At Zenith UK, we recently re-launched our well established ‘Think Thursday’ programme as part of our renewed ambitions to be brilliant partners to all of our industry colleagues.
Think Thursdays offer us a chance to get interesting and inspiring content in front of our teams. And the difference for the rest of this year and into 2027 is that we are asking media partners to come and talk to us. Each session covers a pre-selected topic that we know our clients and agency teams are having to wrestle with every day. Future scheduled sessions will tackle the hot topics like fragmentation, reaching young audiences and harnessing the power of creators and influencers. But to kick us off we had a season of talks around “Effectiveness in an Era of Efficiency”.
First up was our very own Strategic Intelligence team led by Amelia Bainbridge, Emrys Luker Brown and Louis McGillick. This inaugural session was a very timely reminder that whilst there is a raft of benefits to how we leverage everyone’s new team mate, AI, ultimately the AI is only as good as the human truth behind it.
“Understanding real human truths can add a level of nuance, elevating a good campaign to being an exceptional one.” (Amelia Bainbridge, Research Lead at Strategic Intelligence)
Together, the team unpacked how qualitative research can unlock real human insights that can help strengthen the work that AI can do. This was a story of human vs machine, and it felt like a creditable score draw by the end.
Next in the series was Amazon, who approached the question of effectiveness from the perspective of how we can work together to fight back against fragmentation by using the Amazon DSP to access premium streaming and audio content from multiple publishers. And just to mix things up, the team curated a brilliant panel involving voices from Disney, Spotify and Sky.
“Content is the fuel while our technology is the fire. Great content is what people seek out – they don’t really care where it sits but they do want it to be easy to find.” (Priscilla Reidt, Senior Sales Manager Media & Partnerships at Disney)
“We can work together to counter fragmentation, and our aim will always be to do that via higher strategic conversations with the agency.” (Jianfei Bu, Automation Lead at Spotify)
Honest, eclectic opinions on the challenge we all face around increasingly hard to reach audiences. But a refreshing honesty that everyone has a part to play in the mix. Though fragmentation might be the enemy, working together can be the antidote.
Just a week later we were listening to the dulcet storytelling tones of News UK who had literally created a fairytale on the need for a ‘polymath’ approach to modern media. Mastering multiple disciplines, or in a media campaign planning context, using multiple channels and formats is a proven route to success.
“We’re in the ‘stone age of specialisation’ – the world is wired to a ‘stick to your lane’ approach. In contrast, Polymaths defy categorisation. The advertising industry tends to package people like products. This is results in us speaking to audiences in the wrong way. It also limits advertisers when it comes to innovation and efficiency.” (James Brook, Agency Development Partner at News UK)
And we couldn’t agree more to be honest in the notion of embracing a balanced media diet. Our very own Sannah Rogers spoke about this very topic to Campaign at the start of this year: The Year Ahead 2026: Media agencies
And to round us out for this effectiveness season we had the JC Decaux team sharing a comprehensive walk-through of all the different ways we can quantify the impact of OOH – the point being that as media gets more complicated, the ways we measure it needs to and (thankfully!) is evolving.
“Challenges around effectiveness are not due to a weakness of the medium but a signal that something else is holding OOH back. If you the put the right data in, then you can get a much more accurate, and frankly fairer, read on the true impact of OOH.” (Nick Drewe, Senior Strategic Research Manager at JCDecaux)
Everything from a fairer way for MMM to judge OOH if you use the right data, to creative testing and eye tracking to get a read on ad copy impact. It was also great to hear from the JCD team that Zenith are also really leading the charge on all things measurement.
So, just as one season closes we now look ahead to what comes next. It might only be the summer, but in media terms it’s about time we started talking about the ‘C’ word… Christmas! How do we navigate the noise to win? All will be revealed in a few weeks’ time… Stay tuned.
