Strangely Familiar

Ok. Been away for far too long.... It's been a busy summer. After 7 and half years in the world of media, I've hot-footed it to a creative agency.

Now many people reckon that media agencies shall inherit the earth. (Certainly Jim Taylor and the folk at MEC). And perhaps they will be right.

But for me the future is in being able to create genuine value for the people that you want your brand to connect with. And creating value means doing something.

And for me that means being in a place where planners, creatives, designers, researchers (and semioticians, games designers, architects and any number of interesting people) can work together collaboratively to understand, plan and create that value. And yes, more often than not that means operating in fluid & digital world.

And unfortunately, whilst media agencies have loads of fantastic ideas - at the moment, my experience says that they still win or lose pitches based on their TV / Press / Radio / Outdoor guarantees. Not their ideas.

I think in the future, media buying will have to separated off again. Buying could do with a healthy dose of streamlining to bring it into this century. A big fat computer to automatically bid and book operated out of China I reckon. Maybe then communications planning can properly thrive and media agencies will inherit the earth.

But until then, I'm loving being able to actually make stuff happen.