He should know.
I was surprised by a headline I saw on Linked-In earlier this week. It said “The Traditional Media Buying Agency Is Dead”. The item referred to an article written by Larry Allen in a magazine called Business Insider. It began by saying. “We’ve seen a lot of change in the media business over the last 10 years. One of the biggest evolutions was the formation of the media buying agency”. I was surprised because I have never regarded the Media Buying Agency as being a traditional part of the marketing mix, as I recall it’s a relative newcomer. I had more than a passing interest in the development, as it happens. I was the Advertisement Sales Controller of the Mirror Magazine, the first weekly colour magazine to appear in a tabloid daily, when the media buying agency first appeared…it was in 1969. Paul Green broke the mould of the advertising agency world and launched a company called MBS. Its purpose was simple, get the best possible deal for the client, and of course make money for its founder and backers.
The idea may have been simple but the effect of his action was anything but. Would the publishers’ organisations that ‘recognise’ advertising agencies accept business from Paul Green? If they did would it lead to the foundation of other media buying agencies? Would the move destroy the advertising agency structure as it was then known? Would the creative departments follow suit and set up creative hot-shops?....that did eventually happen but not with the same spectacular success achieved by the media people. Would the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) recognise the new business? All sorts of questions were posed and discussed at length. It really was a major innovation. Not that the decisions taken by the NPA (Newspaper Proprietor’s Association) and other groups were adhered to, each title gladly accepted the business offered and the door opened wide. Others soon followed Paul Green’s example and in time the media buying agency became an established part of the advertising scene.
Before all this activity the media departments of advertising agencies were, for reasons I never understood, regarded as the poor relation. Often the media department wasn’t even in the same high profile address as the main agency; there the account handlers in Saville Row suits met and entertained their clients. The creative people usually dressed in outlandish style and with even more outlandish attitudes and ideas, presented their campaigns. The media buying operation wasn’t seen as being front of house. It couldn’t last of course. The media departments were attracting people of very high intelligence, with an ability to see how the business of advertising, it wasn’t called marketing then, was likely to progress. Second fiddle was out of the question for them.
The media directors began to take centre stage, have a profound influence on the agency they worked for and the business of advertising at large. Many became leading lights in the advertising industry. Clients realised that astute media planning and buying gave them more and better targeted exposure for their money and media took its place alongside the creative department and began to have an influence on accounts moving to and from agencies. A number of agencies passed their media buying to the newcomers and a new and very lucrative section of the advertising scene was well and truly born. Some of the media buying agencies became publicly quoted, multi-million pound businesses.
I have no doubt there have been many far reaching changes in the advertising business since then. The very nature of the business is to innovate and change on a continual basis and the advent of computers and electronic media must have brought with it a whole new way of assessing media values. But I find it difficult to believe the media buying agency is dead. Still… Larry Allen should know, he is a current voice in the industry and employed by a company whose parent, WPP, is one of the biggest marketing conglomerates in the world. But hold on a minute isn’t WPP the same company who in 2001 bought the most successful of the media buying businesses for £430 million from its founder Chris Ingram? I can’t believe they bought it just to close it down, then again in the advertising business anything can happen and usually does.
