Moving media buys back to the agency...

So I'm not getting my usual reading fixes, and posting yet another piece from WSJ, this one on Publicis and their new joint venture Optimedia Inside.

Interview with Publicis USA CEO, Susan Gianinno:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120287513864964733-email.html

According to Susan, the goal of the JV is to reunite media buying with the creative and planning functions that take place within agencies --- disciplines that separated over time as media purchases became more and more specialized.

The interviewer does a good job of addressing a critical issue --- the disconnect that has developed as agencies developed according to discipline, and then collectively began working independently on aspects of large client accounts as members within a larger holding company. After a while, marketers can begin to feel like they are double paying for services, as they pay for planning within digital, media, and consumer areas all at the same time. As a result, unified branding becomes more difficult as agency specialists focus on different consumer insights. But as Susan states, the problem is more complicated than that, and client organizations are often even more siloed --- something that I can attest to.

In my humble opinion, the reality is that substantive change is difficult for "the establishment", and that can mean the "old guard" marketing (or agency) types that have benefited from older organizational structures, and simply don't have an incentive to evolve. Hence, it's not an "agency" problem or a "marketer" problem, it's a complacency issue that plagues both.

Since a large number of marketing groups are not recognized as strategically important functions within their organizations, status quo thinking is allowed to continue. It's only by taking a long, hard look at connecting with customers, and then unifying those insights in a meaningful way --- on both the agency and client side --- that truly ground-breaking work gets done. Here's to hoping that this effort is a move in the right direction.