What you need to know:

• Optus CMO Melissa Hopkins has unloaded on agencies that fail to understand "consumption moments".
• The telco marketer believes media agencies must be more pointed with their placement of creative and use the most relevant channels.
• Using a new metric, "brand memories", Hopkins said the brand can now generate similar levels of recall as its competitors, for a third of the media spend.
• Indie agency boss Chris Howatson echoed Hopkins' sentiment around media and creative strategy, arguing it has evolved in recent years due to "publisher flexibility".

Thanks for the memories

Optus CMO Melissa Hopkins has laid down a challenge for media agencies – get better at understanding creative "consumption moments".

Speaking on a panel session hosted by Nine on Thursday, the telco marketer unloaded her "frustrations and irritations" with perceived channel planning failings.

"My biggest frustration around some agency partners is that they don’t think enough around the 'consumption moment' and why that channel might be right for [certain creative]," Hopkins said.

"For example, we use film to tell stories, not to sell products; radio for us is incredibly effective when we need to drive footfall; digital channels are great for bottom of the funnel and some storytelling. So I get highly irritated with people not thinking about how a brand fits into a channel."

Hopkins pointed to understanding contextual marketing as a solution. She said during the 2016 candidate debates between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, brands scrambled to capitalise on the audience but failed to recognise the context in which they were placing advertising.

She took issue with planners frequently running ads for chewing gum during the debates, and suggested ads for insurance or superannuation might have been more appropriate "when people are in the mindset of feeling slightly anxious and wanting to be protected," Hopkins suggested. "It likely would have created more attention,"

New metrics

To combat perceived issues with creative placement, Optus has elected to focus on a different creative and media metric, dubbed "brand memories".

Speaking with Mi3 after the event, Hopkins said the measurement balances share of voice with advertising awareness to "understand the impact in market of a brand and advertising".

Hopkins declined to unpack the mechanics of the metric but insisted it is robust.

"Effectiveness is a part of how we build brand memories but the other things we look at are true advertising and creative measurements; did it cut through, does a campaign need more investment, is it 'smashing it'; are there things missing or do we need to just kill [the campaign] entirely," Hopkins said.

"If I use Telstra as an analogy, they spend three times as much as Optus on media. Our results have just come back and we created the same amount of brand memories. That goes to show that our work is more efficient, effective and impactful," she claimed.

Bringing flexi-back

Co-founder of indie full-service agency, Howatson + White, Chris Howatson spoke alongside Hopkins and backed the marketer's call to improve contextual media placement, adding that the "classic rules" of ad spend are being challenged at senior levels.

"That’s because we have better tools to sell the criticality of creativity into the c-suite. We can be far more empirical than we have ever been, rather than relying on the same tropes of 'creativity is effective'," Howatson suggested.

He said agencies must scrap the concept of spending 20 per cent of their budget on production, a move he labelled the most "flawed rule" in advertising.

"[Spend] is totally elastic – you might only have to spend 5 per cent on production – so we are seeing far more investment in the media story rather than investing into amplification. This means people are playing with context a lot more than they used to, meaning it’s become about finding the right [ad] environments," Howatson said.

"We have been buying media at the point of diminishing return forever and that naturally spreads [creative] across many different places rather than focusing on the most impactful message you can give, in moments when it matters."

Howatson suggested contextual placement unlocks the "next level of integration", which is being more ably assisted by domestic publishers and their willingness to be "far more flexible with how we can use their inventory".

He referred to recent takeover campaigns, including the new Maccas Chicken Menu work, which saw the brand create integrated ads across Nine's print and radio inventory to appear as though workers had abandoned their posts to eat at the fast-food chain.

"That may not have happened 10 years ago. It’s what our industry is doing really well right now. We are all collaborating together – media, creative and publisher. It’s yielding some good results," Howatson said.