• by Ann Cooper , October 28, 2005

In today's confusing mediascape -- where the 30-second spot no longer reigns supreme, the consumer is king, and emerging technologies spawn new forms of media at breakneck speed -- creative shops are rising as never before to the media challenge. In fact, some are baking media strategy into everything they do, as brands increasingly become synonymous with popular culture.

A new breed of creative agencies with funny names -- StrawberryFrog, Amalgamated, Anomaly, Taxi, The Brooklyn Brothers, and The Wexley School for Girls -- are embracing media as a core tenet of their work and are not only earning accolades, but big accounts in the process. These nimble boutiques join media-savvy creative stars Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and Attik. And a new breed of communications planning agencies -- Michaelides & Bednash, Naked Communications, and Mother -- have jumped into the fray as well.

But it's not only boutique upstarts that are making inroads into media specialists' territory. Omnicom Group's BBDO and TBWA/Chiat/Day are undergoing structural and ideological transformations; TBWA is trying to create a so-called media arts company. As more creative shops regard media as an organic and intrinsic part of their work, the implications for media specialists are staggering. What do you need to know to understand creatives' media imperative, as both creative agencies and media shops elbow their way in for a seat at the marketer's table?

The Rise of Communications Planners

In a rapidly changing media and marketing universe revolutionized by technology, it's nearly universally acknowledged that the traditional ad and media agency model is broken, and no one's sure what will replace it. However, boutique creative shops are giving traditional agencies a run for the money. While wireless, online, buzz, events, outdoor, and public relations have emerged as the hot, go-to media, the common currency of unique and memorable advertising hasn't changed: The big idea rules.

The big idea is often media-driven. But does it issue from the creative or the media agency? Which agency champions the idea and implements it? Speaking at MediaPost's OMMA East Conference and Expo, Carat North America CEO David Verklin argued for creative and media agencies to be "intellectually recombined" and said communications planning ought to be a "team endeavor."

And that brings us to the new breed of agency animal: the communications strategist. Responsible for identifying consumer touch points and for charting the way marketers should reach that target audience, this new discipline is assuming the same importance and prominence that account planning once held. And, as technology revolutionizes business as usual, the fate of media planning and media shops hangs in the balance. Is media the new creative, or merely its facilitator?

"Lots of people about town have gone, 'Oh shit, we need a comm planner,'" says Francis Anderson, formerly director of communications planning at Fallon, New York, and now a marketing/brand consultant. "I keep thinking, 'Right now -- that's the tipping point.' But I thought that when Procter & Gamble put out that pitch for holistic communications planning [nearly two years ago]. Also, when [BMW's] Mini landed at Crispin [Porter + Bogusky]. And then with all the press a year ago about 18- to 34-year-old men not watching tv. But the real tipping point is that clients have finally realized their old ways are working less and less well, and that by using the same model, sales went down," Anderson muses.

The question marketers are wrestling with is how, and through what medium, they can reach attention-deficit-disorder-plagued consumers who control their own media in a TiVo-enabled mediaverse packed with content options. At TBWA/Chiat/ Day, something called "connections planning" is designed to come up with appropriately disruptive creative ideas.

"Disruption is finding the big idea of a brand, and connections is how you put that brand out there in the world so people relate to it," says Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer, TBWA/Chiat/Day. "Connections is very much the new [media] planning."

Yes, Creatives Plan Media

In another sign of the times, when Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky lured the $400 million Volkswagen account away from Arnold Worldwide, Boston, it insisted on doing media buying and planning for the account. The agency continues to dial up edgy creative and media concepts on Burger King's $300 million-plus account.

According to Jeff Hicks, Crispin's CEO and president, "More and more we're involved in the planning of media and, if possible, the buying. We develop a compelling idea and say, 'What's the best way to get a chicken in a room where you can feed it commands and make it and its association with bk famous?' There's no way a media buying company could have put 'Subservient Chicken' onto a flow chart ahead of time, because you have to have the idea. And when you follow that process you have to be involved in media planning."

