Re-watching Mad Men recently, I was struck by how media agencies were framed as the ‘money men’: you ask, they book, job done. Rational, clinical, and to the point. OMD chief executive Sian Whitnall said this is an outdated view, but one that still quietly shapes how the industry thinks about media. In this exclusive op-ed, she argues this mindset needs to change.
The idea that creativity lives solely within creative agencies, while media’s role is to execute, optimise, and deliver efficiency, has proven remarkably persistent.
For some a media agency talking about creativity is drifting too far out of its lane. I disagree, because creativity is simply “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something”, and in practice, this means embedding creativity into the ways teams approach every brief, starting with sessions designed to immerse them in the culture of the audiences who clients are trying to engage.
Craft in media has always required creativity, just not always the kind that gets recognised. It lives in the decisions, the trade-offs, the navigation of complexity, and the ability to turn constraints into advantage.
Creativity in this context isn’t about spectacle or novelty for its own sake. It’s the application of imagination and original thinking to real-world problems: how to connect with fragmented audiences, how to maintain effectiveness in volatile markets, how to make ideas land in environments that are constantly shifting.
And as the landscape becomes more complex, more channels, more data, more pressure on outcomes, that creative dimension of media isn’t diminishing. It’s becoming essential.
For those of us in the media industry, this has long been the work. We use imagination to navigate an inflationary market while still delivering pricing effectiveness. We apply original thinking to prevent measurement becoming redundant as cookies disappear. We experiment with AI to create more meaningful connections with consumers.
In a fragmented market, we must be creative to help brands stay connected to people.
With fragmentation accelerating, creativity is only becoming more important. The pace of change means our collective enemy is convention and it’s why the old, rational descriptor media agencies are often given no longer fits.
So, what does effective media creativity actually look like? It’s easy to default to familiar tropes – media firsts, personalisation at scale, AI everywhere. But the strongest work is often more disciplined than that.
Recently, while judging Spikes Asia Media category, the most successful work acted as a reminder that creativity in media is craft, not theatre.
Simplicity wins. The most effective work had elegance and clarity of ambition – it didn’t over-layer or over-complicate the strategy.
Audience understanding is back. Data was present, but it wasn’t the headline. The best cases demonstrated deep audience insight and translated it into communication that actually landed.
AI isn’t a strategy on its own. It’s a thread – something that can connect, enhance, and strengthen broader work. It’s additive, not the whole story.
So, let’s retire the outdated caricature of media agencies as the ‘money men’. That narrative doesn’t reflect the reality of what we do – or what we must do – to drive growth in today’s fragmented, fast-moving landscape.
This was top of mind when we recently worked though our agency’s evolved positioning, unpacking what we want to be known for, and the role media should play. Where we landed was a clear articulation of the role creativity plays in the craft of media and the effectiveness it delivers.
Creativity isn’t a department; it’s a discipline. It shows up in the restraint to keep things simple, in the effort to genuinely understand audiences, and in the judgement to use tools like AI in service of a bigger idea. That means building ways of working that enable creativity and collaboration, and treating AI as a creative companion, removing friction from the ideation process, but not human thinking.
The result is work which better balances creativity and effectiveness, recognised with improvement in our award conversion rate. “We Create What’s Next” isn’t just our tagline – ultimately it’s a provocation to the industry to reimagine what media can be when the imagination leads.
Because when convention is the enemy, creativity is our most powerful tool.
