What happens when media strategies start to mirror each other across the marketplace?
Trevor Guthrie, Giant Spoon's co-founder who has overseen over a billion dollars in media investment, thinks that many agencies today are working with similar foundational datasets and marketplace access when buying and transacting on behalf of clients.
He sees this as a significant opportunity for agencies to widen their strategic toolbox. The most meaningful differentiation, he notes, emerges through sophisticated strategy development and creative team collaboration rather than relying solely on data access advantages.
When everyone uses identical datasets, buying tools, and optimization strategies, marketing blends into a sea of algorithmic sameness. The result we end up with are invisible campaigns that fail to create any meaningful competitive edge.
"There might be some perceived safety in doing what everyone else is doing. There may even be some comfort in it. But there's no innovation or ability to break the status quo," Guthrie adds.
So, how do you break free? You pull the right levers at the right time with the right people — but this often means expanding beyond the traditional marketing playbook.
Creative and Media: Partners From Day One
A fundamental problem in the industry is how creative and media teams have been separated for decades, eroding their ability to collaborate effectively.
"It's just not naturally how these teams work or how the groups are set up," Guthrie notes. "This is an agency that's worked really hard for a decade-plus trying to build a process that brings those stakeholders in from the beginning."
Most agencies follow a predictable pattern:
- Creative teams develop messages in isolation from media planning
- Media becomes an afterthought – just distribution channels for finished creative
- Success gets measured through cost efficiency rather than business impact
At Giant Spoon, we've created a different model. From the tip-off, those teams are in the room, and they understand exactly where they are in the process and how that's going to work," Guthrie explains. This creates a culture where good ideas can come from anywhere – "Ideas are not the responsibility of creative alone. Ideas are the responsibility of the entire working company."
When creative and media evolve together, both become exponentially more powerful.
Four Steps To Breaking the Algorithm
Here's how we set our clients apart from the one-size-fits-all crowd:
1. Build Media Principles, Not Just Plans
Before planning individual placements, we develop guiding principles that shape every decision and create consistency across a client's brand, creative, and media strategy.
At the launch of every partnership, we conduct deep-dive sessions with clients, extracting the DNA of the brand and establishing clear principles on how it should show up in the market. By getting aligned at the beginning of our partnership, we help our clients jump on opportunities that arise with confidence and speed—because we know from the start exactly what fits the brand and what doesn't.
2. Prioritize Context Over Volume
It's one thing to buy impressions.
It's another to make them.
Our team matches creative assets to contextually perfect environments, identifies moments when audiences are truly receptive, and values quality of placement over sheer volume of impressions.
3. Orchestrate Strategic Timing
When it comes to media buying, it’s not just the “what” and “where.” It’s all about the “when.”
Guthrie makes the point to identify precisely when to amplify messaging for maximum effect, concentrating resources on high-impact opportunities rather than distributing them evenly across the calendar.
We're not filling quotas with scattered content — we're orchestrating concentrated media moments that strategically amplify your message at the exact moment it matters most.
4. Unite Brand Building with Performance
Strong media strategies recognize that brand building and performance aren't competitors for budget but partners in driving business.
"When you're trying to develop holistic marketing and brand in conjunction with performance, there are nuances to that."
We don’t just measure standard digital KPIs. We measure transformational impact like foot traffic patterns, sales velocity, and shifts in organizational perception. It’s possible to deliver the evidence both brand and performance teams need to justify continued investment, and that can be done by maintaining messaging consistency while optimizing for tangible outcomes.
Beyond Algorithms: The Human Advantage
The algorithms powering campaigns can only optimize based on what already exists. They're backward-looking in a business that requires forward-thinking.
Algorithms can't:
- Anticipate cultural moments before they happen
- Feel the emotional resonance of perfect context
- Imagine breakthrough strategies that don't exist in historical data
That's why the most effective media strategies require human orchestration.
"What you're looking for is somebody who can conduct and orchestrate in the correct way for your business,” Guthrie says, referring to how media agencies all have “the same instruments” in many ways.”
The traditional structure—with media and creative agencies operating as separate entities—creates fundamental limitations. These silos not only slow down the process, but actively hinder innovation.
Faster work, better ideas, more thoughtful workflow,” Guthrie says, citing that he believes the industry is already seeing the value in cross-collaboration." Messaging that's built for medium, medium that's thoughtful around the message."
However, there's a significant difference between adding media buying as a service and truly integrating it into your DNA.
The marketplace demands agencies that can break these silos, but clients benefit most from a media agency who knows how to speak creative—and that expertise only comes through years of integration.
The choice of agency partner also fundamentally changes what's possible with your media strategy. Media leaders should look beyond technical capabilities to find a truly strategic relationship that can help solve their business problems and drive business outcomes.
At Giant Spoon, we reject the commodity approach to media.
When clients view media as a commodity purchased through algorithms, they're leaving strategic orchestration as the most powerful strategic tool on the table.
The Choice: Algorithmic Sameness or Strategic Advantage
Media buying leaders face a fundamental choice: continue optimizing within the constraints of algorithmic sameness or embrace a strategic approach that creates real competitive advantage.
The first path leads to incremental improvements in an increasingly commoditized space. The second transforms media from a cost center into a growth engine.
When you stop seeing media as just another line item and start treating it as a strategic weapon, you create advantages your competitors can't easily replicate – even with identical tools.
The distinction lies between working within established parameters and discovering what becomes possible when you widen your strategic lens.