Reimagining reintegration
Many CMOs, especially those heading large companies, are now tapping into holding company networks to access a full suite of services. Health technology maker Philips, for example, consolidated its marketing spend with Omnicom in 2021. Independent agencies suffered as a result of this quest for more integration. From the CMO’s perspective, managing several agencies on a single roster can be cumbersome and require talent investments on the brand side that are costly and difficult to maintain.
Compounding the situation, clients began integrating their own marketing departments—merging brand and performance media teams that used to operate separately. Independent agencies, as a result of these structural changes and industry trends, are now forced to compete with holding company agencies that have more to offer clients due to their sheer scale and complement clients’ internal organizational structures.
The JoanxMedia offering is a new way independent agencies can create broader service offerings that stoke their respective businesses and lure clients away from holding companies. The integrated offering is now available to existing Joan Creative clients including eBay, ZenBusiness, European Wax Center and S&P Global; the latter two are also Crossmedia clients.
Indies partner to broaden offerings
Crossmedia CEO and co-founder Kamran Asghar, who received Adweek’s 2022 Media Executive of the Year award, also owns a majority stake in Crossmedia, making it the industry’s largest minority-owned media agency. Clunie considers Asghar a personal friend and stressed Crossmedia’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, which parallels her own priorities as a woman agency owner.
“The history of [Crossmedia] has been to partner with creative agencies—but those relationships tend to ebb and flow. There’s a need maybe in a pitch, or you are forced to work together because a client brings you together,” said Asghar of Crossmedia’s historical partnerships with creative agency counterparts.
Owning their agencies allows Asghar and Clunie to be more nimble than many other larger agencies could be, were they given the chance to execute a similar partnership. The collaboration also expands each agency’s offering without requiring significant changes to hiring strategies and workflows.
