Media fragmentation and specialism means marketing is being led too much by media channel and not by brand and it ends up fragmenting the brand too. Speaking at Cannes, Unilever CMO Keith Weed called for a change in the way agencies work together and the need for “orchestrators” to manage it to get the best for the brand, not the media channel.
Weed, who oversees some of the largest fmcg brands in the world including Lynx/Axe, Dove and Rexona, raised his “genuine concern” around the fragmentation problem facing marketers and agencies.
Marketers, media agencies and creative agencies often lament the fragmentation of media and the complexity it brings, but Weed went one step further, offering up the idea that media fragmentation is leading to fragmented brands where increasingly specialised teams focus on channels like mobile or social rather than holistically looking at the bigger brand picture.
For Unilever’s Project Sunlight initiative that launched in five countries as a pilot last year, 12 agencies worked together under the stewardship of a Unilever marketer who orchestrated the multiple relationships in a project management style position. Because that is not possible to do at scale every day, Weed believes more of these “orchestration” roles need to exist to help agencies and brands manage it.
“What I’m really concerned about is in that room [Project Sunlight command centre] you have all kinds of specialists. We need to, it’s a specialist world, but they’re trying to deliver a 110% solution for mobile and 110% for social but I want a 110% solution for the brand. Even if it’s 85% solution in mobile and 90% solution in social that’s a real challenge. Too much now our channels are driving what we’re going and its fragmenting brands,” he said.
“On one side it’s incredibly exciting to have all these opportunities but on the other side the threat of fragmentation is real. And it’s a real threat to our industry and our agencies need much more help trying to orchestrate who we bring together so all these experts to produce something that’s consistent with the brand. We need to lead by brands and not by channels.”
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