Global Chief Strategy Officer
Matthew Mee is the kind of person who gives media agencies a good name.
First, he wasn’t always a media guy: he’s done more than look at spreadsheets, including starring in a touring production of Macbeth, working as a photographer and, somehow also, becoming a pop sensation in the Netherlands.
Second; he hasn’t flitted between agency networks spouting a range of agency mantras but instead has chosen to stick with the MediaCom brand, learning his craft from a previous Agency Innovator, Sue Unerman, before leading MediaCom’s strategy, first in EMEA and now Globally.
Along the way he’s rolled out MediaCom’s unique Freshness program in the UK and EMEA, driving creativity across the agency and giving all MediaCom teams a chance to influence their working environment, inspire their colleagues and take time out to learn new skills.
Third, he’s now leading MediaCom’s response to the radical shift in consumer behaviour that digital forces all advertisers to confront. It’s about creating real change in the way brands communicate not just in one silo but right across the whole landscape of paid, owned and earned media.
Matthew is responsible for the agency’s rebrand as “The Content + Connections Agency”, and a new approach that optimises not just individual channels but an entire system of communication. The results are transformative improvements in communications effectiveness.
The premise is simple; that in a world of multiple platforms and infinite content, brands need to optimize the totality of their communications systems, not just individual channel silos. Without this holistic approach, brands will face a constant drip - drip of lost consumers who leave whenever there is a gap in the messaging framework.
Delivering that premise is considerably more challenging and MediaCom’s new planning tools, currently being tested by key clients, are designed to make it a reality. They provide a clear way to both identify the connected systems of content and channels where target audiences learn, share, shop and get entertained, and optimize brand messages across all of them.
Matthew argues that where brands fail to connect across all the consumer connections, not only do they miss out on an opportunity but also that the cost of connecting to the same degree is significantly higher.
Content + Connections is a brand new approach designed to optimize across the whole system with content – defined as anything from a tweet to a customer service call or a branded content programme or even a TV ad – in order to deliver real engagement.
But it goes well beyond this too, focusing on the creation of content that’s designed for and integrated into the media strategy. Only that approach can ensure that messages are not just engaging but also distributed effectively and efficiently across the content system for the target group.
At the heart of this new approach are two key tools, the Connected Systems Audit and the Connections Simulator. The former provides a holistic assessment of a brand’s communications architecture and identifies any gaps while the latter provides a visual representation of the way that audiences flow from platform to platform to identify those that are contributing most to the total audience.
Content + Connections is about changing the conversation between agency and advertiser and advertiser and consumer. It’s about taking a step back to see the bigger picture, and thereby helping our clients understand and optimise the total system of their content and connections and not just the individual channel silos.
Delivering that kind of cultural change isn’t just an iteration of what’s gone before but a radical paradigm shift across a global media agency. Matthew’s challenge is to prove not only that Content + Connection delivers for clients, but also to embed it into every single conversation that MediaCom’s 5,800 staff have with advertisers around the world.
It’s agency innovation, but not as we know it.