5 Things I Uncovered Working at a Media Agency #DigitalSense

When I moved from client side to media agency side back in 2014 the digital advertising world seemed a much more innocent place. Three years later and it’s possible that half the online ads sold aren’t seen by anyone at all, even big folks like Facebook can’t get their measurement to work, and the ANA has published a pretty scathing report on the media industry as a whole. For a whole range of reasons I’m moving back to a client side role, so what better time to dish up the dark secrets I’ve learnt from behind ‘enemy’ lines? Honestly it’s more therapy/change management for myself but you may enjoy the perspective.

1.It’s All About the People

At a macro level it’s easy to talk about giant global conspiracies with big holding groups conspiring to divert media budgets into more profitable alleyways… but it’s almost impossible to see that on the ground. What I actually found was an awful lot of dedicated people, very passionately trying to do the best possible things for the clients they were working on.

In my three years I wasn’t ever asked to make a recommendation which would be worse for a client but better for the agency. Of course there’s a desire to upsell (it’s a business after all), and in many cases an agenda to help drive digital transformation, but it’s underscored by a push to measure & prove out these new options and ultimately help make wiser investments.

Surprisingly often I’ve actually had to push back on a client’s own digital agenda, highlighting how more traditional channels like TV are currently still working harder for their specific brief, or cautioning a blanket world view that every market is as digitally ready as the next. There’s clearly some mess which needs to be cleared up in the world of digital advertising, but any broad assumption that agency teams are actively conspiring to trick their clients does a huge disservice to the people working there. I'm not completely naive here though either, clearly there are some major commercial discussions at play, but those are not limited to the digital space and are as old as media itself... in mature relationships there seem to be mutually beneficial and transparent ways of ensuring everyone's fairly rewarded for their work.

2. It’s REALLY All About the People

Sure agencies have their USPs, unique tools & different ways of being structured but in the day to day running of any account a huge amount comes down to the people who are working on your business. For the most part things are still run by actual people (not robots, yet), but it can be easy to forget that… and in doing so you may miss out on maximising their value.

Every question a client asks, every brief they send, every pitch they eventually decide to run causes a domino effect of actions and a huge amount of effort to try and best respond… and often not enough thought is put into those questions & briefs to really get the right answer as a result. Some have even forgotten they'd asked the question by the time the answer arrives.

Certainly if you really want great answers you need to empower your team to tackle your underlying problems, not the narrowest of briefs you already think you’ve half solved. As for pitching? Whilst there’s something inspiring & powerful about the whole process, it’s also more work than you can probably ever imagine and really feels like it should be an exception/last resort, not a standard three-yearly occurrence. Can someone think of a better way here?

More crucially than anything is how you go about getting the most out of the people you do end up working with, and whilst there are many different views on how best to manage client-agency relationships one thing seems very clear: you get a lot more out of a team who is inspired and wants to work for you, than one you shout at & terrorise into submission in an attempt to make them work harder. People are people after all.

3. Word on the street is important

For me there are lots of great reasons for being such a human-powered business, but it’s also eye opening to see one of the challenges. For all the tools & technology an agency has ultimately big decisions can still rest on the shoulders of a person, and that person can never have perfect information about everything.

Media owners they’ve never heard of, or who simply aren’t front of mind, might never get a look in, and even the big established players get bashed around in the waves of PR. Twitter’s dead right? Facebook’s measurement is all wrong? Google’s ads aren’t brand safe are they? No one watches TV anymore huh? It’s amazing how headlines can radically reshape opinions, be repeated out of context, and ultimately start to shape big decisions.

Though again that’s far from unique on the agency side… in fact clients (who in fairness probably have less time to dedicate to looking into the intricate details) often seem to be the most easily swayed by whatever’s in the news. Media owners shouldn’t underestimate how important it is to have a simple, clear narrative… or how damaging it can be to have a confusing & bad one. Data too can be a dangerous thing when shared without wider context - digital engagement & viewability numbers I'm looking at you in particular.

4. Get out of your bubble

One of the things I was most excited about was working alongside, and learning from, a much larger team of digital experts. What perhaps most surprised me though was that I’ve learnt far more from the traditional media thinkers in the building, and the strategists who cut their teeth long before online marketing was even a consideration. For 9 months one of our clients had me overseeing their entire media mix and the deep dive into MMM, ROIs and media planning that entailed was a great experience, and actually taught me far more about how digital media then works than I anticipated.

It’s very easy to get caught up in a digital bubble, but understanding how these channels interact with the big traditional media ones means building up a deeper knowledge of both – it’s also helpful to challenge a lot of the fluffier digital thinking by seeing if it stands up to traditional strategy & rigour. Spoiler alert: a lot of the industry buzz about social media engagement, interaction & conversation is nonsense that doesn't scale, but those channels can be hugely powerful if approached with a more traditional mindset. If you’re currently working in a purely digital role that doesn’t touch other aspects of the marketing mix, then I strongly encourage you to deliberately look beyond that. And to read ‘How Brands Grow’.

5. Diversity is a challenge for us all

Conscious that as a well-educated, white man I’m not best placed to comment on diversity, I’m also actively aware of all of our roles in trying to help tackle such issues. Whilst I did see a moderate gender balance around my office, and certainly an environment which seems to encourage it, there’s little denying how little wider diversity there is in a lot of media environments. Especially senior ones.

I’ve never personally seen any active discrimination but whether the industry is yet doing enough to proactively recruit is another question. The challenge begins far outside the office, with how we engage and inspire people from different backgrounds to want to try and work here in the first place, and then how we train ourselves to interview people potentially quite unlike ourselves. There are some good initiatives kicking off in this space but we could all (certainly myself included) be doing more and searching out ways to be actively involved. Looking around at younger teams there’s definitely a more diverse range of talent coming through, let’s hope (or actively work to ensure!) it’s only a matter of time before those guys are holding down a range of senior positions.

It’s also been personally exciting to see a LGBTQ+ network spring up during my time at the agency, though I know there were some questions about whether such a thing was really needed when the industry certainly seems to be very tolerant & inclusive. I still think there’s power in giving people a voice, in tackling representation in the ads we produce themselves, and in starting to think about how we help less fortunate markets worldwide along this journey.

Yup, sorry, that's it. I waited all these years for someone to reveal the truly dark secrets of media life to me and they never did, perhaps that's what happens on the 8th floor of the building. I've had a great experience working agency side and would consider doing it again one day, and as I move back client side I will definitely consider my agency (which as it happens is still Carat) as a trusted partner, rather than someone trying to steal my wallet from my pocket... whatever the headlines may say.

?Anyway, enough of my ramblings… I’m off to shout at my agency.

I am a marketer who helps global brands make sense of media in a digital world; Follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter. These #DigitalSense posts are my attempt to cut through the hype that surrounds the industry. I have led media, digital, social & partnership strategy on both client & agency side, and am a passionate speaker and industry contributor. #AgencyVoices