ME AND MY SHADOW 

Some good ideas are right in front of you and others… are in the shadows. At OMD US, a Shadow Team, like a special task force, is sometimes brought in from various departments to offer a fresh perspective on a project. Shadow Teams were inspired by new business practices, where individuals from different areas of expertise are brought together to provide insights and ideas for a stand-out pitch. 

 

OMD’s Shadow Teams offer a way to examine current media plans, put forth new ideas and ensure quality control for our product. The current account team provides the Shadow Team with a creative brief and an overview of the brand’s history and philosophy – enough background to get them started but not so much that it limits creativity. The concept works because the Shadow Team is free of preconceived views about the brand and too much “behind-the-scenes” knowledge. It allows the group, collectively, to approach the task more from the vantage point of the average consumer and free their minds from the conventions of a particular business or category. 

 

This effort also acknowledges the importance of brand experts, as all new ideas go through the “reality and experience filter” of the core team to ensure feasibility and accountability. When all is said and done, it’s about providing the best counsel for clients and taking advantage of every resource and imagination to shed new light on their communication plans. 

 

David DeSocio is chief strategy officer at OMD US

 

 

COMPETITION TIME  

These days it’s widely recognised that media owners are highly adept at generating new ideas that are innovative and effective uses of their media assets. 

 

Back in late 1999 however, we at BJK&E in the UK felt that media owners were under-valued in this regard and that there was an opportunity to capitalise on their capabilities. 

 

We created the DaimlerChrysler Media Award, in an attempt to get the very best media ideas for our client, the holding company for Mercedes-Benz, smart, Chrysler and Jeep. 

 

Each year we run a formal briefing for the media owners, with the incentive of not only winning this prestigious prize but also enjoying an incremental media budget of £200,000. We generally receive in excess of 50 entries across all media types. 

 

These are whittled down to a shortlist of five or six, who then present to a panel made up of representatives of DaimlerChrysler, BJK&E and one of DaimlerChrysler’s other marketing services partners. At that point a winner is chosen. 

 

In the seven years that the award has run DaimlerChrysler has enjoyed an array of brilliant ideas that probably wouldn’t have been developed through the normal course of business. It also helps communicate to the entire media world that BJK&E and DaimlerChrysler are at the forefront of new media thinking.

 

Tim Irwin is joint managing director at BJK&E 

 

 

INNOVATION UNITS 

Time to panic? Explosions in content, distribution and devices have fragmented the media landscape. And though the new opportunities now play a major role in the consumer’s media mix they have not displaced traditional media. We are living in the media evolution. 

 

A revolution would have been easier but we are now in turgid waters. We are having to consider technologies that don’t yet work, platforms that are not yet the next big thing, and traditional media that delivers reach but all too often is filtered out by the digitally empowered savvy consumer. 

 

It’s not time to panic – it’s time to celebrate. Media has become the new creative. As technology collapses medium and message, opportunities arise to use media not only to cut through the clutter but engage and interact with consumers. Creative media has never been more important. 

 

Initiative’s solution to capitalize on the media evolution is Initiative Innovations, a group devoted to infusing creativity and a forward-looking perspective into media planning, incorporating new media and technology, media reinvention, and branded entertainment into the DNA of our clients’ media strategies. 

 

Initiative Innovations is part thinktank, part digital consultancy and part activation group; an ideas factory for the new media landscape. 

 

Sometimes that means finding the newest technology and using it in a way no one considered for marketing, other times it means reinventing the format of a television commercial. 

 

Since its inception in 2005, Initiative Innovations has done more than execute groundbreaking solutions for clients; we’ve reinvented the role and responsibilities of the media agency. What’s next? We’re working on it. 

 

Alan Cohen is executive vice-president and managing director of Initiative Entertainment and Innovations 

 

 

LOCAL BEATS GLOBAL? 

It’s not on the tourist trail, but a trip to Beijing’s Zhongshan Park is quite an eye opener. It’s here that parents play the role of matchmaker. One sign says “Female, age 32, 168 centimeters tall. A military officer who holds a Master’s degree from the United States. Looking for a man aged around 35 who is at least 170 centimeters tall and a graduate with a monthly salary in excess of 3,000 yuan.” Parents are doing everything short of a Powerpoint deck to find spouses for their kids. 

 

The downside is that while there may be 952 marriages an hour across China, there are also 184 separations. Staying together has never been tougher in the world’s most attractive market and that applies to agency-client relationships as well. Our research with 405 marketers in  China, shows the average media agency relationship lasts just 2.4 years – well behind similar research in the US (6.8 years) and U.K (6.5 years). Why is China different? 

 

Of course, there’s the inevitable turnover of client and agency personnel, the usual relationships gone sour but increasingly local media agencies continue to perform well and take business. By some sources, more than 70% of media in China is placed by local agencies. In fact, the reality is higher as all multinational agency brands rely on brokers for anything from 20% to 100% of spend. So what gives the local agencies their edge? 

 

The best ones are like the full service agency of the last century – “I can buy your media, but I can also produce your creative, manage local events, and help you get prime position in programming” – and many also dabble in program distribution. 

 

The bulk of these local players succeed because of that “customer-closeness” – they lead in a province, or in a media in a province, because they know that market well, and that TV station – it’s their rice bowl. Where they have yet to succeed is to scale – alliances across provinces are loose at best, their use of media research minimal and their discipline and execution is behind the global players. 

 

The battle lines are well and truly drawn – with the 8-10 holding company brands battling 55,000 local firms. Every multinational in China uses local agencies at some point of the marketing mix. They are faster, cheaper and more flexible than the multinationals – and increasingly they are closing the quality gap. Last month, a multinational client, Heinz, named a local agency, Guan Tang, as its lead agency for the first time. The holding companies have work to do if they are to increase their share. 

 

Greg Paull is principal of R3, the Asia-based consultancy focused on client-agency performance and compensation