What's top of my mind

What’s keeping me up at night isn’t a trend, but something that will and is affecting everyone in the world - climate change, and what we can do as an industry to help lessen its impact.

The industry needs to stop thinking about sustainability as a trend and start implementing wholesale changes to the way we run things - from day-to-day as a business, to every aspect of the planning, buying and content creation process.

Brands' big opportunity

One of the biggest opportunities available to brands at the moment is owning and understanding their own data sets.

We’re seeing more and more companies are looking to join their brand portfolios together to enhance the products and services they have, rather than compete. This not only drives better performance but is a better experience from a consumer perspective.

It often requires many teams coming together which can be complex, but the benefits are there.

What defines a quality media environment

At Essence, we define quality media as not just the content produced, but how and where ads are placed, shown and loaded.

Advertising works best when it is helpful and natural to the viewer, so that could be an influencer making a recommendation or a contextual ad that mirrors the content on a page.

Increasingly, we also look at publisher policies to see what they give back to society and their environmental impact, so what constitutes quality is evolving to be more holistic than just the context.

Transforming the agency

Essence in the UK has grown at a rapid rate over the last year - 36% at the last count. Maintaining its culture is of paramount importance.

We’re also looking at how culture will evolve when Essence merges with MediaCom at the beginning of 2023.

Going from an agency of 2,000 globally to 10,000 is quite a shift. It’s an exciting time full of opportunities for everyone at the agency, but it requires a lot of thought to make sure that, in the process of creating something new, we don’t lose anything that makes the two agencies special.