Triangle Media Management: Introducing a New Paradigm for Media Investment Strategies
The purpose of this white paper is to help corporations who support their brands with advertising to improve their process for media planning and buying. A fresh perspective on two decades of remarkable change serves as an introduction. Historical perspective is used as a launching pad for moving forward constructively and profitably.
The digital era of industry change has emphasized the lowest price, automated tactics and direct response metrics at the expense of strategy. Planning our media investments in order to maximize the outcomes we seek is a lost blend of science and art. Reviving strategic media planning using a new paradigm appropriate to today's environment will improve ROI and create competitive advantages.
The digital era has been a period of change for marketers, agencies and media companies. Intentional change has driven subtle and nuanced changes that have been hard to manage.
Insidious change reached an inflection point in 2016. A shockingly large number of media agency reviews by big marketers plus the two reports produced by the ANA last Summer — the K2 Media Transparency Report and the Ebiquity "Prescriptions, Principles and Processes" Report — confirmed that the old media agency as middle-man model needs to evolve quickly.
Marketers can no longer delegate media strategy to media agencies. Media companies can no longer leave their financial destiny solely in the hands of media agencies. And yet, getting rid of media agencies is unthinkable because they handle logistical and transactional challenges that no other resource can replicate.
It's time for marketers to start treating the giant media corporations the way that they used to treat the giant holding companies. When given solid strategic direction, media companies can organize their many distinct assets around the needs of the marketer. Media agencies still have a very important role to play but it is not the role of media strategist anymore. The marketer has to take on that role and properly engaged media companies need to be more supportive.
Media agencies are not going away but marketers need to articulate a new paradigm for working with agencies and media companies that is more dynamic. The marketer must lead because, after all, it is their money being invested.
Click the link to the right (or below on mobile) to download the full report.
Source
"Triangle Media Management: Introducing a New Paradigm for Media Investment Strategies." McLaughlin Strategy, 2017.