Keepers of the client's wallet

I have a confession to make. We at afaqs! have, in the recent past, published several special issues of our fortnightly print magazine afaqs!Reporter, to explore different aspects of the media business – marketing, advertising, digital – but have never studied the media planning and buying space in detail. To recapitulate, a year ago, we interviewed 40 heads of different types of agencies, but only a third were media planners, and their input sat alongside that of creative and digital agency heads. Then, over the last three years, we published three specials around the marketing heads of brands across product groups; in 2019, we interviewed 59 CMOs, in 2018, 55… and in 2017, 49. We call this the annual ‘CMO Special’. Before that, we’ve published several year-enders and specials around ad-men and women, about their work.

Clearly, media planning and buying has emerged as the most under-represented function in our magazine, historically. Which is why, we've just wrapped up the very first edition of The Planner’s Special, an issue dedicated to media agency executives, keepers of the client’s wallet. We spoke to 31 heads of media agencies across all major networks, and what a ride it’s been. It’s incredible how a templatised set of questions can yield such varied answers. The process of editing these interviews was like a masterclass in the business of media planning. What an amazing job, I know!

We asked these 30+ media agency heads about the work they’re proud of, global practices, ad fraud, consumption trends across urban and rural markets, skill-sets of the future, the agency-client relationship, and, of course, the economic slump and the product segments that are likely to be most –and least– affected by it. Some of the interviewees who responded late spoke about the covid effect because by then the virus had reached India. While the anxiety quotient varies from person to person, I am heartened to report an overarching sense of optimism.

Other key takeaways: Media agencies want to be business partners to their clients, the “outcome” of a campaign outranks the “output”, the lack of a common measurement metric on digital is flagged as urgent, as is the lack of consensus on viewability. The industry needs more “data scientists”. Lastly, the intangible “effectiveness” of a media investment always trumps its financial “efficiency”.

We are working on our distribution pipeline and hope to get this issue into the hands of our subscribers as soon as possible. We're also working out a way in which we can publish the interviews on our website. Cheers! (Update: here is the link to the soft copy - https://www.afaqs.com/news/afaqs-reporter/afaqs-reporter-march-issue-1_15-2020)