While it's not always a slam dunk, Hicks says it's worth the effort. "We go to them and say, 'We need to be involved to the extent that your giving us responsibility for planning will contribute to the success,'" adding, "For [BMW's] Mini we've been able to use media that's not media on any rate cards, and we've done that for many of our clients. We do all of Burger King's media planning. That's why VW is changing its relationship with MediaCom, so we'll be involved and be the lead media planning agency. It's something we feel strongly about."

Also foreshadowing new roles for creative shops, Crispin recently took a minority stake in fuseproject, a San Francisco-based product design and branding firm. The move augurs a potential melding of advertising, branding, product design, and media.

What Is a Communications Arts Company?

Meanwhile, Clow is busy refashioning TBWA into a media communications company armed with communications strategists -- essentially, creative directors teamed with communications planners. Clow's prototype media arts company will spawn a new breed of creative team.

"It represents all the components of brand-building and storytelling that we're responsible for," he says. "Within this context, there's connections planning, which is understanding all [the consumer] touch points and every way a brand can make a connection." Clow says it allows the agency to speak to clients about everything from package design, retail stores, and brand planning to whether the Internet experience should be recreational, entertaining, or informational.

It's an approach that recognizes a central new reality. As Clow puts it: "How you use media is as important a creative tool as the content itself, so we're demanding that be part of the creative development process," he says. Clow argues that the media piece is imperative to understanding how brands interact with culture. "Now everything is media," he says. "I consider our package design work for Apple and its stores as much a medium as the TV and Internet. I have this high-falutin' notion that brands you interact with are going to become media. For example, I will spend time with a Nike or an Apple brand and even seek it out. Other brands I will skip past because they have not become one of my media choices."

Can't We All Just Get Along?

So how exactly does TBWA work with the big media shops? It's easier when it's Omnicom's OMD, says Clow, because of TBWA's strong relationship with its media sibling.

"Companies with independent media companies and creative agencies have a much harder time doing integrated strategy because they usually have their own agenda and go down their own paths, and only a strong client can force the collaboration that's really necessary. I think it's a bad model."

At TBWA sibling BBDO, New York, there are no media strategists or planners on staff, but John Osborn, CEO and president, works closely with media sister shops OMD and PHD. He says the last thing he'd want to do is build a BBDO media department.

"Media has to be as creative as the creative message itself, and the two need to be in lockstep," Osborn says, adding, "At BBDO we approach it very strategically in partnering with our media agencies. We're coming together as one to represent a much more holistic package for our clients. We're separate, but not."

Osborn's creative cohort, David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO, agrees. Lubars helped kick-start the trend toward nontraditional media when, under his watch at Fallon, BMW created a series of short Web films using top Hollywood talent.

Lubars, who arrived at BBDO more than a year ago, went on to shift the agency from churning out 30-second Super Bowl commercials to focusing on alternative methods of persuasion for mega clients including Pepsi, Federal Express, GE, and Bayer.

"The important thing today is not who [creative or media] rises above the other -- it's not even an adult thing to think," Lubars muses. "It has to be a team where each makes the other better and floats the boats higher. Today there are all kinds of ways to reach people...[and] the cool, hip, new, and creative-minded media person is thinking, 'What kind of places can I show up that I can really delight someone?' There's a new wave of thinkers who are much more creative because the content itself is part of everything now, and how you deliver it is also very creative. So you can't separate the two."

Who's On First?

On the media agency side of the equation, not surprisingly, Carat's Verklin thinks media should lead the dance. He argues: "If the question is whether media and creative need to be physically recombined, then my opinion would be no. I don't think the issue is whether the two functions need to be under the same roof physically. This is not an architectural debate. If the question is whether the two functions need to be reconnected intellectually, then my answer would be yes."

