it encourages a macho, bull-in-a-china-shop attitude; for another it makes them inflexible; and last, when they have to spend the money with other media, it increases demand and therefore prices.

So one wonders if C4 was able to apply the judo defence against Group M – turning its supposed strength into a weakness.

The consolidation of the media owner landscape also shapes the ups and downs of trading deals. When ITV, for example, was a federation of regional companies, it was easier for a buyer to pick off one part – ‘pour encourager les autres’, as they might say – without too much risk to itself.

Now, with greater selling power or, to put it a better way, access to specific audiences, in fewer hands, it isn’t as easy.

The question now is whether Group M will feel the need to take it out on any other media owners, specifically the minnows, just to prove to its clients and other media (and maybe itself too) that it needs to be taken seriously.

The resolution of the deal also looks like a feather in the cap for C4’s sales director, Jonathan Allan. At the time of his appointment in 2011, the former OMD managing director was dismissed as inexperienced, lightweight and lacking the contacts and fox-like cunning of his predecessor, Andy Barnes. This will go some way to proving the nay-sayers wrong.

Wanted: a DM agency for a DM client

Royal Mail has put its £8 million direct marketing account up for pitch, and I’d like to wish the winning agency all the luck in the world. I say this not to cast aspersions on the client, nor because Antony Miller, the man responsible for marketing its direct mail services, this week left (to no-one’s surprise, but that’s a different story) but because producing creative work for a media owner is fraught with peril.

Not everyone sees the Royal Mail as a media owner in the normal sense, but apart from post and parcels, it is effectively the owner of the direct mail medium and it has recently focused a huge amount of effort and cash via its MarketReach operation on breathing new life into the medium.

Now the expectation is that when media owners want to promote their medium generically (and as the dominant owner of mail media, that’s how it effectively is for the Royal Mail), they should use their own medium.

And they have to do it brilliantly in order to highlight the medium’s strengths (hats off to Thinkbox and The Red Brick Road for their efforts), for otherwise they risk ridicule.

The trouble is that, as a medium, mail has rather lost its way. It’s perceived as old-fashioned and so last century. Volumes are in decline and most of the best work comes from other countries (if you don’t believe me, check out the MarketReach website where they struggle to find top-quality, up-to-date creative from the UK).

One reason is that all the best direct mail agencies have reinvented themselves as digital experts, and have either forgotten how to, or don’t employ people who can, produce great direct mail.
So, as I say: good luck to the winning agency. They’ll need it.