Two years ago, Mediaedge:cia's Jim Taylor wrote a book called Space Race suggesting that clients need to reassert themselves at the centre of a total communications planning process, knocking agencies' heads together to achieve it if necessary. In this week's feature (page 28), he highlights the frustration felt by big brand owners such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble over traditional agency processes and the outcomes these structures produce.
Once upon a time it was straightforward. Full-service agencies handled everything and the media world was a simple place with a limited number of media outlets to plan and spend within.
Then, in the 1980s, as the media landscape evolved and expanded, media agencies split from their hosts and struck out on their own, forcing themselves up the client agenda.
A few years ago, communications planning hotshops such as Naked came on the scene with a new way of doing things. For a while they threatened to revolutionise the process, before settling into some sort of normality themselves - albeit a normality firmly anchored in their own reality.
Hurrell and Dawson is the latest agency to attempt to merge creative and media services, with a full-service offering soon set to be bolstered by media stalwart Greg Grimmer, promising modern, strategic solutions. At the other end of the scale, agencies have developed specialisms to the nth degree, leading strategic gurus such as Ogilvy UK's Rory Sutherland to suggest that the talented all-rounder who fully understands communications planning has been badgered into extinction.
But it is media agencies that can prosper in this environment. They no longer have to rely on five minutes at the end of the creative agency pitch. They increasingly lead the brand strategy and total communications planning process - and there is an opportunity for them to do this more often. They understand digital's role better than other agency disciplines, and they are nimble enough to react to the fast-changing media environment.
One thing's for certain, there is no one-size-fits-all method for communications planning nirvana, but the current situation represents a major opportunity for media agencies to assert a much more prominent role in leading the process.
Steve Barrett is editor of Media Week, steve.barrett@haymarket.com.