• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 27, 2012

Some of the best technologies come from startups. Brands can't always depend on agencies to find the best technology for the job. At the MediaPost Brand Marketing Summit in Wisconsin on Wednesday, panelists talked about how to find partners to explore options and the importance of agencies working together for the client's best interest. 

For most companies the idea comes first -- followed by finding support from agencies and partners for campaigns that will run across search, display, mobile, retargeting and other media. At the Brand summit, Karen Premo, principal for the global media entertainment practice at Booz & Co., led the discussion on re-engineering the brand marketer.

Search requires data. Audience measurement will become the key to managing media, according to Gary Milner, global marketing director, digital marketing at Lenovo. Retargeting helps to increase efficiency, but seeing your audience across sites is an industry issue, he said.

Telling a story requires data to tell that message to the correct audience. Companies do a disservice in how they explain technology to marketers, who need education. Companies hear the keywords on many levels: from demand-side platforms to data management platforms to attribution management platform.

DataXu VP of Marketing Julie Ginches realizes that any new ecosystem must evolve to meet the changes, from skill sets to cooperative strategy.

The role of the agency to support information, the big data behind the wall, forces a fragmented campaign. The fragmentation leads brand marketers to feel as if they must herd the cats. Agency reps apparently don't talk enough with one another about campaigns -- but in a world of integrated marketing media, especially native ads, social must talk with display, which must talk with search.

Valspar Paint VP of Marketing John Anton said the company shares information, point-of-sale data, and profits with its agencies after having them sign an NDA. The process appears to work. They collaborate well. "There's not a ton of defending their turf," he said, adding that it's impossible to do it correctly and remain myopic.