Our clear ambition is for News International Commercial to be the most respected UK media owner, not just in press but of all media sectors. We know this means working more efficiently and successfully to provide the most effective campaigns for our advertiser and media agency partners.

Our first step has been to get a picture of where we are now and the challenges presented in achieving our goal. So, last December we completed an agency benchmarking survey.

This has helped us to get a deeper understanding of the type of relationship we have with each media agency, and importantly gave us some valuable insights into the critical factors underpinning a successful relationship between agency planners and buyers and media owners.

We have now started to present the research back to agency teams, highlighting where the relationship can be improved and how we can adapt to suit the specific requirements of your business.

Initial feedback from the survey, and discussions we are having with media agency partners are around the areas of:

- Listening more
- Understanding clients marketing requirements
- Being more flexible and responsive
- Delivering highly valuable insights
- Campaign creativity

The survey will be repeated in December 2010.

Neil Jones
Director of Commercial Strategy