What modern-day marketers need to know about making media magic

When I think about my career as a marketer, the most successful campaigns that I’ve been a part of are best described by a feeling. It’s that excitement when you step back and see that the audience, the channel, the brand, and the insights have all come together to create this special moment. And it’s difficult to pinpoint one individual aspect that takes a campaign to the next level. We can’t identify it because, truthfully, it’s something greater than one specific component.

It’s media magic.

Media magic has been around since the advent of advertising, but how do we achieve it? That changes almost daily. The core of the magic remains, though; media magic is what happens when you make your advertising go from routine to remarkable, created at the intersection of marketing aspiration and experimentation. And in an ever-evolving industry where the funnel is being compressed and capturing customer attention is more difficult than ever, finding a partner who can help bring your brand’s vision to life is vital.

When considering what it means to “Make Media Magic,” we turned to our industry peers to give us their perspectives on how those magical results come to be. I think Chrissie Hanson, CEO of OMD USA, put it best when she said, “The magic is when digital inputs meet human insight, and creativity turns it into something unforgettable. It's not just seen: it’s felt, shared, acted on.” Our customers have always been the MVP to every successful campaign: the brilliance of the brands we work with inspires us to innovate more and work harder to create opportunities that, in turn, inspire them. I believe that cycle makes us all the better.

And listen—we’ve all been there, late in the night with the seventh Diet Coke of the day, cranking out new ideas and approaches with one eye open. That magical media feeling can seem difficult to capture when we fall into a monotonous rhythm, so we are constantly asking how we can be better than we were yesterday. When it comes to finding that special touch, we considered what industry leaders value most in a campaign.

We start with the customer—what they like, where they shop, and how they like to be reached. Ultimately, what does their full-funnel experience look like? “Consumer attention becomes increasingly scarce each year, making it crucial to establish connections with consumers at every stage of the marketing funnel,” Aude Gandon, Global CMO at Nestlé explains. Those connections are crucial to ensuring that a brand can connect with customers at the most important moments in their shopping journey, and with attention spans shrinking, the importance of making those moments matter increases. “Consumer media habits are reshaping the traditional full-funnel approach, compressing the journey into fewer steps that often happen in the same place, at the same time,” explains Asmita Dubey, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer of L'Oréal. “While the journey is more efficient than ever, the need for brand love and meaningful connections remains essential to building long-term equity.” Helping customers find that sweet spot is our own kind of magic (consider us the fairy godmother, except instead of a wand, we have a sparkly DSP to wave around).

I’ve been with HAQM Ads for three years now, and I still find myself in awe of the expansiveness of the HAQM Ads canvas, but creating that media magic isn’t just about utilizing innovative formats alongside great content—it’s about knowing how to get in front of the right people, at the right moments. “First-party data is a superpower—it gives us truth over assumptions,” Hanson adds. “We use those signals to understand when someone is open to influence, where they are in their journey, and how we can be most useful or inspiring in that moment.” When advertisers have those signals, it allows them to not just speak to an audience but create campaigns with them in mind. “I believe the most innovative campaigns, at their heart, have a unique consumer insight,” Rob Ellison, Head of Media Europe at Visa, says. “The intersection of the brand and that insight are the thing that sparks innovation and creativity.”

With the full-funnel approach and first-party signals in place, the real magic comes when we are able to scale it. “Reaching customers at scale through one media partner like HAQM Ads is massive, if done right,” Hanson says. “Scale plus precision is the holy grail. One partner who can do both? That’s not just media—it’s momentum.” She was hardly the only marketer who shared that sentiment. “In an increasingly fragmented landscape—and with Visa being one of the largest brands in the world and looking to stay that way, reaching customers at scale through one media partner is more important than ever,” Ellison adds.

And even with all those elements, we continue to test and learn. There is no established cure-all for creating a remarkable ad campaign, but when we combine our intelligence and curiosity with expansive media selection, audience insights and scalability, the magic is inevitable. You know, maybe that’s the impossible-to-define ingredient: this shared excitement and respect that we share with our advertisers. Every decision that we make as marketers can help elevate a good idea into an unforgettable one. That’s why we show up every day: because when we combine all the right ingredients, we create campaigns that are remarkable. Something that creates a bit of envy. Something magical.

So let’s get started.