Could 2025 Be the Year that Comms Planning Is Valued?
In an industry where distinct media and creative agencies dominate the landscape, Craft Media stands apart with a singular focus on communication strategy. As co-founder Sally Weavers succinctly puts it, "We don't buy, and we don't make." This deliberate neutrality is how the consultancy can offer clients unbiased, actionable advice tailored to their unique needs.
By concentrating solely on communication strategy, Craft Media ensures that every recommendation is made with the client's best interests at heart, free from the potential conflicts of interest that can arise when agencies have a stake in media buying or producing campaigns. "We tell clients, 'You don't need a new TV ad. The one from last year will work fine,'" Sally notes, illustrating their commitment to efficiency and effectiveness over unnecessary expenditure.
“The phrase ‘communication strategy’ has been bastardised,” she adds. “Creative agencies claim they do it, but it’s often too light-touch and not rigorous enough – rarely rooted in data. Media agencies also claim to do communication strategy, but they focus too much on paid media planning.”
Since Sally co-founded the company with Jenny Jones in 2018, the growing team of strategists there has worked to convince brands that communication planning, separate from buying and making, is a valuable resource in its own right. But Craft Media’s goal for 2024 was to hit a certain milestone. "We set the intention that a big client would recognise communication strategy as a skill they need – and we achieved that with BT. So, for 2025, I’d love it if more big clients recognised the value of this kind of work.”
By connecting various facets of a client's marketing efforts, Craft Media ensures a cohesive and comprehensive approach. “We’re like glue – it’s not a very sexy way to describe it, but we stick things together,” says Sally. It’s an apt metaphor for a consultancy that thrives on solving the disconnects that slow down or confuse marketing efforts. Whether it’s linking internal departments, aligning agencies, or clarifying communication goals, Craft Media ensures no part of a business’ communications is working in isolation.
For large clients like BT, who Craft began work with last summer, this means stepping into the chaos and helping connect dots that might otherwise remain unlinked. “Clients are stretched thin and pulled into so many meetings that it often doesn’t fall into anyone’s clear role to join everything up,” observes Jenny. “For a big organisation that’s undergone a lot of change, they need help. And I don’t see why we wouldn’t play that role. I sometimes describe us as Lego – different clients use us in different ways and build the team they need from expert pieces.”
Some clients may just want campaign activation, so Craft can pull together the best creative agency, the best media buying agency, and sit alongside them. Other clients want broader communication strategy across their entire business, which might include packaging, naming, or influencer work. Then there are clients like BT, who wanted Craft to integrate much more deeply into their business and essentially become part of the marketing team. “We’re in their offices, we’ve got a BT laptop with our name on it, and we’re helping them make things happen,” says Jenny.
BT had plenty of creative and media collaborations working well for them already when Craft came onto the scene, but the UK telecoms company didn’t just want to deliver campaigns – leadership there wanted to do creatively exciting work that drives business growth. “Especially for a B2B advertiser, where everyone assumes the work will be dull and performative, they wanted to upset the apple cart and do something exciting,” says Jenny. “They recognised that they’d undergone a lot of internal change, and their structure wasn’t necessarily helping them. People were in new roles, reporting lines had shifted, and they needed help making sense of it all.” Craft’s unbiased perspective was welcome in this context.
“I think you’ll start to see a different type of work coming out of BT next year from the conversations we’re having,” she continues. “That’s exciting, right? It’s fun when someone takes a risk on us. BT has been a really fun client to work with because they’ve got ambition.”
Another ambitious client is BrewDog, who presented a different challenge to the consultancy in 2022 – uniting a community around the brand to create a new product. Craft helped launch Laout, a beer inspired by the input of That Peter Crouch Podcast’s listeners, which became BrewDog’s fastest-selling product ever. By empowering the audience and delivering an authentic campaign, Craft showed its expertise in unlocking engagement and driving sales.
For the team of strategists at Craft Media, now numbering 19, neutrality isn’t just a byproduct of what they don’t do – it’s an active choice that shapes how they work. By stepping back from executional roles, they’ve carved out the space to focus entirely on what’s best for the client, unclouded by the agendas that can creep in when media buying or creative production is on the table.
