Mediaplus UK MDs On Translating human understanding into effective media strategies

Mediaplus UK, part of Serviceplan’s House of Communication network, has been signalling its intent to grow in recent months, most recently with the introduction of a restricted senior leadership team.

In May, it promoted managing partner Jamie Dunlop and head of operations Liz Duff to joint managing directors of the London agency, reporting into UK group CEO Celine Saturnino.

Dunlop joined Mediaplus UK (then Total Media) back in 2010, starting in a junior account role and working his way up to managing partner. Meanwhile, Duff joined in 2013, initially as head of TV from Carat. before taking on an operations role in 2022.

The two have also joined a newly-created Board that has been briefed to champion a bold agency vision that unites media, data, and creativity into a single, connected ecosystem. Alongside that the team will nurture a progressive culture, where innovation, fresh thinking, and collaboration evolve the agency model and enhance the experience for both employees and partners.

Here the pair discuss the recent developments at Mediaplus alongside their own role elevations. 

Creative Salon: What are your key priorities as MDs for the business with its vision to unite media, data and creativity into a single, connected ecosystem?

Liz Duff: Integration is not a structure, it’s a behaviour. The priority is making “connected” show up in the work, not just in the org chart or narrative. If media, data and creative only meet at handover points, the output is slower, softer, and harder for clients to navigate.

The focus is earlier collaboration and shared ownership. Briefs should be built with all disciplines in the room, with one set of outcomes, one joined-up plan, and clear decisioning. When that happens, clients feel speed, clarity and confidence, not complexity.

The second priority is commercial discipline. A connected ecosystem only matters if it drives better performance and sustainable growth. That means being ruthless about what adds value, stripping out process for its own sake, and building a model that scales beyond a few brilliant individuals.

Jamie Dunlop: I have two main priorities. At a macro level, my focus is being part of a team that develops House of Communication into an agency group that gives clients a genuine competitive advantage. Within that, my priority is ensuring Mediaplus UK is well positioned to translate human understanding into more effective media strategies, sharper activation and measurable business impact.

The second, but equally important focus, is building an agency culture that is right not just for today, but for tomorrow. The industry, and indeed wider workplace culture, has changed immeasurably in the past five to 10 years. A steady stream of macro changes have held huge influence over what we do, and agencies have had to adapt to that. As a result, culture has changed, including what people are looking for from their place of work versus before. At leadership level, we are absolutely committed to delivering an agency experience for our teams, clients and partners that reflects people’s needs and behaviour today and in turn delivers a really high performance culture.

How have you been involved in the evolution of the business since it became Serviceplan UK?

JD: I’ve been closely involved in shaping how we embed Mediaplus into the House of Communication model in the UK – particularly ensuring Mediaplus plays a central role in connecting media, data and creative, underpinned by our unique ability to understand human behaviour. A big part of that has been evolving our structure and ways of working so we operate as one system, grounded in behavioural insight, rather than a collection of disciplines. This is both exciting and challenging in equal measure as the agency and industry is moving at such pace, it’s about being agile and dynamic and accepting that certain workflows will evolve.

LD: The real value of scale is not size, it’s access. Since joining the Serviceplan Group, my focus has been making sure we actually use that access, not just reference it in credentials.

In practice, that means pulling in group capability where it moves the needle for UK clients. Two areas stand out right now. The group’s international reach means clients with multi-market ambitions don’t have to stitch together a patchwork of local agencies, that joined-up thinking is built in. And on the specialist side, having Silverside within the group gives our clients access to serious AI and technology expertise that would be hard to replicate independently.

The test for me is always practical. If the model makes it easier for teams to collaborate and easier for clients to buy and experience our capability, it’s working. If it adds friction, it fails.

What role is AI already playing within the business?

JD: AI is strengthening how we apply behavioural science at scale – helping us decode how people think, decide and act, and translate that into more effective planning and activation. For us it drives faster insight, smarter optimisation and greater precision. From bespoke AI assistants that free up planner’s time to act on insight, to synthetic audiences delivering multi-market learning at speed, it’s embedded across the workflow. We’re also using AI to surface behavioural signals from complex datasets, automate reporting and insight generation, and enhance creative testing by understanding what drives attention and response.

Crucially, it amplifies our people – freeing them to focus on interpretation, better ideas and driving real client impact.

LD: AI is not a side project; it’s becoming the operating system for how agencies work. It is already changing how we think, how quickly we iterate, and how much time teams spend on genuine judgement versus repeatable tasks.

I lead AI adoption across the agency, and the priority is breadth, not novelty. There is a real fault line opening between people who feel confident experimenting with AI early and those who hold back, and that gap compounds quickly. The answer is not to celebrate a handful of super users, but to make experimentation feel normal and safe for everyone.

We have built a structured upskilling programme to do exactly that, with different depths for different roles, and a strong expectation of peer sharing of real use cases. The goal is behaviour change, not tool adoption. Anyone can roll out a licence but getting people to change how they work is the harder, more important thing.

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

JD: Stepping into the MD role at a time when not just the agency, but the entire industry is being reshaped. The opportunity to lead a business like ours and to turn that into real growth for clients, is hugely motivating.

LD: Honestly, the highlight is not one moment, it’s the accumulation of things that tell you the work is landing beyond the room you are in.

