Placing technology and performance at the forefront of media planning

Over the last decade, technology has become foundational to delivering world-class media campaigns.

The meteoric rise of social platforms, the boom in eCommerce solutions and the emergence of new forms of interactive media, such as the metaverse, means that the number of channels to reach consumers has never been greater.

With this comes some of the biggest and most exciting opportunities for brands to engage with their audiences – we’ve seen some truly innovative work come about as a result in this explosion in digital, such as our recent Cats in Boxes campaign from Australia.

While the honeymoon period with digital is still in full swing for brands, we should be aware that there are as many challenges and considerations as there are opportunities.

Brands need more guidance, expertise and insight into not only understanding which channels and platforms best suit their needs, but also ensuring that these investments deliver effective ROI and measurement.

What’s more, while brands are still enjoying the benefits and excitement of digital, both consumers and government bodies are increasingly sceptical of the potential misuse of data when forming these campaigns.

At MediaCom, we’ve laid the foundation for a digital-first agency in two ways:

We’ve been meeting this digital opportunity head-on, with the establishment of key teams and departments across the globe, all with a range of industry-leading expertise.

It’s imperative that we help clients invest in the right technologies for global campaigns; the social platforms, apps or digital media that work in one region may not work in another, and it’s crucial that we understand which opportunities are the most relevant for each campaign.

Many of our offices now benefit from dedicated teams which specialise in Google, Amazon, social media, apps, data analytics, eCommerce and ethics and sustainability.

This cannot be a siloed approach, which is why we’re increasingly looking towards a performance-led network that ensures global brands can understand how technology can be integrated into brand-building campaigns and boost audience engagement both on and offline.

Client teams can tap into insights from not only local experts, but from the wider MediaCom network too. This guarantees that our digital planning teams understand the opportunities for our clients like no-one else. It gives us the confidence to propose and establish award-winning and industry-leading digital campaigns which reach our clients audiences in scalable, measurable and impactful ways.

And this is becoming increasingly important. Client briefs and pitches are looking for integrated digital ecosystems, and only by having access to all this expertise can an agency truly understand how technologies and platforms work together to achieve goals and create new capabilities for brands.

Arguably the biggest challenge in establishing an effective global digital campaign is ensuring that the overall marketing objectives of a client are aligned across digital and brand teams.

Often these teams have separate KPIs – all pointing them in different directions, making it incredibly hard to understand where digital technologies fit into the wider campaign picture.

On a global level this challenge is amplified, as regional goals and differences in audiences potentially worsen misalignment.

Our solution to this has been to put our Systems Intelligence teams at the heart of our digital practices – these teams utilise marketing intelligence and analytics to both help clients and planning teams understand how digital can fit into and support global marketing campaigns.

This can help bring markets together, establish how each marketing component is contributing to a campaign and fundamentally set a universal template for campaign activity.

Without this foundation, agencies run the risk of operating in silos, diminishing the impact digital can have.

Ultimately, the opportunities for digital have never been greater, but neither have the challenges of harnessing them in an integrated manner. Only by working with an agency that has both the expertise and global analytics, insights can digital campaigns truly become the cornerstone of a brand.