Where did all the gold and grands prix go?
Success for Starcom MediaVest Group at the Lynx masks the challenges facing media agencies, with the top awards remaining out of reach.
For the second year in a row, and for the fourth time since the Dubai Lynx was launched, Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) was crowned ‘Media Agency of the Year’.
The win led to joyous celebrations on stage and a sense of ‘job well done’ by SMG’s senior management. “Being the only agency to have won the title four times means having to continually strive to deliver creative excellence to our clients and staying ahead of our ever-evolving consumers – who are dictating new trends every day,” says John Antoniades, CEO of SMG MENA. “We are so proud to have received this level of recognition from the Dubai Lynx – which celebrates the Middle East’s best work in media and advertising. We look forward to leveraging the expertise of our leadership team to build on this success and take our clients’ brands to new heights.”
Yet the media category remains a strange one. A media agency has not won a grand prix at the Lynx since 2010, when SMG won for Chevrolet’s ‘Confessions of Corporate Minds’, while all of this year’s golds were won by advertising agencies.
SMG won two silvers and four bronzes, which prior to 2013 would not have been sufficient for it to win media agency of the year. The fact that the Dubai Lynx changed the rules for the title in January last year, with only media agencies now able to win the award, ensured SMG’s success. Advertising agencies, clients and media owners can enter and win a media Lynx, but the involvement of the media agency or media department is now a mandatory field on the entry form, with the media agency and not the creative agency being allocated points towards the media agency of the year title.
So why aren’t media agencies the force they should be when it comes to top awards?
“The ‘quality of an idea’ by far is the most important criteria for judging an award entry,” says Zubair Siddiqui, managing director of UM Dubai, which was placed third behind SMG and Initiative in the media agency of the year table. “There is no shortage of creativity within media agencies, however agencies continue to be shy and risk-averse in taking bold ideas to clients. This was evident in the past and to some extent in the recent Dubai Lynx awards too, where creative agencies dominated almost all categories. Let’s face it, the quality of ideas in the media category submitted by creative agencies was indeed superior to those submitted by media agencies at the Lynx. Hence, creative agencies continue to dominate media categories.
“Media agencies in the MENA region are also relatively new to media awards as opposed to their cousins in the creative agencies. The historical dominance is another reason why they have been able to strengthen their position in award shows. Although media agencies have caught up in recent years, creative agencies continue to rule the roost beyond typical creative categories into media and even PR categories.
“Yet another reason why they continue to dominate is because they are far superior in packaging their work. Media agencies lose out because of not being adept at effectively presenting and packaging their work. There is a learning curve that media agencies need to overcome if they have to shine at awards.”
Ramzy Abouchacra, regional managing director for the GCC at Initiative, adds: “The bestowing of three trophies and a top two position as media agency of the year is a significant achievement and a ringing endorsement of our innovative campaigns and creative abilities. These accomplishments prove to us that we are on the right track and that we are effectively answering our clients’ needs.”
But Abouchacra also recognises that media agencies aren’t necessarily performing as well as they should. Why is the category still dominated by creative agencies and why aren’t media agencies winning any grands prix?
“The answer is two-fold,” answers Abouchacra. “I believe that the more integrated the media scene becomes, the more the lines between the message and the vehicle carrying it are blurred. The roles of a media and creative agency are now meeting in the middle. Having said that, it has to be asked whether a great advertising idea going into print and being shared and amplified on social media actually constitutes an innovative social media idea. This is a question best left to the judges and the award organisers. So far, the answer has been ‘yes’, as was proven by the winning cases – even those that didn’t demonstrate particularly impressive results. As long as the answer remains in the affirmative, media agencies will be at an automatic disadvantage because they do not control the ad idea.
“The second aspect to the answer can be found in the actual nature of the business. While clients look to their creative agencies for ‘ideas’ and ‘innovation’, they still lean on their media agencies for efficiency and effectiveness. This makes the whole creative aspect of media an afterthought and is something that ultimately impacts the number and quality of media entries.”
Maya Kanaan, human experience director at SMG, believes that the industry needs to shift its thinking if media agencies are to fully come into their own. “Media agencies, SMG included, have the opportunity to evolve the campaigns we create to ones that ‘communicate with’ not ‘market to’ audiences.
“Media is still being perceived as a commodity but we can’t create relevant campaigns by buying static things. Brands are no longer defined by what they tell people, rather brands have become defined by all the experiences people have with them. We are in the business of creating experiences. When the industry shifts its thinking, media agencies will truly compete and we will see more award worthy work.”