Although it was officially created in October 2018, The MediaShop’s new human intelligence unit, Tirisano, was only officially unveiled on Friday last week.
The name ‘Tirisano’ is a Tswana word, translating to “to work together with little effort”, and the unit will be headed up by Isla Prentis, head of intelligence at The MediaShop.
Three key focuses dominated its initial direction: Firstly, true integration into all the workings of The MediaShop, ensuring Tirisano is not a separate unit stuck in the corner; secondly, working effortlessly with clients to truly understand their business problems and find the best solutions, rather than what the media strategy is; and thirdly, working together with human beings, not just consumers, but understanding the actual people behind the buying.
“It’s about making sure we have a different approach, that it’s not just an off-the-shelf insights offering. That we understand different pieces of information, that we find A-class partners that we really believe in their offering and they believe in our offering, and finding co-created, unique solutions for clients,” explains Prentis.
The aim is to have relevant conversations with clients and offer deeper, broader solutions for them by putting real intelligence at the heart of everything The MediaShop does.
Media will be just one part of the solution, with digital, branded content, events, sponsorships, and non-traditional radio packaging also playing a major role.
Kgaugelo Maphai, managing director of The MediaShop Johannesburg, reveals that the agency wants people to be at the heart of everything it does.
“A lot of the communication strategies are written at the creative agency level, yet media agencies have the tools that help us understand who the consumers are, what they consume, and often you have to take the comm strat from a creative agency and write a media strat out of it, but at no point is it often informed by what is really happening,” he explains. “We’ve almost gotten to a point where we just look at numbers, but we don’t understand the data behind the number.”.
Maphai spoke to The Media Online to provide more information. Here’s that conversation:
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