The evolution of the modern media agency

Most clients may not have been officially informed about the recent |evolution of integrating multiple disciplines under one roof. But that’s exactly the way media agencies have been going about their businesses of late. The line has been somewhat blurred between the realms of advertising and media.
By way of tradition, advertising firms would be the ones creating all of the creative work and subsequently feeding it to media agencies to be released to the public, with the 30-second TV ads having been the staple of the industry for decades.
Television still plays a very important role for mass outreach. However, the share of eyeballs have been scattered throughout the fragmentation of the digital TV platform and significantly distracted through mobile devices.
In a recent exclusive interview with IPG Mediabrands chairwoman Wannee Ruttaphon, and group CEO Tharaputh Charuvatana, both mentioned that media agencies have had to adapt rapidly to the changing landscape of advertising and media. Furthermore, with the advent of smartphone and tablet penetration, consumers’ media behaviour has evolved to the point that how, where and when they consume content has dictated the future of content |creation and media planning.
“We’ve anticipated this for a while now”, Wannee stated. “That’s why we were the first media agency in Thailand to have diversified all of our businesses to meet the demands of our clients and the changing media landscape”.
“Ninety per cent of our revenue used to be fee-based media planning and buying. The contribution has now become 75 per cent with the other 25 being content creation, brand activation, TV programming, strategic planning and in-house research services”.
“We can proudly claim that we are a comprehensive marketing-communication solutions company. But we want to be more than that. Our vision is to become a comprehensive marketing solutions consulting company, with services going all the way upstream and help our clients grow”, Wannee said.
A demonstration of this diversification is Ensemble Thailand, the local content and activation-based arm of the Thai IPG set-up having grown a massive 30 per cent year on year. They were recently assigned to produce all of Big C’s digital-based video content with one of the videos having climbed up all the way to number 5 on the YouTube Ads Leaderboard in the first half of 2016. The video was called “Doctor Jeab’s confession. I’m not a beauty pageant that loves children”. The video has since gone on amass over 2.2 million views and become the talk of the town.
In conjunction with TV Thunder, Ensemble was also the brain behind the continuing popularity of La Banda Thailand, the latest TV show to whet Thailand’s insatiable appetite for all things ‘reality’. Last, but not least, their latest pitch for Crocs footwear’s |business also cemented Ensemble amongst Thailand’s outstanding achievers this year.
“Diversifying our business means we have to strengthen and extend our team’s capabilities. This means training and supporting them throughout their career. Giving them all of the ammunition they need to succeed and be ahead of the pack”, Wannee said, reiterating the importance of developing people and retaining the best talent in the company.
By keeping up with the world pace, traditional media planners have also had to readjust their mindset to become more ‘digital’. In establishing themselves as one of the industry leaders, IPG Mediabrands recently received the highly coveted ‘Google Premier Partner’ badge with 32 |new planners successfully becoming Google Adwords Certified Professionals. There are now 50 in total at the company; which is roughly one in four IPG employees with ‘Hybrid Planning’ capabilities. This represents one of the industry’s highest ratios.

PRADON SIRAKOVIT is associate director, Corporate Communications
IPG Mediabrands
Email:[email protected]