Category: In the News

Perhaps sensing the opportunity that’s being created by agency holding companies getting bigger and broader — and leaving mid-sized marketers to feel like they’re being overlooked — another independent agency group is launching a new media agency extension.

Barkley OKRP, which has long handled some of its own media work but is primarily known for its creative chops, has launched media agency MissionOne Media. It’s led by Sean Corcoran, a veteran media agency executive who most recently ran IPG’s Mediahub until last year, when he joined Barkley.

The new shop will handle all elements of a full-service media agency but with a focus on staying closely linked to the creative side of the business. Corcoran emphasized that being the right size is vital to its success. “We feel like it’s kind of Goldilocks size,” he said, as in neither too big nor too small. The perfect client spends somewhere in the $50 million to $100 million range, he added.

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Brynn Brewer got in line around 9:30 a.m. last Saturday morning behind dozens of others — some of whom got there as early as 6 a.m. to be near the front of the line — for the chance to experience the Criterion closet like the filmmakers and artists featured on the entertainment company’s YouTube channel. The South by Southwest experience to Brewer, a content producer at Chubbies Shorts, felt like an “organic activation” and “more like an interactive art installment.” 

Brewer isn’t alone in her assessment. The three women around her in line shared similar sentiments, noting their love of classic film, while shielding themselves with an umbrella from the heat of the Austin, Texas sun. To them, the three minutes allotted to each group to enter the mobile Criterion closet truck, peruse the classic films featured in the collection, pick out a few of those films to take home on Blu-ray and talk about why they matter (as well as get a Polaroid of themselves in the closet) was worth the wait. 

As marketers, agency execs, filmmakers and musicians returned to Austin this past week for SXSW — which runs until March 15th — so too have the brands like Criterion, FX, Paramount, Amazon and Alaska Airlines with various experiential activations on the ground. In the past, marketers believed that having an experience was a must and brands faced irrelevancy without one. Now, after having experienced the shutdown of experiential efforts during the pandemic, marketers, agency execs and attendees believe experiential at SXSW (and elsewhere) shouldn’t solely be about relevance, but to give attendees a real way to interact with the brand.

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