Fragmentation has stopped being a media problem and become a strategy problem. In a recent episode of Adweek’s Adspeak podcast recorded live at Brandweek, Michael Law, CEO of Carat North America, and Shivram Vaideeswaran, senior vice president of marketing at Papa John’s, discussed what it takes to stay relevant when consumers are spread across platforms.
The conversation is less about chasing every new feature and more about designing a flexible system. For marketing students and professionals, it is a useful reset for media planning.
A four-channel view of attention
The discussion starts by separating media into four connected layers: paid media, creators and influencers, aggregator platforms, and organic social. Each layer has a different role. Paid media can create predictable reach, creators build contextual relevance, aggregators capture demand that already exists, and organic social keeps the brand present in culture. The value comes from sequencing these layers around a moment, not simply stacking them on top of each other.
From linear journeys to tangled user behaviour
Consumer journeys rarely follow a straight path. People bounce between search, social, aggregator apps, creator content and a brand’s own channels before making a decision. The podcast frames this as a planning problem: if the customer journey is tangled, the team operating it must be nimble. That requires clear strategic principles rather than long approval chains. One practical benchmark raised is the ability to act on a cultural moment within 24 hours. Speed is not recklessness; it comes from pre-agreed guardrails that let teams decide fast.
Brand building, performance and one north star
The guests also confront a persistent tension. Brands still need long-term resonance in an algorithm-driven world, even as performance marketing grows. The advice is not to pick a side. Instead, marketing leaders should define a single north star metric that keeps brand and performance teams pointed in the same direction. Closer collaboration between creative and media teams helps translate that shared metric into better briefs, formats and placements.
A practical review checklist
For marketers reviewing their current plans, the conversation offers a simple checklist:
- Map every campaign across the four channel roles and identify any overlap that lacks a distinct job.
- Document the cultural-response guardrails your team needs to move within 24 hours.
- Choose one north star metric for a campaign, even if supporting teams track their own diagnostic signals.
- Run a joint creative-media session before media budgets are locked, not after.
The core message is that attention is not won by adding more channels. It is won by designing for relevance, setting clear decision rules, and giving brand and performance teams a shared definition of success.
Source: Adweek
