NORTHERN PLANNER

As the media gets more fragmented, agencies outside London have a big chance of seizing the initiative since they’ve been nimble, media neutral and multi-skilled for years. But there’s a big reason why it probably won’t happen, and it’s boring media planners. While there’s a big conversation going on about the consumer’s increasing ability to shut out the brands they don’t want to engage with, media planners still want to talk about bombarding people with a choice of TV, press, outdoor or radio and maybe online banner ads. They don’t seem to have moved on since 1985 and they don’t want to.

Maybe part of the problem is that media and creative are rarely in the same company, even out here in the sticks. This represents a big opportunity for planners of course since they can be the bridge, owning  the problem and including every specialism in setting about solving it. But this can only work if people actually want to engage with each other. It seems that media companies are quite happy to do their own thing, and it’s the same thing they were doing  20 years ago.

So while others are learning how to exist in the new mixed up media world, and the gap between creative solutions and media solutions gets ever more blurry, out here we’re falling behind, even though we had a head start., and it’s a shame.