Agencies usually have discrete roles in the media world. They create ad or buy them, rarely both. But they always rely on media companies for distributing their messages.
Maybe that’s not how it should work. Jason Stein, CEO of 130-person social content agency Laundry Service, believes agencies are squarely competing with publishers, which are at heart brand content engines. Laundry Service, which was recently acquired by Wasserman Media Group, has launched a new unit called Cycle which is a media distribution are of 1,000 social media influencers and 1,700 athletes.
“BuzzFeed and Vice are our biggest competitors now and in the future,” Stein said on this week’s Digiday Podcast. “The only difference between what we’re doing and what BuzzFeed is doing is we’re using brands’ channels and people’s channels, and BuzzFeed is using BuzzFeed Video, BuzzFeed Food and so forth. But BuzzFeed executes media buys. They’re getting a content budget and they’re executing a media buy behind that content. So much of those views are through media.”
