Today’s rapidly shifting marketing and media landscape means that client and agency professionals must be more integrated than ever before. We can no longer think of ourselves as marketing managers, account managers, media planners, art directors, copywriters or research managers.  We are all buyers, sellers and enablers of media and must work together to achieve a successful campaign. 

Here is what I have recently witnessed within the industry. The lines between public relations and social media are blurring. Account managers need to be well-versed in analyzing technical data, interpreting those results and translating those results into strategic recommendations. Media professionals need to understand the brand strategy and all of the media options available today including social, online and mobile campaigns as well as established channels like broadcast and print. Likewise, creative and production teams are learning new technology and software programs in order to keep pace as well as how to translate TV or print concepts to online and mobile. And everyone needs to have in-depth expertise within a client’s business.

At a recent Ad Club Second Annual Media Innovation Day, attendees were polled about how the fluctuating advertising environment is impacting their profession. The outcome indicated that media professionals, in particular, are increasingly working with other departments within their companies. When asked which departments they work with “very often,” 31% included their brand planning department and a quarter cited their creative departments. Over half described the use of other departments within their company to develop client campaigns as “very important.” And 32% use their analytics departments to measure every client campaign.

Some other interesting statistics are that Americans have access to:

• 1 trillion web pages
• 65,000 iPhone apps
• 10,500 radio stations
• 5,500 magazines
• 200+ cable TV networks

At Domus we take a holistic view of our clients’ business objectives, including their target audience and how they consume media, react to all forms of advertising and what their brand preferences are.  Our strategic planning approach allows us to understand the extraordinarily complex dynamics of the marketplace from the very start of a project to better equip ourselves and our clients to make decisions about how to connect with customers across all the available platforms. In this way they can achieve the greatest results and analyze the outcomes in qualitative and quantitative terms.

Joanne Michael is an Executive Vice President at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805