Agencies, Publishers and Technology Vendors gathered at an intimate roundtable to discuss how hard it can be to integrate marketing communications across organizations and media platforms.

After two exciting morning keynote sessions concerning how marketing has to change in the face of ever-shifting customer behavior, iMedia Agency Summit attendees shifted ground from hearing about the questions facing marketing in the age of social media to talking about how actually to do it, or at least try to do it.

I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of the tables discussing "decentralization," or how interactive agencies can learn how to co-exist peacefully and cooperate effectively with their clients' other agencies. At the table were media planners, major publishers and technology vendors.

The moderator, an associate media director for a big media agency, kicked off the session with a hypothetical case that illuminates the pervasiveness of the problem of multiple agencies servicing the same clients. With a Video-on-Demand purchase, the moderator asked, which agency fields that request? The broadcast agency? The interactive agency? The media agency? "Who is your client? Who do you service? That's the hard part… and where do you go for that answer?"

Speaking for the publishers, one account director said that she calls for, "Open communication on both sides… I get this from one side, this from another… let's just have one conference call and get it over with."

And that's merely the problem within agencies: the moderator, whose company is the media agency of record for a big beverage company, told the story of how the clients' promotions agency might go to, say, "Sports Illustrated" with an interesting idea, get signoff from the magazine publisher, and then leave the media agency with no leverage for negotiation. "Sometimes the promotion strategy and the media strategy aren't exactly synergistic. Those things shouldn't be working even in parallel: they should be interwoven with each other." But that is hard to do when agencies work against each other.

"Can you influence the project?" a media planner asked.

"That's where the struggle is, because now we're negotiating from a weak position," the moderator replied.

"Will the clients help you? Will they get involved?"

"Yes, but only to a limited extent."

On the publisher side, the agencies at the table agreed that silos negatively impact the relationships among agencies, clients and publishers just as those silos hurt marketing departments and agencies. Agencies have difficulty finding one representative from a publisher who can speak for both print and online. That leaves the media agency to juggle different deals and agreements with the same publisher, which can be frustrating.

One publisher at the table, who represents a weekly news magazine, argued that he sees, "a sea change occurring. It's less about control and more about ideas that are on strategy for what that client wants to achieve." Agencies and clients alike must move away from a culture of control to a culture of collaboration. 

"What's going on in the intelligence community -- the Federal Government intelligence community -- is a good analogy," for marketing, the publisher continued. Heretofore, "the intelligence community has been very covert," and the CIA, FBI, NSA et cetera have been unwilling to work together. But now, "there's a movement toward an open environment, where they'll all have to work together. An open source arena… where people are sharing information."

"That's a great analogy," one technology vendor interjected. "There was no way, a few years ago, that different media channel specialists would cross over, but now there's so much crossover" between channels and among traditional and interactive. Yet, "on the brand side that's a discipline that they lack, that they have to have… to be an orchestrator more than just developing marketing plans."

At this, the moderator said, "None of us are philanthropists; we're all in it to make money." But when the money between agencies or between different parts of one big agency or holding company is not an issue, then unique marketing strategies can happen. The moderator's agency did a deal with a major TV drama where, "we embedded into content a multi-media scavenger hunt. Some of it lived in TV and some of it online." Significantly, "the way we're structured the deal is that we're all on retainer, so it's all one bucket of money" shared within different parts of one agency. "But," the moderator asked, "is that sort of thing possible with multiple agencies?"

"The problem with working with different agencies," one publisher added, "is that there needs to be an open environment, but right now everybody is protecting their franchise," so when an idea originates elsewhere -- even if it's a great idea -- the other companies don't embrace it.

"When you're working with a creative shop that has a media department, you have to guard your business," a media director said. Only when the creative shop does not have a media department can the two companies work together without egos getting in the way. It's hard on the media agency when the creative agency is, "trying to take our business. We really can't collaborate and compete at the same time."

Brad Berens is the editor in chief and chief content officer for iMedia Communications. Read full bio.