Verklin thinks that media had to physically separate from creative before any kind of intellectual reintegration could take place. "Media can no longer not have a seat at the grown-up table," he says. "In fact, in our new communications planning process, Carat leads the process which orchestrates the way all of our brands and marketing partners work together. The media plan of the future will have more components in it than the plan of today. I like the idea of a 'BBDO powered by OMD,' or perhaps even McGarry Bowen, Taxi, or StrawberryFrog powered by Carat," Verklin adds.

Paul Woolmington, ceo of The Media Kitchen, says the higher order of creativity is actually the reintegration of context, contact, and content. "Both groups of protagonists are woefully dis-integrated and missing the bigger picture, which...is about content and contact and great creative, and it doesn't matter where the brilliant idea came from," he says. "Creative agencies are rushing off to employ communications strategists, but it's all tokenism. On the media side the same thing is happening. But everyone's got vested interests. It's turf and greed, and clearly, there are financial implications for whose got the upper hand with a client.

"Talk off the record to creative agency senior execs and you will find that if they encroach on certain areas, the media honchos will be down on them, and vice versa," Woolmington observes. "The biggest disservice we gave creative and media was [the idea] that creative was only this group of copywriters and art directors and everyone else isn't creative. I believe everyone should be creative, except the finance department," he adds.

Creative and Media Intercourse

Steve Farella, president of TargetCast TCM, maintains that creative agencies will always write copy and position the brand. "The partnership between creative and media agencies is wide and various," he says. "In some instances they are true partners, but in old-fashioned legacy relationships, the creative agency wants to take charge and control the media placement of its messages."

Farella says there are different kinds of relationships: There can be a rough balance of power between the media and creative sides, or a relationship where it's clear that one or the other is the leader. The best relationship, Farella says, is a full and equal partnership.

The new crop of creative shops may teach media agencies a thing or two. "We've really integrated the consumer and strategic cultural brand with our creative thinking," says Douglas Cameron, director of strategy at New York-based Amalgamated. "Next is to integrate it with media thinking. We think the real answer will be in the marriage of cultural branding, and we're trying to influence the culture and media planning, as opposed to creativity and media planning. We set up the agency with that in mind."

Guy Barnett, creative director at The Brooklyn Brothers, says what's happening today constitutes more than mere advertising: "The new media is driving a new kind of creative, and the business today is about building audiences and encouraging them to constantly seek you out," he says. "The ad community is not taking up the creative role of making that happen. We get very excited when we [help] generate a million hits on a Web site or onto a controversial film we've done, but Amazon gets that kind of audience daily," Barnett enthuses. "This makes the new creative all about customer service -- applications that show buying patterns and similarly minded buyers, and all that stuff on Amazon."

Joseph Jaffe, principal in jaffe, a new marketing consultancy, argues for a new definition of creativity. Jaffe says that the marketing and media industry is witnessing a paradigm shift from "push" to "pull," from intrusiveness to permission-based, or invitation-only models. "Data is the DNA, ROI [return on investment] is the currency, and creativity is the mojo. You have this data-driven force, accountability, [but] creativity is still the process of generating breakthrough and compelling ideas. That's what keeps this business in business -- it's as simple as that," Jaffe concludes.

Indeed, whether you're situated in the media or creative camp, marketing today is all about finding the influencers in society, because content creation and distribution has become participatory. In addition to consumer-generated content, there's also "consumer-disseminated content media," Jaffe points out, which means that "not only can I create a piece of advertising and circumvent or bypass the traditional creative agency, but I can also bypass the media agency. The paid media cost is zero and the production costs are zero, and the time spent in putting it together is minuscule."

In Jaffe's view, this scenario is an indictment of the entire process of creative content development, media planning, and implementation. But as agencies and marketers scramble for a new prototype, a consensus remains that no matter whether media planning remains at the media shop or goes to the ad agency, or whether a hybrid agency model emerges, media and creative are intrinsically interdependent.

Amalgamated's Johnson gives a recent illustration.

"The ad starts out as a relatively normal ad, touting the benefits and attributes of Fuse, but then halfway through declares that all of this is boring and that viewers should send off for the 'uncensored' version of the spot. The ad was not only the ad -- it was also the product that was being sold."