Mother has been expanding steadily – pandemic or no pandemic – and now it’s challenging the media agency establishment in the US with Media by Mother, an initiative 18 months in the making it seems.
The new agency, based in New York, will be headed by former WPP global head of media strategy Dave Gaines alongside former Accenture exec Will Heins. Its first client is plant-based food company Califia Farms.
Gaines says; “You have people that work either in influencers, in paid search and paid social, then they’ll go away and put together small detailed views on how you should spend that money in that area. And then someone sticks that together on an Excel flow chart and says ‘that’s a campaign.’ It’s not — it’s disconnected crap that then gets sold as, ‘Hey, this is how we’re going to build that brand.’”
With just 14 employees to date Media by Mother is a minnow in comparison to some of the holding company media behemoths employing thousands. But for years many of these have pursued their own agendas, vying with online giants like Facebook and Google for big client ears (and usually losing out.) Real people putting real ads in the right place as their priority might just pay off.
Who’ll run Media by Mother when it makes it back across the Atlantic?
“Gaines says; “You have people that work either in influencers, in paid search and paid social, then they’ll go away and put together small detailed views on how you should spend that money in that area. And then someone sticks that together on an Excel flow chart and says ‘that’s a campaign.’ It’s not — it’s disconnected crap that then gets sold as, ‘Hey, this is how we’re going to build that brand.’”
Not sure what planet Gaines has been working on for the past 20 years of strategy and planning in media agencies.
And what image does Media by Mother use to show how new, innovative and different it is? By ripping off the cover of a Sonic youth album from 1990. Presumably only very old people like me will remember it… https://www.amazon.com/-/es/dp/B000AS9OEK/ref=ntt_mus_ep_dpi_20