MEDIA PERSPECTIVE: Brand Connection takes 'instinct' out of media planning.(Editorial)

It seems that parts of the media industry have become too frivolous for some. One agency chief executive (who wishes to remain anonymous) wrote to Campaign last week complaining that 'the industry is increasingly 'lost in Soho and Shoreditch spin' where, for example, we are under the impression consumers might be vaguely intrigued by silly little exercises in ambient wank'.

Now this might seem like the equivalent of writing to The Sun bemoaning the cultural diversity that immigration has brought to the UK, but the writer was making a serious point. In any case, he got me thinking about ways of distinguishing between a piece of good work and the type of 'ambient wank' you wouldn't touch with a urinal sticker.

Subjectivity, inevitably, comes into the process and to me this is a good thing. However, the thinking at the media agency Brand Connection suggests we can take our personal whims and fancies too far. The agency has, in common with every other shop in town, been working on a new planning tool with a meaningless two-word title: Media Instinct.

But before you fall asleep, the idea is quite good. It involves polling an agency team before they put a media plan together to identify their own biases and personal media consumption. Brand Connection's argument is that planners, just like normal people, have preconceptions that influence media plans, sometimes to the detriment of the client.

The findings from the ...