• by Nicole Pomerleau , September 20, 2012

The future of media isn’t a channel or a platform or a user experience. Those things will come and go. The future of media is what it always has been – ideas. Ideas born from creativity and collaboration that inspire passion and trigger emotion. When the idea is nailed, the communication plan writes itself- like working with a paint-by-numbers set where the picture suddenly comes to life.

But brilliant ideas don’t live in a neat box, they spill over and back between media, digital, social, user experience, content creation, PR and the list goes on. We’ve all heard the stats that people are multi-tasking more than ever before. We are battling for attention and engagement in an ADD world.

The future of media belongs to those who know how to co-create. Media is the new creative and creative is the new media. Magic doesn't happen during the scheduled meeting times, it comes from staying late and sharing beers and greasy Chinese food. Some of my best media work has been a result of just hanging out in the creative “war room” and getting involved in the process. When we are in planning, I bring my laptop and work from the creative area. Pretty soon, it is normal to involve media in the full ideation process and we become an extension of the creative team.

Too many agencies have trouble even collaborating within their own walls and clients today expect their agencies to bring an idea to life across multiple agency partners. If I were hiring an agency, I would make sure they know how to collaborate and navigate this world of co-creation between the agency, the client, partner agencies and publishers. Do media and creative work together? Ideas don’t live in one discipline alone. It’s not just about playing nice in the sandbox. Great work comes from those who know how to throw down together to make an idea better.

Nicole Pomerleau, Director of Media, Colle+McVoy