Media Agencies Are Building Burgeoning Creative Practices to Meet Client Needs

More clients are looking to their media partners for creative guidance. It's forcing the industry to once again ask what, exactly, a media agency does and if creative is part of it. A creative practice within a media agency is no new concept, but traditionally they've been small. Now, a changing industry characterized by fewer agency of record relationships and proliferating digital channels opens up the creative budget to a whole host of possible partners, from creative and media agencies to publishers. Because media agencies are data gatekeepers with expert knowledge of the digital ecosystem, they are in a unique position to rake in more creative dollars. Unsurprisingly, they're eager to do it and are investing in their teams. “We want [our offering] to be looked at as a holistic solution, as part of a media and creative offering,” said Eric Levin, Publicis Media’s chief content and innovation officer. Anush Prabhu, chief strategy officer, U.S. and global chief strategy officer for MediaCom's Creative Systems echoed this. "We want [MediaCom] to be less of a media agency. In order to really deliver what clients need today, we want it to be an agency that sees the bigger picture, that is more of a modern-day communications agency," he said. The Metaverse Multiverse: How Companies Are Navigating a Virtual Wild West Media means more Media agencies are reeling in high-profile creative leaders and they're on a hiring spree. When Prabhu set about finding other creatives to expand Creative Systems alongside, he was soon joined at MediaCom by Benjamin Vendramin, chief creative and content officer, and Mother co-founder Stef Calcraft, now CEO, creative transformation. Over three years, Creative Systems' headcount increased 950%, scaling from under ten employees to over 100 today. Other holding companies report growth, too. Dentsu's U.S. media content and creative team, which serves over 35 clients, has 80 employees and plans to reach 100 by the end of 2022. Spark Foundry, for its part, grew its content innovation team's headcount from two in 2015 to over 140 today, making it the largest of Publicis Media’s three content practices. About 30 employees make up Starcom's and approximately 100 make up Zenith's. Across Publicis Media, 275 total creatives support over 100 clients. According to Levin, media agencies are one solution to deliver a cost effective, streamlined way for some clients that lack large budgets to create scalable digital campaign assets. Media agencies can integrate creative concepts with media plans upfront, instead of slotting creative in later. Armed with the data and insights that make such integration possible, media agencies have insight into what resonates with consumers. This played out for Prabhu. He recalled walking into pitches and sharing creative ideas with clients who acknowledged media-infused creative ideas were absent from their strategy. It's now common to see media agencies' creative teams at new business pitches. About 80% of potential clients request that Spark Foundry's group attend pitches, and the agency still pitches it to the ones that don't, according to Erin Vogel, U.S. head of content at Spark Foundry. Creative within media—not the other way around There is the question of how to best organize and market creative services. Some networks simply refer to them as content practices. Others take a more formal approach with branded offerings. Dentsu's offering was split into separate performance creative, CRO and landing page groups before it eventually combined the three and elevated content to the group level. Publicis Media, by contrast, now has content practices at both the group and agency levels, but that wasn't always the case. It used to have an offering at the group level and then Spark Foundry (known then as just Spark) pioneered a content practice. “That model was then something that our various leadership said needed to be scaled across the whole of Publicis Media. Starcom, Zenith, et cetera, were all asked to follow a similar path. Each did it in their own unique ways,” said Levin. Today, Levin manages the content team at the Publicis Media group level called PMCI. Content teams at the individual agency brands ladder up to his practice, and the group level focuses on feeding individual agencies information on new channels like Web3 and the metaverse. Getting tactical Despite significant growth and the restructuring that's come with it, much of the content work that media agencies do remains strategic in nature. "We typically like to explain our creative ideas as being media-led, meaning working with platforms and partners in our space to develop those creative ideas and execute [them]," said Kim Einan, head of strategy at Starcom. One Spark Foundry client in the food and beverage industry, who spoke with Adweek anonymously, said the agency's content team is an intermediary between the client and publishers' branded content studios. Media agencies are negotiators, able to broker deals with the publishers' that actually develop the content. Situations like this make the creative ecosystem more nuanced. "There are multiple ways to create. And I can't imagine us ever going back to the one way," the client said. Slowly but surely, the agencies are finding ways to execute tactically. Omnicom Media Group and Zenith use creative resources from their holding companies to create video content, for example, instead of outsourcing big projects to outside production houses. “Content’s always been a key component of the media agency offering. It's just changing to some degree,” said Ralph Pardo, North America CEO of Omnicom Media Group. "Nobody is trying to go out and make television spots, but we do think that there's an opportunity to program for platforms where people are spending most of their time,” he added. The Driving Force Behind Omnicom Media Group’s New Expertise and Products? Its Centers of Excellence