This spring, Starcom Worldwide is launching a new made-in-Canada division called Impr!nt that SVP/group media director Steve Meraska says will ‘develop innovative media properties born of brand-centric media strategies and consumer insights’ – a concept that flows from Starcom’s year-old repositioning ‘Fueling Brand Power.’

In addition, he says, a team dedicated to that mission will fill in some of the cracks that have become apparent in the media business. One such crack is that senior media people now have so much responsibility for running the business, they have too little time to devote to creative thinking. Another is that the notion of media has been glaringly absent from the brand planning process.

‘Traditional agencies link the consumer and the brand together via the message,’ Meraska says, ‘while traditional thinking links the consumer and media together. Nobody has been linking the brand and media together and that’s where we see huge opportunity for Impr!nt.’

Meraska is heading up the new division along with another Starcom veteran, Jeff Marchand, VP, group media director.

Impr!nt will operate as a central hub at Starcom, developing channel-neutral plans for clients and then bringing in media specialists from throughout the agency as needed. Although the division will also be the single contact point for converged media owners such as CanWest Global and Bell Globemedia, Marchand is quick to point out that Impr!nt is more about the creation of highly strategic, highly integrated ideas and media properties for Starcom clients.

‘The business is moving that way. So many clients are saying that creative development will not begin until our media plan, our [consumer] contact plan, is in place,’ says Marchand.

‘We think the more you can involve consumers in media, the better. That’s why it’s important that we’re dedicated and don’t have a client list of our own. We’ve been freed up to be involved from the beginning.’

Marchand says media strategies that are brand-centric rather than media-centric are key to helping clients distinguish their brands from competitors while also tackling some of the media obstacles they’re now facing – clutter, fragmentation and new technologies such as personal video recorders.

He points to Starcom’s launch of AOL Canada into Quebec (see below) as a perfect example of how strategic media planning can intensify consumer involvement with the brand and the media. Traditional thinking would have called for sponsorship or 30-second spots during the programming, but he believes the final plan, built on marketing and branding objectives, gave AOL a far bigger presence by engaging viewers.