[Video]: Providing Media Leverage to Agency Partners

The agency landscape has changed dramatically thanks to the pressures created by the pandemic. Learn how we’re filling the gap for agency partners that now have limited media and research capabilities. In this episode of Fast-Forward the Conversation, VP of Business Development Fabio Ramos and Planning Strategist Misty Castellanos join President Zac Keeney to discuss the value we can provide not only to other agencies but to their clients as well.

We believe the daily pressure on CMOs to move their business forward is real, intense and not going away. Join our media practitioners, as we discuss the HOW behind making meaningful progress, on well-defined targets.

Catch the Highlights

• COVID-19 has presented numerous challenges across the marketplace that have drastically changed the agency landscape. Agencies are rethinking not only staffing but which capabilities they will handle themselves versus bringing in a partner to provide.
• There are 3 seminal points where we can provide value, not only to agency partners but to their clients.
• • Scale
  • Perspective/Research
  • Trusted Partnership

Scale

• The wide range of capabilities that we have, from traditional to broadcast to digital to analytics, allows us to be a true media powerhouse. This proficiency gives us the opportunity to extend our offering beyond our direct clients to other agencies that can benefit from that partnership.
• From the pricing insight that we can provide on the media landscape to the market research tools that we use in our planning and strategy – there’s no incremental labor. An agency can use us as their media arm without having to hire a full staff or sign multiple contracts with vendors to fulfill media buys for their clients.
• This allows agencies to focus on their core competency while leaving the media piece for us to fulfill for their clients, giving them the opportunity to capture additional revenue that they weren’t able to before without investing a large amount of money to handle these capabilities in-house.

Perspective/Research

• Even prior to COVID-19, we would have agency partners reach out to us for research help because of the tools we have at our fingertips to do things like build audience profiles and analyze the competitive landscape.
• Many agencies have had to cut expenses, and that might have meant sacrificing their research tools. We love to help fill that gap.
• We invest over $1 million annually in the industry’s best research tools. This data helps to define and drive media recommendations.
• Kantar Strategy – provides insight into the competitive landscape from a directional sense on where brands are spending across traditional and digital media.
• Pathmatics – allows us to get an idea of spend by brand and shows how creative messaging changes throughout the year. This has been especially helpful given the challenges this year, to ensure we’re using the right voice and messaging to resonate with consumers.
• MRI Simmons OneView – helps identify and paint a more complete picture of an audience segment by going beyond demographics to reveal their attitudes, opinions and beliefs.

Trusted Partnership

• Whether just down the road or across the country, we’ve helped multiple agencies with their research needs.
• When a creative shop in southern California needed to drive end-of-year donations for a nationwide nonprofit client, they turned to us for planning and execution of a multi-channel campaign. We crafted a media plan for a 60-day flight with the goal of reaching the previous year’s donations ($10 million). Not only did we hit the goal by deadline, but we surpassed it by 8 percent. The ROI on that campaign was 240 percent, a win-win across the board.
• About three years ago a creative agency out of D.C. called us to co-pitch an education client. We won the business and are still working with the client, running media globally which has resulted in additional creative work for the primary agency.
• We’re also partnering with an agency just down the road from our San Diego office to fill an analytics/data visualization need. They were also looking for programmatic display to be integrated with campaigns they were running in-house. We created a concise strategy and developed a live dashboard making it much easier for the client to access their media story.
• We recently had an interactive agency partner come to us about a research opportunity for a Canadian client of theirs that is looking to expand into the U.S. They tasked us to look at a couple of markets and help them identify, of the two, which one is the better market to go into for their next distribution warehouse.
• Ten years ago, a B2B agency in Oklahoma reached out for assistance with a couple of clients that were looking to get into some traditional media, TV and radio, and they just didn’t have those capabilities in-house. We’ve evolved with them as a true extension of their team. Our team members are even included on their website as their media personnel. Not only have we helped their existing clients grow, we’ve pitched and won new clients with them.
• When responding to an RFP a few years ago we discovered that a former client contact had joined an agency in Florida. Familiar with our media expertise, they reached out to us to give their creative shop an edge in. We partnered with them and have been pitching new business together ever since.
• Our relationship with a creative shop on the east coast started with an audit when a CPG brand was looking for a business intelligence perspective to determine if their media efforts were working. We uncovered some opportunities and provided momentum to the creative. We’re now reviewing budget increases for 2021 based on the success of that work driving more sales.

If you’re on the agency side and looking for a partner to help take your work to the next level, we should chat. Connect with us to explore the opportunities.