Media Buying Briefing: How two media agencies took differing approaches to learning how to adapt to a changing world

By Michael Bürgi

You know times have changed when media agencies do a little soul-searching as a result of digging into what they need to do differently for their clients.

As the media world tries to get its proverbial arms around a vastly changed marketplace — one in which a full-on recession seems inevitable following a life-changing pandemic, and in which the mechanisms of connecting with consumers are morphing faster and faster — two media agencies are looking themselves in the mirror to determine how to adapt their services to go with this newer, faster flow. They’re certainly not the only ones — but they happen to offer two current examples of reaction to the tectonic changes media and marketing are all experiencing today.

IPG’s Mediahub has quietly undergone an internal examination resulting from a presentation it has put together for clients about the dramatically altered media world it’s operating in. Havas, meanwhile, assembled a report that it presented at ProcureCon in Europe last week that addresses how agencies and clients need to change their relationship with each other.

First, Mediahub’s existential presentation, which Digiday has seen but which has been kept under wraps outside of the two dozen clients that have been shown it, addresses all manner of change: gaming and Web3, e-commerce, the surge in content creation, influencers/creators, AI, cultural shifts, diversity awareness, etc.

Mediahub CEO Sean Corcoran admitted the presentation, “A New Era in Media,” needs to be updated constantly due to the rapidity and fluidity of the media marketplace. But as it morphed, he said, there was a need to look inward to see how Mediahub must adapt as well.

“Coming out of the pandemic, our feeling was, you know, everyone’s using QR codes, streaming is winning and gaming is huge. Jumping ahead to Web3, we’re totally on board with that, and it just felt like we could finally close the book on traditional mass media and say we’re in this new era,” said Corcoran. “But can I rely on that to drive business for my clients? We got existential, thinking what’s our job in the future? What is our job as a paid media agency? What are we built towards? ”

Corcoran used a quote from corporate sibling IPG Media Lab as a rallying cry of sorts: ““The end of the pandemic will mark the beginning of what comes next, where we must reinvent the pieces of society that have been stubbornly clinging to the past, while balancing the needs of those who can’t or won’t be ready for that new world.”

Mediahub’s conclusions look more outward than inward but offer a clue to how the media agency will adapt:

Data needs to be front and center of pretty much anything any agency does, media or creative, particularly when it comes to measurement. And in order to do so, AI and machine learning need to be applied to determine the best insights to inform creative, planning, strategy and execution
The metaverse and Web3 will play a huge role in …read more
Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron