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Call it what you wish: the murky middle, the messy middle or even the muddy middle. Whatever your phrase of choice, brands and agencies need to inhabit it because this space between creative and media is where the magic happens.
“The discrete disciplines are eroding,” said Kate Narbrough, brand director at Nomad Foods, Europe’s biggest frozen food company, during a panel discussion at Media 360.
“And that’s happening because rightly everyone understands they need to be holistic, strategic partners for clients to better solve problems.”
Relevant and effective
“The game we’re playing is changing,” said Narbrough. “It used to be OK just to do brilliant work but now that brilliant work needs to be relevant, effective and measurable. That can’t happen unless creative, media, data and insights from the client side are all working together.”
Still learning
Katie Lee, COO at Wavemaker UK, urged agencies to invest in project management systems to ensure smooth processes rather than relying on “good people doing their best to make the process work which invariably creates tensions along the way”.
She added: “Agencies are struggling to keep up because of the nuances, the number of assets, the number of media channels and the amount of data that’s in your head. People are learning how they collaborate – there aren’t clear handover points.”
Tech + media = creativity
Alice Tendler, director of marketing and brand for Ovo, the energy supplier, talked of the “muddy middle where tech and media opportunity come together and are brought to life creatively”. She cited Ovo’s campaign that used the voice of actor James Norton as an Alexa prompt to help customers use their appliances at the most energy-efficient times (ie: “when the grid is greener”.) “This was a media-first concept that had to be brought to life creatively,” said Tendler. “It’s the intersection of our media agency and our creative agency working together.”
For Anna Legros, strategy director at Ogilvy, this much-discussed grey area is the “murky, messy middle” which is “where the creativity happens and where we get to meet our audience”.
Ogilvy worked with the Mayor of London on the ‘Say Maaate to a Mate’ anti-misogyny campaign. “The research was that men didn’t have the words to get involved in conversations about misogyny with their friends,” explained Legros. “So we created a creative tool, which was the word ‘maaate’. How do you land that in culture, in vernacular with a group that’s really difficult to reach? We’re talking about getting into private conversations.
“So we worked with behavioural science and one of the keys to get people to adopt risky behaviour is they need to hear from more than one source. We built hero content with Romesh Ranganathan months before paid media landed aimed at 18-24-year-old men in London. After the campaign, they became the group most likely to intervene when misogynistic conversations were happening. It’s exciting when there's a challenge and you reach a solution by looking for different ways and bringing different people into the room.”
Diversity: everyone’s invited
Lee picked up on Legros’ last comment asserting that a focus on “diversity of hiring makes a massive difference to collaboration”. She continued: “I already see much more respect between the two parties. The environment is tough for everyone and that gets people thinking and collaborating more. In the past, creative agencies would often have the client’s ear and the media agency would have their wallet. The diversification of skill sets, services and people; everyone is invited to that top table”
Legros added: “Diversity of experience is really important, that understanding and empathy putting our audience at the heart. Our Philadelphia cheese campaign involves using simple emotive language and mouth-watering images and landing them at hyper-relevant moments. Unless you have people who understand the worlds of data, tech, media, influencers, and social, you won’t get to those creatively effective solutions, which we need to move the needle on our clients’ businesses.”
The future: grow the marketing pie
So, what does the future of collaboration look like? “Tight-knit, high-performing teams,” Narbrough hopes. “We have a collective responsibility to demonstrate the power of what we’re doing and the value that we bring into the business, in the hope that we can then grow the total pie for everybody.”
Lee concluded: “We’re still having conversations internally around improving long-term effectiveness. We have the same culture and much more in common than we realise. The best work undoubtedly comes when we realise we’re one team, alongside our agencies.”