Opinion: Perspective - Are media owners becoming the new ideas men?

It is the sign of a good advertising campaign when almost everyone involved in the process claims ownership of the idea. The turkey, of course, is always a bastard.

So across the span of Campaign's awards season, it's not unusual to see the same work entered several times by different agencies (creative, media, DM). On the basis that success has many fathers, such multiple parentage is often a fair bet that these campaigns will enjoy at least one trip to the podium.

Things were no different when media's finest (and the equally fine Steve Henry) sat down to judge the Campaign Media Awards last week. There was much debate about provenance and whether it even mattered whose damn idea it was if it was an envy-inducingly good one.

If anything, such debates illustrate that cliches like holistic communications and 360-degree thinking, and all those other hackneyed phrases that shamefully clutter agency positioning statements, do actually mean something in the real world. And for any client that manages to enjoy such seamless work from a collection of disparate agencies, the origin of the idea is almost the least important thing; its success across relevant communications channels, with all partners working together to drive effectiveness, is a rarely achieved holy grail.

But the emergence of a new breed of squire raised some interesting issues at this year's awards judging. Media owners' growing confidence in cross-media advertising packages, tailored to specific client needs, presents a new dimension in the ownership debate.

Cross-media selling has been the next big thing for an age, and has consistently and resolutely failed to deliver on its promise. The bravura of collaboration - with different media coming together to provide a unique advertising platform across, say, TV, radio and print - all too often disintegrated into a ...