MEDIA PITCHES WANT DATA SECURITY AND CREATIVE FREEDOM

This year’s media pitches have been driven not so much by transparency but by a need for data security and more creative freedom. 

Advertisers had multiple reasons for calling a media pitch in 2015. And many of them have, its been a well documented record year for billings in review. It could be transparency, a need to update resource or a sense that a better deal was there for the taking.

But actually beyond much of the talk about this summer’s feast of large scale media pitches it’s been data and the need for creative freedom that has sat behind many of them.

It’s no surprise that data has started to occupy a more important position in the typical advertiser's thinking. Advertisers increasingly see the value in getting more control of their customer and campaign data and want to have all their data in one basket, where they can get best value for money but also where they can ensure that it is available for their own exclusive use.

Nobody wants that data to disappear into a trading desk, be shared with rivals and become tainted by other brands’ campaigns. Equally, nobody wants to have to spend a fortune on gathering in market data that helps inform a rival's campaign.

Sorting out data is essential for brands that signed their global media deals three to five years ago. They need to be made relevant to today’s circumstances.

The other area of focus have been about creative. Too many brands have signed media deals that also tie them to securing creative services from the same network or don't allow the freedom required for dynamic creative to be properly implemented.

This is an area which represents a significant opportunity to improve the effectiveness of both the media buy and the message. This isn't a technology issue, the principle of implementing the right message (in an appropriate format) in the right media space has been a concern for decades, still every week I see an example of a brand just reposting their print advertising on a large poster site, or thinking that auto-uploading a TV ad into YouTube is sensible. Waste of time and money and we should be doing better. 

Today's media pitches are consumed with technology concerns but sometimes I think we're missing the basics. It's always refreshing to hear a media agency get their hands dirty in a pitch and get down to the basic principles of insight, targeting, strategy and planning. 

Media is really so simple and so easy to get right, but made unnecessarily complex these days that we risk losing the craft and becoming paralysed with over-analysis and the fear of missing the latest fad. A good media planner should be leveraging data sure, but not forget that its the creativity to link a media placement and a message in harmony that really makes in impact.

It may be an unfashionable point of view, but if it were my own money I'd want my media agency planners to have the creative freedom they need to make objective recommendations which are in the interest of my brand and not be trying to buy media on an industrial scale.  

Additional costs, delays and inaction can become part of the creative process under such circumstances.