Creative Media Philosophy

Over the years I've had a lot of successes, a few failures and my fair share of just getting the job done situations. When I look back on the places and projects I consider to be successes for me I find a few common threads.

1. I loved the Brand I worked on
2. I was learning as I went
3. I knew the client's business model
4. I had great partners, inside and outside the Agency
5. I had enough freedom to explore my ideas, but not so much that I had no accountability

I look at a recent(ish) project I worked on at DraftFCB San Francisco as a perfect example... Consider the suite of Del Monte Pet Products (Milk Bone, Pup-Peroni, Meow Mix, Snausages, Kibbles'n'Bits, 9Lives), these are all Brands I have a personal connection with as an animal lover, but more I loved the Advertising the Agency produced for these Brands. If you haven't seen the Pup-Peperoni ads I'm talking about check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqK8nbQ2ViQ&feature=related

I also was being challenged to learn more about response driven ads, specifically online coupons. This was the first time in my career that I was charged with both Brand measures and DR measures for the same campaign and it was eye-opening!

I was lucky enough to have clients that gave us the information we needed to effectively map out success measures before we went into Planning, thus we could really sink our teeth into how every dollar we spent in advertising mapped to the client's bottom line. Client types, you should hold your Agencies accountable to the level of information you share with them.

In addition to an AMAZING group of clients, I was also incredibly blessed with smart collaborative Creatives, some of the best Brand Strategy/Planning folks I've ever encountered, and a dedicated Account Service team. Not to mention I had the Buying power of Starcom Chicago behind me, which is always nice when you want to go crazy ... they ground you, but also make it easy to get enough media value to justify new ideas and I was lucky enough to have a sales rep community in San Francisco that listened well and brought back capabilities and ideas we could use!

Most importantly, since I was a Freelancer, I had a management structure around me that let me run with my ideas, but questioned and prodded and forced things to be absolutely perfect.

So, you ask, what's your point? Well, when I get right down to it I come to my personal "creative media" philosophy:

The best ideas are only ideas until you can execute them responsibly within your clients structure.

I've seen some amazing ideas put in front of me or my clients, that ultimately mean NOTHING if they don't contribute to the client's business objectives, or can't be executed responsibly. If you are a Media Planner, give some real thought into the difference between a cool idea and something that can drive your client's business.