After a deafeningly quiet start to the year, the last six months have seen a rash of media accounts put on the block (see ‘Account activity may point to recovery,’ right), and some are pointing at a trend to separating media and creative accounts as the reason.
Although still more common in the U.S. and Europe, where media agencies have had the time to develop personalities of their own, those in the Great White North finally appear ready to accept that divorce (or at least trial separation) might be better for the children.
‘More and more, media agencies are developing their own unique identity and positioning in the market,’ observes Lorraine Hughes, president of OMD Canada. ‘There’s a lot of development in that area, and I think clients want to compare media agencies to see where their areas of expertise are.’
Accusations have been made that the move to separating off the media accounts is being driven by the media agencies themselves, but Jeff Marchand, VP and GM of Starcom Worldwide, says the split is happening ‘because clients want it that way.’
Clients don’t want to be stuck with a dud media shop just because it happens to belong to an agency with a hot creative department, and vice versa, Marchand says. ‘Clients want to be able to cherry-pick resources from a menu. It’s like they’re ordering a dinner from four restaurants’ menus…. [This way] they can get the best all-around meal.’
As for the recent increase in accounts going up for grabs, Marchand says that some are simply the result an account encompassing both media and creative being cut in two.
‘A lot of the times, clients are embracing the split between branding agency and media agency for the first time,’ he says. ‘That can lead to pitches. You’ve got a client like Canadian Tire – they’ve been with their full-service agency for a long time – and they have been slow to say: ‘Well, maybe we don’t need to keep our media and brand together.’ Whereas Procter & Gamble, Kraft and Coke have had separate agencies working on media for years.’
