MEDIA PERSPECTIVE: Just being asked to do plain old media can be a real relief.(Brief Article)(Editorial)

'We did a pitch last week. Had to keep the presentation down to 40 minutes. And the client was adamant he was only interested in our media planning and buying capabilities.'

Yeah, yeah. I knew what was coming next. You don't sit through umpteen presentations about media agencies' expertise in direct marketing, public relations, event sponsorship, product placement and shelf wobblers to know that a pitch requiring simply planning and buying is an affront to the inexorable march of media to the top table.

So I braced myself for all that stuff about ignorant clients who wouldn't know a good media agency unless John Billett had written it on a Powerpoint chart and charged rather handsomely for the unique insight. But that stuff didn't come. 'What a relief,' my source confided. 'A client who knows exactly what he wants. And it means we don't have to pretend to be experts in something that, frankly, we're not. We can just concentrate on what we're good at.'

I wonder how many agencies are secretly very happy to find a client who just wants some bloody good media planning and buying. Probably quite a few of the ones that try so desperately to convince the world that a handful of rather over-achieving media planners have unlocked the secrets of, oh, at least half a dozen other marketing services sectors and between them offer the combined wisdom of entire billion-pound industries. Because isn't that what you're supposed to offer to ...