When ‘Average’ Means ‘Exceptional’
Known VP, Media Strategy Karen Graf on the different ‘flavors’ of strategy and why even with great data, planning will always need a human touch.
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room” is a saying that’s been attributed to every well known business leader. It’s a pithy way to say that it’s always good to learn, but there’s something jarring about the cliche’s imperative to change rooms. It implies instability and losing contact with colleagues and teammates.
Personally, I prefer our VP of Media Strategy Karen Graf’s way of describing the drive to Never Stop Learning. (That’s Known’s Value №2, by the way.) “You are the average of the 10 people you spend the most time with,” she says. This sounds so much less stressful than moving room-to-room!
Karen’s 10-person average is impressive, as she’s held media strategy roles at agencies including Universal McCann, Havas Media, Mediahub//Mullen, and Spark Foundry. In that time, she’s worked on campaigns for clients from Wendy’s to Johnson & Johnson to BOSE, among others. She joined Known because she found the company’s approach to building plans for testing and experimentation compelling. In the piece below, Karen reflects on her time in media strategy, the biggest misconceptions about the industry, and elaborates on what makes Known such a special place to work.
Karen Graf: In my 15 years of working in the media strategy field, what I’ve liked most is how responsive it is. You can change your approach or thinking based on new inputs. Whether it’s a different audience or different channels in consideration, no two media plans are ever the same. It’s a fun challenge to customize a plan for clients based on their changing objectives or opinions. Changing consumer behaviors keeps it fresh, too.
Each agency or holding company has their own take or “flavor” to approach media planning, and this isn’t bad. Different clients have different business needs and various levels of internal skills and resources, accommodated by different agency models.
All good strategy should be grounded in strong rationale backed by specific data and insights.
A common misconception about media strategy is that we’re often considered to be acting on gut or over-leveraging syndicated tools with small panels. All good strategy should be grounded in strong rationale backed by specific data and insights. If you don’t believe a recommendation, we haven’t done our job, which is to create a narrative from the supporting information.
In my experience, media planning has a fairly linear narrative (objectives -> planning -> execution -> report results). Analytics and reporting are merely a final output of that process. Here at Known we flip the cycle. Everything we do starts with science, and data and analytics are embedded through our Skeptic OS in every step. The idea of designing plans built for testing and in-flight experimentation was compelling — I hadn’t seen that at any other agency, and it’s a major part of what drove me to join Known.
This test-and-learn process also means we don’t have the misaligned incentives between business objectives and marketplace costs. Putting forth the most strategic recommendation can be a challenge when it’s then undercut by the need to secure inventory at bargain-basement rates. It’s a rampant issue, both in the ad marketplace securing inventory, and between agencies and their clients. It’s exciting that we’re engaging clients in a whole new way.
At Known, there’s no bulk buying/preferred arrangements, and we avoid the race to the bottom of a rate card. Making cost a piece of the discussion and not the entire conversation allows us to put forth recommendations that are genuinely strategic and customized, instead of backing into a recommendation in order to hit cost ceilings.
Working here at Known has been fun because while we always consider cost, we prioritize outcomes, efficiency, and the opportunity to learn. What’s really rewarding is finding clients on the same wavelength, who want exactly what we’re offering. We’re not the biggest, we don’t always have the cheapest inventory, but we’re committed to excellence through science, service, and ultimately business outcomes.
While science and data are a crucial component of a media plan, that doesn’t mean that we’re just using computers to crunch numbers with no human analysis. We have significant investment in human capital for that reason — machines can’t interpret data and make custom recommendations. That requires a human touch. Also we’re in the business of client service. I don’t see anything replacing a human touch for a concerned client.
Speaking of the human touch, I say that you are the average of the 10 people you spend the most time with — and I’m so pleased to be surrounded by the smartest but also humblest group of people I’ve ever worked with. In their own test, I’d bet on this team against any other, all day every day.
Want to know more about Known’s media strategy? Get in touch.
