Greg Newman’s Post

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Strategic Business Consultant at Craft Media London | upthereforthinking.substack.com

This is a #mediapositive to every single person who has delivered work good enough to be recognised by their peers. Congratulations. It's always harder than you imagine, and time seems to go faster than the free drinks at a media party. But of the 186 shortlisted Campaign Media Award entries, 96% come from media agencies within the Top 20 (Campaign School report billing 2023) Just 3.7% have come from agencies outside of this, six agencies: Total Media, Bountiful Cow, Yonder Media, dentsu X, Flourish - Customer Journey Marketing & Craft Media London As a small agency, getting your work through the volume of entries from the top 20 means that this recognition means so much more. The truth is it is harder to cut through and at £500 an entry and £7,000 a table even entering these awards is a huge investment for smaller agencies and one that they have to be super selective at making. We also want to  #mediapositive to Spark Foundry for Benriach, Total Media for Greene King, Propersnacks (for yourselves), M&C Saatchi London for The Ben Kinsella Trust, the7stars for Ka Drinks, Goodstuff for Gu. Six entries with a reported media investment across 2023 of circa £4m  Versus the shortlist pool of over £2bn (2023 AdIntel) Congratulations to you specifically and the teams involved in these, because you were starting with a huge disadvantage. Despite that you got a shortlist, and managed to get a panel to see the great work you did. So what's that disadvantage? You're not spending millions every month, and so don’t enjoy that latent awareness within the judging room, and the familiarity that comes from having 8-or-9 figure media budgets and creative budget to match. You don’t in short, have availability bias. We've been guilty of this in the past, drawing on the deeply woven tapestry of knowledge and emotion regarding a significant brand (age, adspend and recency being some of the factors) rather than trying to be deliberate about the work in front of us. And this surely has to be impacting the shortlist of the ‘under £250k’ category: Walkers, Lloyds, Sky, Channel 4 & Audible are all shortlisted, brands which have spent heavily (and consistently) outside of this ‘campaign’ who are being compared to Ben Kinsella Trust, Mitchum deodorant and Gu. If you are fighting with these giants and holding your own you should really celebrate your achievements. At Craft we passionately believe good strategy drives business growth and should be available to all clients, not just the biggest spenders in media. And maybe we need to find another way to surface and celebrate the real depth of planning and effort that happens on the longtail and not just for the already highly familiar and famous. Welldone to everyone involved in every entry, and I wish you all the best of luck come the 18th April. But a particular well done to those whose cream has risen to the top in challenging circumstances - we see you especially and we tip our Crafty hat. #mediapositive

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