As we close out 2023 and head into 2024, Media in Canada interviews the industry’s top executives to find out their thoughts on the year that was and what they see on the horizon for 2024. Today we feature Caroline Moul, president, PHD. 

What lessons did you learn this year?
2023 was an exciting and hectic year. For us, [we learned] the importance of people and being together. We always knew these were important but as we’ve adapted to hybrid it’s become clearer that face-to-face meetings and sustaining relationships with our people and our clients is a critical part of navigating change. And, it brings the passion and fun back that just is not easily achievable in a virtual world.

What do you think were the most seismic changes of 2023?
There’s been a convergence of factors that are creating a reinvention of the media landscape. This includes economic uncertainty, media landscape shifts including privacy changes and continued cookie deprecation, changes in audiences in TV and US pressures of changes that we expect to influence our market, AI and how this is and will change aspects of our work, and of course, the significant importance of industry missions like Canadian Media Manifesto. With so much going on in the industry, it is easy to be distracted or stay in the path of least resistance – but advertisers that manage to see the big picture and lean into the best of what has always worked while adopting the new are at a real advantage.

How do you predict those changes will evolve in 2024?
The momentum behind changing digital signals is going to continue – and in some corners accelerate. For savvy marketers this’ll mean going deeper into the platforms but also looking for value elsewhere – like in Canadian media and data. We’ve leaned into planning for “attentive reach” in 2023 to help manage the complex trade-offs across media and platforms. This will continue to be a key tool for us in 2024 and beyond. There’s a long-term trend knitting media strategy, digital transformation, marketing accountability and business planning closer together. We truly believe that a modern media agency has a critical role to play in this evolution – and we’re seeing it develop rapidly across some of our client relationships.

In your opinion, what is the single most critical pressure facing the media industry as a whole right now?
To use a term coined by Mark Ritson: “tactification.” The complexity of the media execution landscape means that there is unprecedented expertise devoted to keeping up with how to execute effectively. While this is critical in day-to-day management of media, it can leave other critical areas unattended. It makes it harder to see the big picture.

We’re using modelling and communications planning to help our clients really focus on what’s working best for them. For many advertisers fewer, bigger, better is a powerful prescription that helps them balance brand and activation and drive more growth with less complexity. Some of our most successful campaigns, award-winning, were great examples of what you can do to move business outcomes with highly impactful campaigns.

What do you and your team see as the biggest challenge facing your work or business? How are you planning to address it?
Rapid change. Through the pandemic, the need to pivot and adapt to an immense amount of uncertainty, be it in supply, asset availability, business pressures and intense pressure to drive results, has not gone away post-pandemic. While certain aspects like supply issues have immensely improved, the rest is now the norm. This means finding sustainable ways to effectively work in fast and challenging dynamics. One where our talent can thrive on the work they do and push for creativity and innovation in media. This will be an increased focus for us in 2024.

What do you see as the biggest opportunity in 2024, for your agency and for your clients?
There is so much opportunity. The landscape is evolving so quickly that it is ripe for innovation. For us, there are three key areas we see lots of room for reinvigoration and innovation. From resetting measurement to address the evolving gaps as a result of cookie deprecation, changing metrics and more. To resetting data – beginning to end being in the driver’s seat. This is key as our clients navigate their first-party data, we put scrutiny on the second-party data and look for avenues to be able to enhance data we activate on to give our clients the advantage over their competition versus all buying the same segments with second- and third-party data. And, most importantly, doing great work within our craft, where it matters. For us we are hugely proud of the impactful work we do together with clients, creative, and media partners to support DE&I, sustainability, and Canadian Media Manifesto.

We will be pushing to do even more in 2024. We truly look forward to what 2024 holds for us in terms of award-winning work, continued evolution within our client partnerships as we, together, tackle the changing dynamics of the Canadian media landscape.