Mediaweek held its inaugural Power Lunch in October, celebrating the successes of the media industry and the people who make it.
Taking #39 on the Agency 50 list is Lucy Formosa Morgan, managing director of MAGNA. She spoke to Mediaweek about her team’s focus and determination, weathering the tough economy and the key to positive change across the market and country.
Mediaweek: Congratulations on making the #39 spot on our Mediaweek Agency 50 list. What was your reaction to your placement?
LMF: I’m flattered and honoured to be included in the list, among my peers and those whom I’ve admired professionally for many years. Thank you!
MW: How does your position on the list reflect the achievements made by Magna?
LMF: Being recognised on this list is testament to the great team of people working alongside me within Magna. The thinking and output that we’re producing for Mediabrands and our clients is super exciting and something I love being a part of.
Our Media Responsibility Index (MRI) is a great example of the focus and determination of the team. It’s been a huge project, surveying our key media partners across 4 key priority areas – Sustainability, Inclusivity, Safety and Data Ethics.
MRI empowers our clients to make responsible decisions surrounding their media choices with in-depth knowledge at their fingertips. Seeing the response from our media partners has been really exciting knowing we are all on the way to making better choices and decisions and together are advocating for stronger, safer standards in media.
MW: What are three industry issues on your mind, and in your opinion, how can they be solved or achieved?
LMF: – Talent acquisition & preventing burn out – going into a tougher economy it’s highly likely that as an industry we’re yet again going to be asking far more of our people. We need to automate more and more elements of our industry to try to minimise the pressure on our people wherever possible.
We’ve seen huge churn over the last few years off the back of COVID. Although staffing pressures seem to have eased slightly, we need to be mindful not to drive more people out of the industry through burnout.
– Converged trading: We’ve been waiting too long for VOZ to arrive. Linear TV audiences have been declining consistently for a while now given the plethora of choices and devices that consumers can watch content on. That decline though has accelerated rapidly this year so we can’t wait any longer; we need to evolve our thinking about the buying process and change our approach now. There’s considerable work and testing to be done.
– Responsible Media: There’s a huge amount of work being done around sustainability, carbon calculators and of course the work that we are doing with our MRI. But there is still much to be done. We need to work more collaboratively together as an industry to lift the tide across all areas such as sustainability and inclusivity to drive meaningful step change across the industry.
MW: What are your hopes for the industry in 2023?
There’s no doubt that 2023 will be a challenging year which makes the work we do even more important to help our clients evolve and optimise their media investment approaches to make their money work harder and maximise return on investment.
MW: What are your hopes for the industry in 2023?
LMF: In a tougher economic climate, I hope we don’t lose sight of the great opportunity we have as an industry to drive positive change across the market and country – be that through sustainability, inclusivity, evolving how we think about and buy media, etc.
It’s very easy to revert back to bad habits when under pressure, but we need to remain focused and make a difference.
See also: Meeting of the Minds: Magna’s Lucy Formosa Morgan and Ashleigh Segalla