The world of advertising is always evolving and changing with the flow of the consumers’ needs. If advertising teams remain stagnant, they become a rock in the river impeding the flow of progress instead of promoting it. The most successful teams are the ones open to change. Sometimes just changing a P to a B is all you need.

Lindsay Rittenhouse gives some insight on how companies are moving with change in this week’s issue of Adweek. IHOP, BP and Westworld are a few examples of how companies are consolidating their media and creative teams to push innovation forward. IHOP’s collaboration with IPG agencies Initiative and Droga5 allowed for the IHOb campaign to come to fruition. All it took was a letter change to blow up Twitter. It would not have happened though if Initiative and Droga5 had not worked so closely throughout the campaign. Consumers in this generation require personalized media and innovative ideas to garner their attention. This creates a need for media teams and creative teams to become synonymous in order to deliver successful media campaigns. BP also had WPP Team Energy create the “Possibilities Everywhere” campaign in order to emphasize its support of transitioning to a lower carbon future. WPP used a single team made up of strategists, media specialists and creatives in order to deliver the campaign instead of splitting up the responsibility into separate teams. Westworld and Giant Spoon also found great commercial success in its campaign for the new TV show. Giant Spoon co-founder Marc Simons stated how they don’t treat media creation like an assembly line. “There’s a central team made up of strategy, creative, media, experiential that is linked to our projects. It’s not just a media-led project or creative-led project,” Simons said.

Advertising has become a creative collaboration. As consumers take in new media their expectations rise. Media and creative teams can no longer act separately if they want to create the next IHOb. Creating innovative media is difficult for one department to do. Everyone can’t be as witty as the International House of Pancakes, or should I say burgers. While collaborations between teams can bring tension and cause individuals to butt heads the pay off is tremendous. IHOP’s campaign speaks for itself garnering 1.2 million tweets and 15,000 media stories in just ten days. There were probably individuals who laughed at the idea of IHOb proclaiming that a letter change won’t create any media buzz. Low and behold though that the IHOb campaign is one of the most successful media strategies in the past few years. Times are changing and with that consumers needs are as well. Advertisers need to take risks and get creative with their media. IHOP and Westworld have shown the industry that consolidating media and creative teams are a step in the right direction in combating an evolving market. Who will use this information to succeed in the market? Only time will tell. It is clear as day though that advertising must do something different or it risks falling to the wayside in the mind of the consumers.

For more information, follow up by reading the article What’s Old is New in Adweek volume 60.