This approach also means Craft can say things other agencies might shy away from. “Stop spending so much on media,” Sally says, or “We can achieve this on £1 million instead of £2 million.”
Neutrality also allows them to challenge assumptions without stepping on toes. In one example, Sally recalls speaking to a creative agency team who had come up with a campaign that made a very rational case for a high-end product: “Your role for comms isn’t to explain – it’s to evoke desire. Shoot this like a car ad, plaster it on the side of a building. Make it untouchable.” By staying out of the execution, Craft is free to push for bold decisions without competing with other partners.
But a strategy is only as good as its execution, and Craft Media knows that even the most brilliant plans need collaboration to come to life. At the heart of their work is a commitment to working hand-in-hand with creative and media agencies, ensuring that everyone involved is aligned and equipped to deliver results. “Proper strategy without collaboration is just PowerPoint,” says Jenny, cutting to the heart of Craft Media’s ethos. While some consultancies stop at presenting recommendations, Craft steps into the thick of things, fostering the relationships and understanding needed to translate strategy into action.
This collaborative spirit doesn’t just enhance execution; it changes how their partners think about their work. “Craft media plans feel different, so media partners have adapted their teams to think differently,” Jenny explains. By introducing fresh perspectives and challenging established workflows, Craft helps unlock the full potential of every team it works with.
Sally and Jenny highlight how their approach has been particularly effective with creative agencies, where they’ve fostered a culture of mutual respect. Early on in Craft’s days, the co-founders remember sitting with Grey London, pitching for the National Lottery. “We literally spent days in their office, just sitting and chatting,” says Jenny. Integrated with the creatives and planners, they were part of the crucial conversations. “It was truly integrated,” says Jenny. “When we first walked into that pitch, they had every ad shape imaginable drawn up on the wall. They were like, ‘Look at all these options.’”
Sally picks up the story: “And we said, ‘Brilliant. Now, get rid of all that. Let’s focus on these ones.’”
“These were the ones that mattered, so we concentrated on making those the best they could be,” says Jenny.
But great strategy doesn’t come from intuition alone. Craft’s work is firmly grounded in data and research, providing the solid foundation needed to build solutions that are not only creative but also effective. “We spend hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on research, so we’ve got the numbers to back us up,” says Sally. “Without that foundation, a strategy often becomes just words on a page with a picture. A proper strategy is boxes, arrows, and logic – rooted in data. It’s not sexy, but it’s actionable. It’s, ‘Because of this, there’s this – and therefore, you need to do this and this.’”
This approach is particularly valuable in an industry overflowing with ideas. “Clients never say, ‘Nobody brings me ideas.’ What they say is, ‘I’m inundated with ideas,’” explains Jenny. Brands need help to prioritise the ideas, making sure the right ones align with business objectives and audience needs.
Craft Media’s journey so far has been one of carving out a distinctive role in an industry often driven by convention. From bootstrapped beginnings to reshaping communication strategies for major brands like BT, the consultancy has proven that clarity, neutrality, and collaboration can redefine what marketing success looks like. The co-founders know firsthand how hard it is to bring a bold idea to life, especially in an industry stacked against small players. “Being entrepreneurial in the media space is extraordinarily hard,” Jenny confides. “Contracts, payment terms, and the need for cash reserves – all of those things mean having an idea and making it happen is extraordinarily hard today.”
Yet they’ve survived for over six years and built something lasting. Of course, for Sally and Jenny, this is just the beginning. “Why can’t we do for other big clients what we’re doing for BT?” Sally asks, a rhetorical challenge that encapsulates their ambition. With each success, Craft Media is demonstrating the transformative power of communication strategy – not just as a component of marketing, but as its backbone. They’ve already made their mark in the UK and are beginning to unlock potential across the Atlantic, delivering “British brains at British prices” to US clients.
As businesses grow more complex, the need for Craft Media’s brand of glue – its ability to stick disparate teams, ideas, and strategies together – will only increase. The consultancy’s mission to elevate communication strategy into a recognised and indispensable skill is bold, and it’s clear they’re just getting started.
