Medialab Executive Director, Steve Parker, reflects on relationships with media owners and investing in the future…

How people behave in a crisis or in difficult times is the truest reflection of their collective culture and often defines them. It is also not forgotten and helps shapes their future.

At Medialab over the last few weeks we have used our daily all company live Workplace call to celebrate our colleagues’ energy, behaviour and skill in working together and working to guide our clients through what has been several unprecedented weeks. That work is an investment in Medialab’s future.

But alongside how we work together, and how we work with our clients there is a third, important set of partners, our media owner partners.  Our relationship with them is important well beyond the tens of millions of pounds we spend with them on behalf of our clients. I believe there is respect there already because of our transparent, data led approach to partnership. Now is an opportunity to deepen that relationship when partners need it most. This is not about money it’s about humility, ideas and opportunity.

The significant volumes of client’s investment that have been cancelled or deferred across the last few weeks impacting all channels has been widely publicised. All at a time when many channels are seeing record breaking audiences. This is the irony of the media marketplace. It is so important that agency talent everywhere remember this when they are speaking to their media owner partners. How we act now will last a long time and will help set the tone and direction for future reputation. I have been hugely impressed by how Medialab colleagues have handled media owner conversations recently. Everything we have seen and heard has been done with respect, transparency and with our client’s best interests at heart but not to the detriment of the media owner. That will serve us well.

We remain committed to working with our partners in sharing ideas and opinion across all channels to generate incremental opportunities for our clients and investment for media owners. Whilst we quite rightly celebrate and call out achievements from within our business, in these challenging times we should call out our media owner partners who are working hard to create solutions and add value for clients and agencies.