The only practical reason I can think of is that a really awful creative show can stink up the room so badly for everyone else that the media part would be pointless, while you never hear of a media plan beaching itself and bloating up in the hot sun like that. But that occasional flop has to be weighed against all the times that agencies have dulled the receptivity for a fun bunch of work with a butt-numbing discussion of Malaysian GRPs.
I’m not knocking media folks here. But vaudeville comedians knew not to follow animal acts. Setup, room mood, audience freshness are key to a good show, and spending hours on an analytical task is not a good warmup for an artistic one.
Putting creative at the top of the bill would give presentations a whole different emphasis. Instead of being whatever cute stuff happens to get poured into the solid structure built by media, creative solutions would be the focus of the meeting, and how you get it seen by people would just be the followup. Not all creative would be strong enough to stand on its own first, without a good solid media plan to support it. Which, of course, is exactly why it should have to.
Michael Gebert, Writer, formerly Michael Gebert, iWriter; Michael Gebert, eWriter; Michael Gebert, Integrated Communicator; Michael Gebert, Text-Based Relationship Manager; Michael Gebert, One Minute Writer; Michael Gebert, Natural Writer; Michael Gebert, Kozmic Grooverider; and Michael Gebert, Astro-Writer, is now Michael Gebert, Copy Solutions Provider.
