Media Neutrality

Multi-skilled all-rounders – a workforce who can deliver a multi-

faceted approach to a clients business that will deliver an
accountable ROI – from briefing stage to delivery – in other words
“Integrated Communications”. And what have we been/attempting
to do over the last 2 years – well exactly that albeit we haven’t
adopted the “London” buzz word – “Media Neutrality / Integrated
Communications Planning (ICP), so lets do it but stress that we led
this field in Northern Ireland and didn’t follow the National trend.

So what exactly does it all mean? “A re-evaluation of the traditional

views concerning the planning of brand communication! Clients
ultimately want to ensure that they are getting the best from their
investment in marketing communications, budgets are being
questioned and marketing expenditure must be justified in this day
and age. Hence we must ensure an expected ROI for our client’s
budgets.

Put in it’s simplest form Media Neutrality is about having a

communications plan that incorporates above-the-line & below-the-
line media with all forms of non paid for channels such as sales
forces, PR & Sales Promotion. But this is only the end product, not
the process or the strategy to get there.

To get there we need to have a firm understanding of the market

and the client’s business dynamics. This will be linked directly to
their P&L and to understanding the real impact of all communication
channels on the entire business & how this affects customers in
terms of quality & value. Needless to say, the breadth of this work is
crucial to having an open mind and should precede the traditional
media planning process.

Armed with this information, it still requires an approach that takes

in a far broader outlook than has been the norm. We need to focus
on the customer and how they relate to the different forms of
communication and we have to get over that massive hurdle of
what went before will do now or we always did it that way – the
issue here is that the old way is not necessarily the best way and
nine time out of ten it won’t be.

“Placing the best interests of the client above the vested interests of
the Agency” is another way to describe Media Neutrality – I for one
believe we have adopted this approach, have been actively
practicing this approach for over 2 years and we’ll strive to
continually evolve our business to deliver best advice, best value,
results driven and that may well mean a “paid by results” initiative
and in case you don’t know, it’s been the norm in the US for nearly
4 years.
I’m attaching a few articles below that I’ve researched online and
there are a plethora of these as well that we should at least take
heed of in light of the evolving media neutrality hype & yes it will
get here from England in about 6 months probably, call me cynical if
you like but we own this terminology & we should vigorously
promote ourselves as experts in this field with perhaps a couple of
re-written case studies for our website.

Part of the pitch for the bigger agencies in these days of recession is the
value added in consolidating marketer’s specialist service requirements within
the agency’s networked groups. But while the daddies in terms of size are
pitching new business on the value of their shared research resources and the
savings in group buying, there is also a whole swathe of independent niche
operators actually using their relative size and specialist nature to leverage
their objectives strengths. One such is Blackbird, the new agency offering
looking to provide ad hoc internal support to marketers without an extensive
in-house marketing function.

“The fragmented and increasingly complex media scene in the UK and across
the globe, paired with budget cuts and increased demands for greater ROI,
were the driving force for creating Blackbird,” Crowley says. “We now have a
solution which gives clients the media and advertising expertise they need in-
house during key marketing periods, as well as the strategic understanding
and expertise of the fast changing media world.”

“We believe that direct marketing, electronic marketing and branding are
mutually inexclusive,” he says. “It’s not about neutrality and it’s not about
how big you are: it’s about measurement. It’s about asking: ‘what is TV
actually doing and how is it helping my harder working direct marketing
functions?’”

“Building successful brands and brand loyalty are never more important than
in times of impending recession,” says Hall. “Clients looking to build
successful brands need to ensure that the agency with which they engage
focuses on brand strategy and has a deep understanding of each of the touch
points that will shape a complete brand experience – from the web to call
centres to advertising.”

Hall believes there is no contradiction here in his anti-one-stop shop stance.

He believes that that brand analysis function is key to looping all the different
elements of the communications strategy together. And that a company like
Siegelgale, while taking the lead in that process, then has a responsibility to
work closely with the respective external experts – from direct marketing to
media agencies – to take the strategy through implementation.
“Marketers do perceive that their agencies aren’t always necessarily
collaborative in their approach,” she says. “This a partly a problem of the
client’s own making – through tactics like giving contradictory information to
different agencies, playing them off against each other and so on. Clients
must laugh some times over the competitiveness and resentment that exists
between different agencies.”

I hope this gives everyone some sort of insight into just exactly what
Media Neutrality is because we as company ambassadors need to
adopt one voice on this issue & evolve it as we see fit for the sake of
our clients best interests.

Stephen