"Media agencies are a high-performance team"

The end of the year is approaching.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
06 November 2022 Sunday 00:46
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"Media agencies are a high-performance team"

The end of the year is approaching. What do you ask of 2023?

Advertisers, good luck with your business. To the media, that they know how to reinvent themselves and transform themselves. And to the audiences, who embrace advertising and believe in it.

Ask for Omnicom Media Group, too.

To be the best group of agencies in this country. And for that to happen, you need more satisfied customers, more motivated employees and sustainable business growth.

Before it's time to end this convulsive 2022. What assessment do you make?

It has been a volatile year, with uncertainty and full of opportunities, but it has not been the year we expected. In 2021, the market overcame part of what it lost in the first year of the pandemic, and in our case, in 2022 we have recovered 19%.

Satisfied?

We have been able to consolidate business with our clients, grow new accounts, increase the capabilities of our core business, and keep internal talent motivated.

People first.

Our agency OMD has been chosen media agency of the year at Cannes Lions, when in 2021 it was PHD. OMD and Omnicom have been the agencies with the most Efficiency awards, and according to Forrester, the group is considered the best in capabilities to help clients face new challenges such as e-commerce, cloud, technological marketing...

How do you work with the retention and recruitment of talent?

Taking care of people. For example, we launched the 40x400 program (40 mentors for 400 mentees) or Future stars to support young people who come to the agency. We are also very attentive to the market, with a fresh look, to incorporate people who help us improve. We have an average of 20 open positions continuously.

What differentiates Omnicom from other groups in a contest?

Advertisers are very different, and the reasons for making the decision, therefore, are also different. The agencies of our group fulfill 100% of the commitments that are acquired without breaking the market.

Agency-client trust is a critical factor.

Advertisers have to understand that the team is not going to work for them, but with them; that we feel the values ​​of the brand as our own. Our permanence relationship exceeds nine years, when according to Scope the average is four years.

It will not be easy in the current context.

I am more optimistic than what the media transmits. And the communication and advertising sector is in a complex moment due to everything that surrounds it, but it continues to be a clear driver of the economy. We must maintain the creative capacity to create actions that fall in love in these troubled times.

Falling in love with new audiences is one of the challenges.

The attention share of young people has radically decreased. You have to listen to them more and understand their behavior better, to know what interests them, what doesn't, and how to impact them without being intrusive to connect them with brands.

How has Omnicom prepared to meet that challenge?

We have done our homework. We work with attribution and contribution models that help us determine which media work best and which work least, even taking into account the type of creative. Predictive models allow us to make the best decisions for our clients.

The hyper-fragmentation of the media is another of the new determining factors.

There are many more players in the market. Consumers have also changed. And advertisers have other challenges, with axes such as sustainability that matter more and more. Our goal remains the same, but the ecosystem is so turbulent that it makes our role as a media agency especially relevant: helping advertisers to invest in a very appropriate way with a budget that is sure to be lower than in the past.

What lessons have you learned after the pandemic?

We are better prepared. We have gained in resilience and agility, to make decisions quickly. We also despise the superficiality of time thieves more. And we continue to push the technology and data areas to make decisions based on data and be deterministic, not probabilistic.

How do you see the media?

They play a key role in the security offered by their content to advertisers. They provide strength and credibility to both advertising and audiences when they add those media.

Do you augur a good future for the industry?

My mission is to embrace the challenge and lead the change. “When something works, improve it; if it doesn't work, change it; and if it does not exist, create it”.