At most agencies the media team receives the creative after it is finished and finds places to put it. At Loudwell the planners are in the room when the idea is written. It is the most useful thing we have changed in a decade.

The plan is part of the idea

A media plan decides more than reach. It decides which piece of work someone sees first, what they see second, how long the gap is and what mood they are in when it arrives. That is storytelling, and it should be designed alongside the story.

Night Miles bought paid social only between 7pm and 2am, because that was when the runners were out. Maison Ilse bought after 10pm for the same reason. Neither idea would have worked on a standard day-part plan.

Testing every week

We build creative in families rather than single ads, so the plan can test them against each other every week and move money to what is working. A typical launch runs a dozen variants in the first fortnight and keeps three.

Reporting in money

We report media against sales, not impressions, using the result we agreed in the brief. That sometimes means telling a client to spend less, or to stop a channel they like. We would rather say it early than explain it in a quarterly review.

The table

Our planners sit with the creative teams, not on another floor. The best media ideas of the last few years, from lenticular posters to night-only buying, came out of conversations that would never have happened in a hand-off.