Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Media Independence!!

A few posts ago I was talking about not being comfortable with cross-media integrated agency as a description of cherish, and after much thought I think the concept of true media independance is really what captures the essence of what I am trying to achieve with the business.

I have been speaking to clients and contacts about what it really means to be “cross-media” and that the benefit cherish has is true “media independence”. To recap an earlier point, what I mean by this is that a lot of agencies preach cross-media but in reality they have one dominant media that they have to have as a cornerstone of a campaign to make their business model work. I have not yet seen traditional agencies constructing cross media without TV and/or print. I am less likely to see interactive agencies producing cross-media campaigns without an online/digital element. This is naturally because of their skills base in house and the fact they need to keep them utilised to stay profitable and pay salaries. cherish was founded on a different business model that will still facilitate financial and headcount growth but in a scalable and truly media-independent manner. If, together with our client, we feel that a TV and print campaign is correct we can deliver this. If an interactive campaign combined with events is required we can do that. It is about what media is right for the consumer and the campaign and not what media is right for the agencies margins. This is an interesting and relevant topic as a number of traditional, PR and interactive agencies are all trying to jump onto the cross-media bandwagon at present but there business models constrict their flexibility.

So there we have it, cherish is a media-independent cross-media agency...hmmm, maybe to many "medias" for one sentance but it makes the point.

Henry's birthday!


Moving onto what's important. Henry is 2 today, hurrah. Let's celebrate with him by calling cherish and giving us lots of new campaigns, you know it's what he would want...and if we don't get campaigns it makes me angry and frustrated and taking it out on Henry today would be such a shame...