The MOST Awards perfectly illustrates the importance of relationships, collaborative partnerships and effective communication. It highlights the media owners who are invested in media agencies and who are at the forefront of fostering and building great relationships.
The Awards certainly produce a heightened awareness of the competencies and efficiencies in which both media owners and agencies manage their business. It means that a level of accountability has permeated the industry, holding us equally responsible by our peers to award performance and rate services.
For media owners it’s not just about providing media space at a competitive price, it is about digging deeper, engaging with the brand custodians and understanding the marketing objectives. It really is all about the communication between the agency and media owner!
The MOST Awards serve as a reminder to both media owners and agencies that we are encouraged to continuously work on establishing and strengthening relationships. We remain vigilant of the individual roles we play, and collectively have an obligation to fulfil the client’s objectives and at the same time keep the media and advertising industry a thriving entity.
Our industry has certainly not been without its challenges and adapting to changing working circumstances during Covid-19 has been just one example. We were fortunate that The MediaShop swiftly encouraged changed behaviour to ensure we continued to regularly engage with our media partners. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that we don’t have any erosion in the quality of our relationships, no matter the circumstances.
The human aspect
Although it was challenging to adapt to the ‘new norm’ and find balance at the beginning of the pandemic, which we have successfully achieved, relationships have certainly become more meaningful. Of course, the rapid implementation of virtual ‘one on one’ in-camera meetings eased the anxiety of managing the human aspect of the corporate world.
Ironically there are media owners who have engaged with us more during Covid, thus shifting and shaping the future rules of engagement. The old adage of ‘out of sight out of mind’ has propelled us to become more ‘present’. Media Owners have been phenomenal in embracing the challenge of being ‘seen and heard’ in the virtual space and us in the agency thank you for the proactivity.
The MediaShop is extremely proud to be a regular sponsor and partner of The MOST Awards because we truly believe that relationships are key to the success of anyindustry.
We pride ourselves on maintaining and sustaining trustworthy media owner / agency relationships which ultimately results in effective collaboration and outcomes.
While media owners are the custodians of their respective platforms, we rely on these partnerships to keep us abreast of trends and behaviour, to provide us with creative innovative proposals aligned to the brief and brand to ensure strategic objectives are met accurately and timeously.
The virtual world
The pandemic certainly created a vacuum in terms of the way media owners and media agencies could interact. Suddenly regular interactions like lunches, dinners and events were gone and we needed to find an alternative manner in which to interact. Most media owners did this well and remained top of mind in their agency partnerships for their strategic alignment. As agencies, we levelled up and implemented efficiencies to engage, however, no doubt our industry attracts people-centric individuals, therefore we will revert to the pre-pandemic interactions as soon as we can.
In this industry of ours, human connection is paramount for improving relationships. There is great value in physical one on one presence to sustain this. If anything, Covid has highlighted the importance of life and personal human interaction.
However, virtual meetings have forced us to adapt and on the plus side, has certainly decreased the stress of travel and being stuck in traffic! Virtual check-ins with media owners have proven to be effective and convenient as has the facilitation of cross border and inter-country meetings and webinars. Unlimited guests and staff are hosted via the platforms, where we endeavour to ‘keep our cameras/videos on’ for the face-to-face communication.
It’s safe to assume that as we navigate into the future, a balanced mix of the two will be the way forward. One thing remains abundantly clear though, the media agency and owner dynamic is more important than ever before, and the MOST Awards is excellent at keeping the spotlight on the importance of that bond.
We wish all entrants good luck!
The MediaShop is a proud sponsor of the 2021 MOST Awards. Bonita Bachmann Managing Director: The MediaShop – Cape Town
