The GroupM agency recently landed the Novo Nordisk Danish pharmaceutical giant with a reported annual media spend of $400 million.

Richman talks about managing the agency virtually and how this has lead to increased productivity.   “Remote work is bringing us closer,” she says.

MediaLink Managing Partner Matt Spiegel prefaced the conversation by calling into question the age-old format of 40 minutes of TV content leavened with 20 minutes of commercials. Encountering no disagreement, Spiegel elicited the following condensed thoughts from the varied panelists.

Amanda Richman, CEO, Wavemaker US: “This battle for attention is really sparking different ways of working. And we’re excited about now it’s becoming less of a focus just on the precision and data and targeting and keeping that within the realms of digital media only. And maybe back to the creative agencies and a different level of collaboration to recognize that we need to actually help develop the stories and messages that are bespoke to these new ad formats and platforms and broader distribution.”

John Osborn, CMO, OMD USA: “I think media more and more is just as innovative and in some ways just as creative as the creative storytellers in a creative agency. No one’s ever gone wrong by considering the consumer first and foremost. You’re seeing I think some real evolution in terms of innovation in different formats if you think of what Fox is doing with JAZ pods or NBC with Prime Pods and you’re seeing a variety of different formats coming to life. But I think a lot of the conversation is around formats. I think more and more we have to change and tilt the conversation more to experiences.”

Allyson Witherspoon, GM, Global Brand Engagement, Nissan: “Relevancy becomes what the experience is because we know so much more about who our consumers are and what their interests are that we need to be serving up content and experiences to them that’s relevant. In the case of automotive, we know when they’re going to be in market, we even know what type of vehicle that they’re in market for. So we should not be advertising a van to them if they’re interested in a sedan and we know that type of information. And then it’s to the point of how you can combine media and creative to actually deliver that message, which I think is still not something that we’re able to do at scale but it’s definitely something that we’re trying to build towards.”

Pooja Midha, President, true[X]: I’m heartened and I love the discussion that’s happening these days around bringing the consumer back to the center. While I’ve not been with the company terribly long, true[X] has been around for years and really from the beginning said we need to think about the consumer. We need to respect the consumer. We have got to think about messaging and context, advertising and an experience that is worthy of that consumer’s attention. If we’re not delivering that, then we really have no right to be there and to be expecting something back. It’s nice to be in Cannes because everyone we work with is represented. The creative side of the business, the media side of the business, the agency side, client marketers even the technology companies and measurement companies we partner with to deliver.”

This video is from a series of videos and sessions produced in partnership with FreeWheel at Cannes 2018 as part of the FreeWheel Forum on the Future of Television. You can find more videos from this series here.

“If somebody really doesn’t have a strong bias towards a brand and you decide to serve them what we would call active phase content, utility content, ultimately that’s wasted because they’re not predisposed to picking you anyway,” Acampora adds in this interview with Beet.TV. “It’s a lot about customizing content to the platform and then starting to personalize the right kind of content to the individual or the segment.”

The Wavemaker agency takes its lead on clients’ creative needs by considering their existing partnerships and what’s best for them. “There are definitely instances where we’re creating new custom content, everything from what we call hero content to utility content.”

Wavemaker works with vendors like VidMob, a technology platform that connects marketers with a global network of expert editors, animators and motion graphics designers.

The agency’s Momentum consumer insights database is the largest of its kind, with some 400,000 “individual journeys” across a host of categories and countries. “That data is the starting point to help us segment and sub-segment audiences,” says Acampora.

He relates how Wavemaker worked with Ikea to promote its living room offerings. “For one segment, it might be way more about quality and design, so those are the things we drummed up about their living room message. Another might be way more about price and ease of putting it together, more utility content.”

MEC, which along with Maxus constituted the basis for the combined entity called Wavemaker, had handled Ikea’s media planning and buying for more than a decade. Last month, Wavemaker successfully defended the U.S. business, as ADWEEK reports.

To help clients navigate the maze of segments and creative iterations, “We try to make that as turnkey and bite-sized for them as possible. You want to limit it to a certain number of meaningful segments that will actually help to unlock growth for the brand,” says Acampora.

The proof point or benchmark Wavemaker has used “is roughly a one and a half times increase in ROI. Whether through attribution modeling or longer-term market mix modeling results, we see a significant increase in the overall ROI. That or if we go more toward a performance level we’ve seen roughly a two times decrease in the cost per acquisition when we start to customize and personalize messaging.”

This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

“The idea that you go somewhere, you decide you want something, you make that purchase and then you’re done is incorrect. Inherently it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t really exist in real life,” says Whitney Fishman Zember, Managing Partner, Innovation & Consumer Technology, Wavemaker US.

Wavemaker, the self-described media, content and technology agency is quite literally obsessed with deciphering the consumer purchase journey.

“You’re never not considering or thinking about something you may need or want to do, whether it’s a week from now a day from now a month from now. There’s always something top of mind and percolating,” Zember explains in this interview with Beet.TV.

Wavemaker’s approach is to “flip the quote unquote funnel upside down” and look at things through the purchase journey, according to Zember.

“There’s active and there’s passive stages, but the reality is that consumers are always in some state of the purchase journey.”

Whether it’s understanding, exploration, fact finding, making a purchase, reviewing a purchase, sharing a purchase, engaging in a purchase, “There’s something that’s always going on with a consumer with regards to brands.”

The agency also takes a different view of technological solutions in a sort of cart-after-the-horse scenario.

“I always say it has nothing to do with the technology,” Zember says. “If you start with the technology, you tend to look for reasons to apply it and it’s not always genuine use cases or genuine opportunities to impact the consumer positively.”

Starting with understanding who consumers are and where they are within the purchase journey should take precedence.

“What is their everyday experience and those opportunities to alleviate everyday frictions that people don’t even think can be alleviated that they don’t even realize are a problem?”

Choosing the right tools, technology and platforms comes after “you recognize inherently what those needs are and how you can provide for the consumer.”

This video is part of a leadership series presented by Wavemaker, the GroupM media agency formed by the merger of MEC and Maxus. Please find additional segments from the series here.