I started my career in TV buying and moved through various leadership roles in media activation, commercial strategy and operations. That breadth has been the foundation for leading an agency. When you have sat in enough different seats, you understand how decisions actually land, for teams, for clients, for the business, not just how they look on a slide.

Stepping into the MD role at a genuine inflection point in the industry has been the most exciting phase so far. There is a real chance to build something modern, not just run an inherited model.

And then there are the purely joyful ones. I have been on BBC News a few times, which still feels surreal. But nothing tops the WhatsApp I got from my mum after I did an early morning interview on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money. She turned on the radio and there I was, she thought she was having a very odd dream and had to wake up my dad to check she was actually awake. Those are the moments that remind you the work reaches further than you think!

The marketer’s remit has become more complex over the last few years and agencies have had to evolve to keep up. What does the new client-agency relationship look like?

JD: It’s more connected, more strategic and more accountable. Clients are looking for partners who understand their customers as people, not just audiences, and can translate that into joined‑up execution. The House of Communication model is built for that – bringing together the right capabilities around shared challenges and clear commercial outcomes.

LD: The new relationship is less supplier and more decision-partner, because clients don’t lack options, they lack clarity. The strongest agencies now help clients simplify complexity and make better choices faster, with transparency on what will drive impact and what will not.

That means the relationship becomes more collaborative and more commercially mature. There is less appetite for theatre and more demand for accountability. Clients want joined-up thinking across channels, data and creative, plus the confidence that the agency can make calls, not just present possibilities.

It also changes what “service” means. It is not about producing more. It is about removing friction, focusing effort where it matters, and building trust through consistency.

What still takes you by surprise in the industry?

LD: Honestly, how quickly we reach for complexity when a clear call would do. We build frameworks, invent language, add layers, and somehow still avoid making a decision. That is where a lot of value quietly disappears.

The things that differentiate great agencies have not changed: sharp thinking, strong execution, and teams who can move at pace without losing their heads. The industry knows this. It just keeps drifting back towards complication, partly because it feels more considered, and partly because complexity is easier to hide behind than a clear point of view.

The people I find most impressive are the ones who can walk into a messy situation and make it simple without making it simplistic. That is a rare skill, and one I don’t think we talk about enough.

JD: How quickly expectations continue to shift but how quickly we are able to adapt to them. The fundamentals of human behaviour haven’t changed, but how people engage with media and brands evolves constantly. That tension is what makes it interesting and why staying close to real audience insight is so critical.

What changes would you like to see in the industry?

LD: Less performative transformation and more practical change that actually lands. There is a lot of noise about AI right now and not enough honest conversation about who it is, and isn’t, working for.

Most organisations are measuring AI adoption by the wrong things. Licence counts, outputs, hours saved. None of that tells you whether people are thinking differently, and thinking differently is the only part that compounds over time. The distance between an organisation’s AI investment and the change in how its people really problem-solve is wider than most leaders realise, and it does not close itself.

This thinking gap is not evenly distributed either. AI culture tends to reward visible, confident experimentation, and that skews towards the people who already felt safe putting their hand up. If your adoption numbers look healthy but you have not looked at who is driving them, you may be solving for the people who needed it least.

That is the conversation I want the industry to have. Not just “are we adopting AI fast enough?” but “are we adopting it in a way that builds genuine capability across the whole organisation, or just accelerating the people already at the front?”

JD: I’d like to see our industry move decisively from a channel-first mindset to a truly outcome-led, integrated model, one that prioritises business impact over media mechanics. That means further breaking down siloes between media, data, and creativity, and building teams that are structured around solving client growth challenges, not delivering specialist outputs.

Added to that, we also need greater transparency and accountability in how we measure success, with clearer links between investment and commercial outcomes. This means reappraising the commercial model and moving to one where success is defined by business impact. Equally important is a shift in culture: fostering more collaboration, faster decision-making, and a stronger bias for action, this includes embracing AI not as a cost-saving tool but as a catalyst for better thinking and more effective work. It also involves embracing the different working environments now on offer by creating space for head down, head up and head together work.

Finally, I’d like to see deeper, more strategic partnerships with clients — moving further up the decision chain, engaging with procurement and c-suite stakeholders, and becoming genuine advisors on growth rather than just executional partners. We are certainly focussed on addressing these challenges here at Mediaplus, and as part of House of Communication.

And finally, what advice would you have for someone else wanting to become an agency MD?

JD: It’s still a people business and the leaders who recognise that make the biggest impact. Whether it’s helping clients understand real human behaviour, building strong partnerships, or creating a high‑performance culture internally, it all comes back to people. The better you understand how people think, feel and act, the more effective you’ll be as a leader.

LD: Get out of your lane as early as you can. Commercial, operational, people leadership, how client relationships really work when things get difficult. The MD role is not about being the best specialist in the room. It is about making decisions that hold up across people, performance and long-term direction, and you cannot do that if you have only ever seen one part of the business.

Stay close to reality. The best leaders I know are the ones who understand how a decision lands on a Monday morning, not just how it looked on the slide deck on Friday.

Two things I wish someone had said to me earlier. You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room to be the person that people listen to. Presence and volume are not the same thing, and confusing the two holds a lot of people back unnecessarily. And progress beats perfection. Doing and learning is almost always more valuable than waiting until something is flawless. The agencies and the people who get ahead are the ones who have worked that out.