You’ll struggle with the culture shift, Mat: The DNA of media buying is completely different to earned media
In this guest post, Anthony Freedman argues that media agencies will find it harder than they think to shift into public relations territory because it requires an entirely different culture.
Like a lot of people, I noticed the coverage surrounding Mat Baxter’s reveal of UM’s new “Creative Connections Agency” positioning last week.
It started with a piece in Mumbrella provocatively headlined “Media agencies aren’t our competitors” and continued the following day after Mat was goaded into stating UM “won’t be entering media agency awards any more”.
For anyone who didn’t read the stories, the gist of it is this; UM is no longer a media agency, it’s a ‘connections company’ that is embracing earned and owned media, and thus will herein compete with the likes of R/GA, Google and (closest to my heart) One Green Bean.
Yep, big difference between fishing where the fish are and actually having a line and bait
‘ An eye for editorial and an ear for social context’. Great summation.
Extremely well said. Anthony & Kat, congrats on all you’ve achieved with One Green Bean. You’ve got agencies from every sector scrutinizing your success & wanting a slice of it.
“An eye for editorial”. Always surprises the journalists and editors among us when PR types claim to understand editorial when somewhere in the vicinity of 95% of what is pitched never sees the light of day.
Great post and explains very well why smart PR agencies that are good and sophisticated at editorial media relations (in all kinds of industry niches) are doing so well in content marketing and social. Those with “bought” in their DNA always eventually come to regard “earned” as way too hard.
I sense a bit of fear (and denial) here.
It’s not the 90s anymore. Media agencies have been moving into this space for years and have produced many successful campaigns. Coupling the ability to provide paid media with owned and earned capabilities on a large scale is ultimately where the most powerful campaigns will emerge.
Mats story was a story – we are changing our agency to adapt to the ever changing landscape. Anthony’s is not – I am scared and you don’t have the skills. as a client I am extremely happy that UM are changing the landscape… congrats. Anthony – its cool mate – your offerings are still relevant and have their place… moving on.
If we are listening to our clients and taking on board their needs then any of us can create the right offering provided we build the right talent base to deliver results.
I would imagine Mat has the dollars to entice a cracking PR team to sit side by side his cracking media team.
Anthony it would appear your view of media agencies – what they do and how they operate – is a little dated. We (yes, I work in a media agency) are no longer simply bookers of spots and space but instead use data and insight to develop ideas that come to life across every consumer touchpoint. The most important of which being social. Because we understand the relationship between paid and organic, the strategic role of channels AND the behaviour/motivations of our audience UM’s move becomes totally logical.
“What sets public relations (PR) people apart from other marketing disciplines is this; they have always had to take a message a client wishes to communicate, and find a way to position or package it such that an editor will deem it worthy of publishing…PR people pitching stories have to earn the right for their content to appear, and have done so by telling that story in a form the audience of that media, would consider interesting, useful or entertaining….[they’ve] never had the luxury of being able to buy an audience for [their] content and so [they’ve] developed an innate ability to think about how to solve clients’ briefs in ways that people will choose to consume, without being forcibly exposed to them”.
Thank you Anthony Freedman for being one ad guy who actually understands what PR/media is, why it’s so powerful and why it will be the central marcoms discipline of a future in which paid media is ever-diminishing in importance.
PR/media is in the box seat to drive native, content, owned digital, which ironically is being embraced by the mainstream media as its financial savior (I guess its ok to cross the church/state divide if you specifically pay to do so!).
As a Head of Function who runs marketing/media and PR teams, I have bad news for UM and Mr Baxter. It will take GENERATIONS for marketing/media people to ‘get’ an editorial sensibility because they just cannot put themselves in the audience’s shoes. They’ve spent decades pitching advertiser’s messages.
Should also point out that what Mat and the UM team are doing is not really overly different from what many other agencies are doing or have done – many are changing or have changed their remuneration structures to remove reliance upon diminishing margins, and many are pursuing media opportunities beyond the traditional means of ads and spots… but credit to Mat for formalizing this shift within his own agency and earning himself and his agency some solid PR… because I suspect that this was all just a bit of a marketing exercise for UM.
When talking about how good you are at PR and editorial, you may wish to hire a proofreader to look over your press release.
That aside, it is worth pointing out there is an awful lot of ‘earned’ media claimed by PR companies that is actually paid for, in the form of media partnerships with radio, TV and magazines.