• by Ann Cooper , October 28, 2005

The avalanche of emerging technologies and platforms, the rise of communications planning, and the flight to nontraditional media may signal different things for creatives and media strategists. Fundamentally, though, if both are going to thrive, they'll need to understand how the new dynamics are changing the marketing game.

As ideas cross various technology platforms, media, and channels, the creative canvas appears ripe for a radical reinterpretation. Good ideas, no matter whether they issue from the creative or media camps or some combination thereof, remain a pervasive need. While the industry zeitgeist continues to beat the "media is the new creative" mantra, nimble creative shops of all sizes are eagerly diving into the media waters with good results. Creative powerhouses like BBDO and TBWA are rejiggering their approaches to meet the changing demands of the new market. Smaller creative upstarts have made media planning central to their work.

For Lee Clow, who's spearheading the development of a new agency paradigm at TBWA, the old ways of working don't address marketers' communications challenges. Clow's vision of a media communications company with an emphasis on communications arts has media at its core.

So what do these developments mean for media pros? We asked several leading creatives what the three most important things media planners, buyers, and strategists need to know about the new creative landscape. Here's a sampling of their responses:

Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer, TBWA/Chiat/Day:

* How you use media makes a brand statement.

* Quality is more important than quantity.

* Media strategy must be led by the communications idea.

Paul Lavoie, chairman and chief creative officer, Taxi:

* We look for an open mind -- media partners that start the process with a blank sheet of paper and are looking for unconventional communication ideas, as opposed to just conventional advertising ideas.

* A point of view. Media partners demonstrate huge value when they can apply the analytical skills that are [in] their domain to looking at data in unexpected ways.

* A creative collaboration. We invite our partners to dive into the ideation process with us because it's a given that creative makes media better and media makes creative better. Ideas know no boundaries.

Carl Johnson, co-founder, Anomaly:

* Creative and media are inseparable.

* Some great ideas have no numbers to support them before they happen.

* Sticking "Inspiration Room" or "Creativity Center" on the door of a sterile meeting room is no substitute for having ideas and building a truly creative culture.

Guy Barnett, creative director, The Brooklyn Brothers:

* Although the traditional 30-second TV spot may be receiving its last rites, moving images are still the most persuasive and powerful form of advertising.

* Just because you can buy space on the side of a dog doesn't mean you should. Media creativity is about making a relevant connection with a consumer.

* Next time you get free tickets to the playoffs for buying all those in-arena billboards, bear in mind the person who actually wrote the ads might want to go, too.

Doug Cameron, co-founder/strategy director, and Jason Gaboriau, creative director, Amalgamated:

* What advertising people see as creative media ideas, non-advertising people increasingly see as pollution of their cultural environment. Most citizens don't share our enthusiasm for turning everything into ads -- from sidewalk tiles to rooftops, urinal pucks, and fruit stickers. Media thinkers should be sensitive to the growing backlash that's being fueled by the likes of Adbusters and author Naomi Klein.

* The creativity-in-media trend could ruin your professional credibility. As creativity becomes the holy grail of media planning, the incentive is increasingly to come up with nontraditional plans, even if a traditional plan would be a better solution. The more that your agency touts its media creativity, the more reason clients have to doubt your objectivity.

* Sometimes nontraditional media plans do more to make the agency famous than to make the client famous. In our experience, guerrilla campaigns tend to cost a lot of money for the limited consumer exposure that they receive. A $10,000 street stunt in downtown Seattle might be seen by 1,000 people. If you put the same money into TV, you could buy half a million impressions.