The Starcom HX Partnerships team prides itself on doing things differently – a key reason why it won the AdNews Media Trading Team of the Year award at this year’s AdNews Agency of the Year Awards.
Counting the likes of Visa, Miele, P&G, Bega, Metcash, Weber, Stellantis, Brown Foreman and Tourism Tasmania as key clients, Starcom’s integrated team of craft specialists drive digital, technology and data-led investment solutions and not just traditional media.
Louise Romeo, national head of trading & operations, told AdNews that Starcom was proud to win the AdNews award as it serves as an acknowledgement of the collaboration that happens within the team and the “magic that you see day to day”.
“From a Starcom perspective, we talk a lot about being the human experiences agency and driving people-powered growth,” said Romeo. “What that stands for is being a collaboration platform. It's about us finding and customising our teams to have the right talent across paid media and also DTC.
“The reason why we believe we won is because we position ourselves as not the typical legacy media trading team, but the exact opposite. We don't really talk about buying spots and negotiating rates and impressions and CPMs; our integrated team is about having all of those craft specialists that solve problems for clients in a platform world.”
Mark Duffy, national head of digital & solutions, told AdNews that the HX partnerships team at Starcom developed a product acceleration roadmap to bring all of the crafts together, enhancing the capabilities around data tech, the operations process and how the company works with both strategic partners within the market as well as within the Publicis Groupe.
“Elements of that included all-agency training to make sure that we were cross-pollinating the crafts amongst the integrated team as well, looking at future proofing our people by developing their talents and skills,” said Duffy.
“As part of that, we did a full digital skills audit for every single person in the team and created an individual personalised development plan to support the integrated structure of all of those crafts. We introduced our innovation framework, which is essentially like a test and learn mindset, and that meant we're able to really tap into broader elements of not just looking at paid media in isolation, but also look at eCommerce and identity and omnichannel solutions with a number of our clients as well.”
Duffy said that Starcom also developed a digital maturity index - a measurement of a client's maturity in terms of their data-driven marketing.
“We wanted to make sure that we were driving that acceleration, not just internally at Starcom, but also looking at what's happening from our clients’ perspective and where we can help them to advance,” said Duffy.
Some of the Starcom HX Partnerships team at the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards
Duffy said that when you look at a traditional trading model, it tends to focus on online and offline media working together, but despite many thinking of this space in a siloed manner to achieve either a brand building outcome or a performance outcome, that's not how customers engage with brands.
“They don't see those silos - they actually have a customer journey that stretches across paid media, both online and offline, but also into direct media and into the clients' owned assets,” said Duffy. “We need to acknowledge that this is the reality of how a consumer sees a brand and then identify the core tenets needed to be able to enable it effectively.
“From a leadership perspective - and this is where I think Louise’s and my own skill sets and strengths really work well together - we actually codeshare the [trading] department. It just made integration across those crafts from a leadership perspective a lot more seamless.”
Duffy said that Starcom’s decision to integrate the crafts of Investment, Digital and Performance into one team, underpinned by the disciplines of operations, data and technology, is all about embracing where media is headed in the future, with challenges around convergence, fragmentation, digital identity, cookie depreciation and impending privacy laws all looming on the horizon - if not already here in some cases.
“We turn these challenges into opportunities, so it's really about acknowledging the trends, and then anticipating the model to keep ahead of them,” said Duffy. “It's a model and a structure that we can actually build from and iterate.”
Looking forward to where the media trading space is headed in the next few years, Romeo said that it’s an exciting time to work in the industry due to marketing becoming much more complicated than ever.
“One of the most notable changes is the growth that we're seeing in digital ad spend,” said Romeo. “Lots of different traditional media channels continue to converge and we're seeing reports that over 65% of ad spend is projected to be spent in the next few years, with 80% of that spend transacted programmatically.
“The rise of things like digital audio, the connected TV space, competition in the video landscape, seamless user experiences and interactivity, and media being shoppable at your fingertips – that’s all being enabled by the rapid changing pace of technology.”
Duffy said that the rise of eCommerce and omnichannel media signals a clear shift from product-led marketing to consumer-led marketing. Starcom’s recent work in the grocery category, which showed that 65% of Australians are omnichannel shoppers post-COVID, means that how it engages customers on their encounters, and not in siloed channels, will continue to be a big focus in media and for Starcom.
“Another big trend is around data driven marketing. If you look at some of the research in this space, we're sitting at around 60% maturity in the industry, based on industry benchmarking from the Boston Consulting Group and some internal work that we've done,” said Duffy.
“There's going to be a big focus on how we work with data, particularly in establishing identity, when you think of what's going on from a privacy perspective. When we think how we want to help our clients grow using their first party data and their measurement solutions, it's about working more strategically with the media, publishers and adtech partners to unlock first party data in a privacy compliant way.”
Romeo said the focus on the product acceleration roadmap will hopefully also impact the team internally, as Starcom looks to future-proof and upskill its talent due to the growth in a number of media channels, as well as advancements in data and tech.
“Our responsibility is around how do we continue to train our teams, so they have the right skills to be able to activate those new and emerging channels and ask the right questions,” said Romeo. “The roadmap is designed from a product perspective, but hopefully we see the benefits from a team perspective.
“We're also focused on driving our test and learn mindset. Omnichannel is one of the things that sits in there, but we're also looking at convergent testing and continuing the conversations around driving our client’s digital maturity. For me, operations is a big one - how do we create a seamless process and deliver those brilliant basics for clients by using things like automation and dashboarding solutions?
“At Starcom, we talk a lot about a culture of never standing still - it influences how we think, how we work and how we try and challenge the norm. The roadmap inspires us to think about how we can do things differently to deliver business results for our clients.”
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