It’s a principle that’s especially poignant when it comes to creative media planning. Firstly, it seems to us that media planning is very often a misunderstood skill. Many still place far more emphasis on media buying, rather than what we see as the most important part – the planning. Our view has always been that it doesn’t matter how well you transact a poorly researched or thought through campaign, it won’t work – at least not as well as it could have done. The ideal outcome for your campaign, as Antoine might have agreed, is simply wishful thinking.
At Lane Media, we passionately believe in the importance, not just of media planning, but of creative media planning.
What do we mean by that? Well, any media planner worth their salt can utilise industry research tools and insight to identify appropriate media channels. But how many of these media planners really consider, in depth, the relevance of the contextual environment? From experience, not as many that should.
‘Extra-mileing’ it’s not. We see this use of insight as an essential tool for any media planner. However, as commoditisation and the lowest price have become the greatest focus to please various internal and external stakeholders, it’s a skill that so often goes overlooked by both agencies and marketers.
The antidote? Well, for us best practice simply means working collaboratively with media owners to explore creative media placement beyond the norm in order to create the required impact. Whether it’s unique broadcast partnerships, innovative press placement or imaginative experiential space, this creative and collaborative approach to media placement is an essential ethos at The Lane. We pride ourselves on being the opposite of the commodity buyers or transactional admin robots that some larger agencies have allowed their staff to become over the years.
OK, it’s easy to claim that we’re creative and innovative media planners, but this approach has really worked well for us! Last week, our work on the Border Biscuits campaign won the Media Strategy award at the Scottish Creative Awards for the third year running, following recent successes with our work with Graham’s the Family Dairy and the National Galleries of Scotland.
So the proof is in the pudding (or should that be biscuit?). This latest award is a great recognition of our approach to planning campaigns across our client base and I’m very proud of our talented team of creative media planners.