By Kevin Downey

   Separating an advertiser’s media planning and buying from its creative ad agency has been an ongoing trend for the better part of three decades.
    But the risks associated with that media unbundling have been pushed to new extremes in recent months as bigger advertisers split their accounts between media and creative agencies.
    General Motors, for example, not only split the country’s biggest account last year but may have started a new trend by further separating its $2.9 billion media planning from separate buying and creative agencies.
    The risks of media unbundling center on losing a unified vision of a client’s advertising strategy by having too many separate teams working on pieces of an account.
   "The downside is the fact that advertising is still not a science, it’s an art form. Much of that comes from communication from different areas like creative and media," says Allen Banks, executive media director at Saatchi & Saatchi.
    "Having them separate puts a burden on people to communicate. It cannot be as good as when they are in one place."
   Media executives say maintaining communication between disparate teams and agencies is key to making media unbundling work.
   If it doesn’t, the result could be as simple as a campaign falling flat because creatives developed a strategy with a 30-second TV spot in mind, for example, while planners developed a strategy around 15-second spots or different media.
   But in the worst case scenario, it could mean a client’s brand message is lost on the wrong audience.
   "Communication is important," says Lou Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of Initiative Media Worldwide.
    "The risk and danger is when people think the creative does not interface with media. That’s antithetical to getting your message to consumers. You want to talk to the creative agency to see what they think and let them raise any problems they have with it."
   He says to make communication work, Initiative Media has set up an extranet that helps people stay in the loop and has touch-point meetings with the creative agency during the development of media plans.
    Despite the risks of media unbundling, most media executives say the benefits outweigh those risks and will lead to even more unbundling.
    By consolidating a client’s media buying and planning with one agency, buyers have the leveraging power of much bigger accounts to negotiate better advertising rates. But it also means that costs can be saved by consolidating functions.
   "It allows for reinvesting back in themselves," says Kevin Coyne, executive vice president and director of media and new technology at Bates North America.
   "It helps from a scale standpoint, from a multinational perspective, to allow costs to go through one entity. It also helps for reinvesting in research, whether that’s syndicated or proprietary research."
    There are other benefits as well.
   Saatchi & Saatchi’s Banks adds: "The media service until recently was essentially given away.
    "It was something agencies did as part of a full-service agency. The belief became, ‘maybe we can charge for that.’ Instead of making it a cost factor, make it a profit center."
   Beyond the benefits to the media agencies, most executives say the media environment is getting so complex that media needs to be handled by specialists.
    New media like the internet is one example of that. But it also includes the increased number of TV networks and media that are far more cluttered with ads vying for consumers’ attention.
   "With the fragmentation of marketing channels, a client needs a media partner who works in this arena all the time," says Denise Halpin, partner and senior vice president of client services at Empower MediaMarketing.
    "Another benefit of unbundling is that you let the strategic planning drive the process. You don’t want to put a spot on TV, for example, just because your shop can create great ads. Where you place your ads should be driven by where your consumer is most likely to be watching, listening, or interacting."
    With the demand by clients to split media from creative, media-only agencies began forming as far back as the 1970s when Western International Media (now Initiative Media) opened its doors. Since then, virtually every major agency has formed a media-only agency, although most were created in the mid- to late-'90s.
   With those agencies came a new source of profit and a new level of expertise that, most media executives say, is unlikely to revert to full-service agencies anytime soon.
    "The genie is out of the bottle," says Bates’ Coyne. "It would be awkward and difficult to rebundle because profit centers are being formed."

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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