IN RESPONSE to C John Brady’s feature ‘A new view of the future of media landscape’ (Market Leader Q1, 2011, p38), looking back, the ‘big bang’ of marketing services can be dated to around 2000.
At that time, the explosion of digital technology blew the media and marketing industries into fragments of different sizes and shapes travelling at great speeds through space and time. Suddenly everyone did everything. Media agencies created, creative agencies distributed, technology companies became media owners and data became the new black.
How will it all settle down? What new worlds will be created? Will it ever settle down or are we condemned to permanent revolution and volatility?
C John Brady gives us three possible new worlds, new planets: a data-led planning planet that is a cool, rational place and the world of geeks; a low-cost, high-volume buying planet that’s a world of smoke-filled rooms and dealers; and an integrated, creative boutique world that is a small but beautiful world, full of beautiful things and free spirits.
Geeks, dealers and free spirits are all good planets, but quite close to the pre-bang world. Let me suggest a couple of wilder worlds.
One might be a planet for the global adaptation and distribution of content (creative) assets. Hogarth and TAG are the Adam and Eve of this world. This service stores assets created elsewhere and releases them at the right place at the right time to the right customer according to the prompt from media scheduling software. It’s all online, all automated and all globalised.
It’s a world where traffic and production, the people who really make creative agencies tick, are finally the pearly kings and queens.
To complement this planet is a moon of mass-produced, mass-customised, high-volume, low-margin creativity. I’m not convinced commercial creativity will remain in a low-volume, high-value business. Perhaps a large swathe of creativity becomes commoditised and media becomes bespoke as media agencies, media owners and rights owners co-create inventory around clients’ brands.
This moon might be a place where content created elsewhere (Hollywood, Bollywood, Googlewood, Groupmwood) is endlessly recreated, refined and repurposed in a million slightly different forms to appear in a million slightly different digital spaces selected by the geeks.
And finally the world of Googlewood where media inventory is shaped uniquely around customers and brands and then licensed to clients for global use. IMG meets Facebook, meets Groupon: a world of creative geeks, the new species for the new world.
Perhaps the biggest question will be whether the development of this universe is controllable – with WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic and Publicis as the divine watchmakers – or whether marketing services’ Darwinism will find the group constraints too tight. Who knows? But it will be an exciting ride.
Marco Rimini is leader business planning worldwide at Mindshare. marco.rimini@ mindshareworld.com