Life as a media owner is volatile at the best of times. But the next couple of years is going to be a battle royal for every crumb of share.

Time to shift gears

We’re all used to changeability in media. Media spend is a weather vane, a hype lab, a canary in the coalmine of economic and technological shifts.

But what we are seeing right now is something different.

Within a few months we’ve seen both sides of change in quick succession. A flash flood of post-pandemic recovery, of beaten forecasts, of non-cyclical double digital growth. And then, immediately behind it, a slump that is most likely to come first fast, and then slow and long.

If you are a media company, reliant on the budgets and caprices of advertisers and their agencies to maintain and grow your businesses, it’s time to make a rapid gear switch.

To go from gearing up, to fighting for every slender slice of share.

Keeping external focus

It’ll be easier than said than done to focus on the external fight.

It’s a business situation that will come with re-examination of business models; of endless searches for bubbles of structural inefficiency. Things that forever call you inwards.

But it’ll be the ability to keep looking at yourself from the outside that will make the biggest real difference.

To keep putting yourselves in the shoes of marketers, media planners, buying specialists – with all their own pressures and biases.

One of the chief delights of the last three years as an independent has been the opportunity to work closely with media and content companies – from tech platforms, to out of home destinations, to entertainment companies.

They have been without exception businesses with energy, passion and deep capability. But the single hardest thing for passionate teams is to look at their businesses with the semi-focused eye of the customers on whom their share of budget depends.

Here are 5 ways that you can get a little bit of competitive edge.

1. Craft a story that travels

Whilst it’s the client CMO’s money you’re ultimately spending, between you and them lie specialist buyers, trading units, agency planners, heads of media, brand managers and more.

And in tough times, it’s easy to get deeper and deeper into a commodity discussion with your most immediate daily buyers, particularly as your face-to-face coverage of the industry becomes patchier and your short-term commercial pressure tightens.

But that means that your marketing efforts have to work harder than ever, and your story has to move smoothly along the chain of communication when you aren’t there.

To do that it has to be compelling – which is all about showing while your audience relationships provide an opportunity whose time has come.

It has to be in simple, human language – expressed not in the jargon of the industry, but the common sense language of the audience, and of the experienced marketer.

And it has to be persuasive, imbued with the proof to battle any objection.

2. Build category propositions

Category dynamics are one of the most underestimated areas of intelligence for agencies and media owners alike.

It goes without saying that the value equations of marketing in automotive, FMCG, utilities and travel are different. If you are a marketer in one those categories you are deeply immerse in those equations, and in stealing a march on your competitors. And depending where you are in the economy, the impact of changing consumer journeys, and inflation, and disrupted supply chains, are drastically variable.

Media propositions that are genuinely tailored to help brands win in their categories are still surprisingly rare, and cut through the noise like a knife through butter.

Unless you are a global mega-platform, it’s unlikely you can focus on every category. But those in your core, or in your key target zone, need to be fully understood. Speak to clients, to agencies, to trusted 3^rd parties.

And sharpen your market propositions for the demands of the category.

3. Help the hunt for bubbles of cost

As in a lot of inventory-based industries, cost reduction is a cultural bugbear.

Agencies and media owners alike will rue to folly of reduced budgets, or of commoditised, price-per-unit mindsets. It is, after all, a ‘race to the bottom’.

This is entirely understandable, but in a time of terrifying inflation, in media and beyond, no client or agency will be able to escape the pressure to deliver, as far as possible, ‘the same for less’. Everyone will be hunting for cost they can take out. And you can either help them look, or have it taken out for you.

If you want to do this without undermining what you value most, you need to anchor in what is most valuable to the client and the agency. Sometimes, it’s not what you expect. 

Once you really understand the other party’s cost/value equation, you may find new opportunities. Replacement options for someone else’s hyper-inflated solution. Synergies that come from tying together different parts of your capability.

But cost take-out will be a progressive requirement, most likely for the next 5 years. It needs a proactive strategy.

4. Hone your ESG story

This will be a period when we can probably expect a lot of marketers to double down on short termism, waiting for a clearer picture of the future to emerge. But when it comes to sustainability, the long-term is feeling every more urgent.

The ESG agenda of larger businesses is moving faster, and becoming more ubiquitous, and more specific. All scopes of business are under the spotlight, and media, though more intangible than packaging or transportation, will be no exception.

This means that a strong, society-positive story be a differentiator in choice of key strategic partners. But it also means that this story needs to be more than a narrative. It needs to be quantified. It needs to be objective. And it needs to have a clear benefit to the client and agency’s own ESG goals.

In advertising, we still lack common language and standards against which to measure ourselves. But for businesses as a whole, standards like B Corp and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are beginning to provide common frameworks.

Telling a distinctive story with tangible outcomes against these frameworks could be a source of competitive advantage – if your business is ready to walk the walk.

5. Make it easy

To get more than your share of spend, you need client marketing and agency organisations on side.

And both of these units are already stretched tighter than a drum – even before the impact of recession bites.

You can have a solution that’s simply better, but if it’s harder to deliver, or more intensive to manage, you are at a huge disadvantage.

You can deliver fantastic campaigns, but if you make it impossible to cancel, or adapt, or activate at short notice in response to conditions, it’s inherent less useful.

Media operations are fraught with logistical complexity, whether that’s posting, or scheduling, or targeting, or reporting. And media buying is fraught with the challenge of different stakeholders, all with different commercial needs.

But particularly in times of trouble, your buyers that partners that are easy to work with, low maintenance, and ready to flex if needed.

The Golden Rule

There’s a lot to consider here. But really, it all comes down to the same principle – to listen with empathy, and to communicate with clarity.

Sometimes, in a tough context, that needs an external partner. A partner who helps you to look at yourselves as others look at you; that can help you to pick the brains of clients and category experts; that can help you to unify your thinking in a simple but compelling way.

It’ll be a tough time to be a media owner. But I look forward to helping more of you to beat the odds over the coming months.

Hook Strategy has worked with multiple media owners, trade bodies, content creators and data & tech companies to help them share their propositions, and improve their share. If you’d like to discuss how we could help you, get in touch at contact@hookstrategy.com