Stef Calcraft’s excursions into the media world since he left Mom, the company he co-founded after a profession as a senior consumer, have been attention-grabbing.
First he turned govt chairman of Dentsu Aegis Community UK (primarily however not solely media companies) after which joined WPP’s Mediacom, initially as head of Artistic Programs. Now he’s been annointed as world chief govt of Artistic Futures at EssenceMedia.com, a brand new unit of the recently-merged two large WPP media companies.
So what is that this precisely?
Calcraft says: “We’re seeing our deal with integration and inventive transformation driving breakthrough work and outcomes for our shoppers, each inside and past promoting.
“Our development mannequin brings collectively probably the most various, artistic and revolutionary groups world wide and integrates them seamlessly into our consumer groups, media, platform and WPP companions.
“Artistic Futures is single-mindedly centered on the way forward for creativity and the breakthrough outcomes this delivers for our folks, shoppers, and companions.”
EssenceMediacom says the brand new division will “assist shoppers navigate and leverage the explosion in alternatives within the burgeoning new communications financial system.”
However aren’t there different companies that do (or attempt to do) this, many dotted across the WPP empire which incorporates AKQA Group (incorporating Gray), Ogilvy, VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson?
As soon as upon a time, in fact, artistic and media have been housed underneath the identical roof within the good outdated days of so-called full service. Then the comparatively unremarked (generally underpaid) media lot broke away, principally to be purchased again by the massive holding firms as soon as they’d pushed a coach and horses by way of company margins.
Varied makes an attempt to re-unite the 2 have since foundered and, occasionally, media companies have tried to eat what’s left of artistic company lunches by launching their very own models, generally even with a world CCO in place (often somebody you’d by no means heard of.)
The foundation of the issue, other than the existence of entrenched managerial empires, is that the majority media folks don’t perceive artistic. Their job is to get the consumer’s message in entrance of as many individuals as attainable as profitably as attainable. Even when hundreds of thousands of so-called shoppers are literally digital bots. Do they really care a lot about what’s within the message, not to mention know how one can create it?
Calcraft has fairly a pedigree at Mom, nonetheless one of many world’s greatest companies (and one of many smartest commercially) after practically 30 years in enterprise. So presumably he is aware of what he’s speaking about and has a transparent concept of what he, and WPP finally, wish to obtain.
To a extra cynical soul it could sound like mission creep, even a part of the traditional sport of confuse-a-client.
