Media planning and buying for brands that intend to be famous

Great creative nobody sees is just expensive art. We decide where the money goes before anyone spends it — then buy it across search, social, programmatic, CTV, out-of-home and print, and show you what it actually did.

Make your paid media effective

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Most media plans are written by the channel mix, not by the marketer

Here's how it usually goes. Last year's channels get pasted into this year's
spreadsheet. The percentages move a little. Whatever looked good last quarter
gets more, whatever didn't gets cut. Nobody asks what the plan is for.

That isn't a plan. It's an accounting exercise with a media agency attached.And the number everyone's optimising toward is lying.

You've watched a search line item get a raise for harvesting intent somebody else's campaign generated.A plan starts with a decision: are we creating demand or capturing it? Those need different channels, different budgets, different timelines and different proof. Get that decision wrong and everything after it is a rounding error on a mistake.

We plan first. Then we buy.

Every channel your audience actually uses. Not just the ones with a dashboard.

There are people who believe Meta is all there is, that print and TV and billboards are ruins from a golden age. Then you open GQ and Mercedes is still there. So is Adidas, so is Patek Philippe. Paul Smith is still in the FT.

Are they all stupid, or is there more than one kind of audience?

Paid social

Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest. Suitable for everything from cosmetics to sheet metal lasers, which is a sentence we can write because we've run both.

Search Ads

Google, Bing, Apple Search Ads. Brand defence, category capture and the long tail of people who already decided and are checking you exist.

Out-of-home & DOOH

Static and digital. 100+ DOOH screens across Riga for Motobuzz, measured against POS data and footfall — because "brand can't be measured" is a choice, not a fact.

CTV & TV

The closest you get to TV without the TV budget — and actual linear TV where the market justifies it. We ran 30s and 60s spots on Norwegian television for Kongsberg.

Print Ads

Premium press, trade and industry titles. Where the buying committee for a €1.2M machine actually reads.

Programmatic Display

Bought against audiences and context, not against whatever the exchange has spare. Native included.

How a based. media plan gets made

Five decisions, in this order. Reverse any two and you get the spreadsheet
you already have:

Demand creation and demand capture are different jobs.

One of them makes people want the thing. The other catches them once they already do. They need different channels, different timelines and different proof, and almost every plan we inherit has quietly stopped doing the first one. We name which job this budget is doing before a single channel gets discussed — because that decision sets everything after it.

Every channel gets a job written next to it. No job, no channel.

Most channel mixes are a record of what the team already knows how to run. Meta because someone's certified in it. Search because it reports well.
That's not a mix, it's a CV. We write the function beside each line — reach, frequency, capture, retention, proof — and anything we can't write a function for comes out of the plan, however comfortable it is.

Spend has an order. Spreading it evenly is how budgets disappear
without anything happening.

Fame before the launch, capture during it, retention after. Run those simultaneously at equal weight and you pay to harvest demand you haven't created yet, then pay again to create it once nobody's buying. Motorcycle season, EuroBLECH, Black Friday, a product announcement — the calendar is part of the plan, not a constraint on it.

Below a certain weight, media does nothing at all. Not less. Nothing.

There's a floor under every channel and audience where the spend stops buying anything — not reduced effect, no effect. Most underperforming plans aren't badly targeted, they're spread so thin that six channels each sit below their own threshold. We size to the threshold or we tell you the plan
doesn't work at this budget and what to cut so it does. That's why our floor is €10,000 a month.

Proof gets designed before launch. Not reverse-engineered in Q3.

Measurement bolted on afterwards can only report what the platforms already wanted to tell you — which is why last-click keeps recommending last-click. We define what counts as evidence before anything runs: brand lift, share of voice, mental availability, geolift, media mix modelling where the spend justifies it.

The full method is written up here, free, with the template we actually use.

What our plans achieved

Kensa — making a heat pump brand famous during a heating crisis

Kensa is the UK's #1 ground source heat pump provider. Ground source is the most cost-effective and sustainable way to heat homes, schools, commercial buildings and whole neighbourhoods. We audited the strategy, positioning and spend, ran market and audience research, and rebuilt the media plan around separate messages for each of the four audiences who had to agree. We got CPL -30%, 2X the leads QoQ

Learn more about our Kensa work

Kongsberg Digital — $32M in PoC deals for a 200-year-old company selling the future

Kongsberg has been part of Norwegian industry since before ships were made of anything but wood. That legacy beats any competitor on trust and works against you the moment you try to sell digital twin software to drilling engineers, fleet managers and energy grid operators. The creative angle was space-optimism — Star Trek, not spreadsheets — which is how you get attention from a C-suite buried in identical vendor decks.

Campaigns led to $32M+ in proof-of-concept deals with Shell, BP, and Skanska. over two years. 852 qualified leads, 39% brand lift and 75% lower CPL.

Learn more about our Kongsberg work

**AMADA - 80 years of metal processing, and a campaign that said "Cut the Sh*t"**

After 80 years in business, AMADA is in the top of metal processing equipment manufacturers in Europe, with a rich legacy, broad offering, loyal customers, and cutting-edge technology. They knew they needed better marketing than what AMADA had.

To retain its market position and grow the business we needed to find ways to stand out, announce the brand while respectfully acknowledging almost a century of AMADA’s history.

Learn more about our AMADA work

Don't just take our word for it

We were facing a challenge to modernise our marketing systems and improve the efficacy & effectiveness of our digital marketing investment at Kensa I immediately thought of based.

Caroline Copsey, CMO

To break through the plateu we were facing globally, the team built and saved our lead gen setup many times. Trust their recommendations and optimizations without reservations.

Polianna Slatery, Marketer

Always professional and giving valuable feedback on how campaigns and setups can be improved based on previous experience.

Philip Ekman, HoM

This is not for everyone

Below €10,000 a month in media, we'll tell you to spend it on one channel properly and come back. We're not going to take a retainer to spread €4k across five platforms so a report looks busy. We don't run media separately from creative unless you make us.

We can — but if the creative is limiting the media, we're going to say so out loud, in writing, probably more than once. We decline crypto, high-risk categories, and anything connected to the russian federation or its allies.

based. is boutique, expensive and opinionated. If you want an agency that agrees with the plan you already have, there are four hundred of them and they're cheaper.

Got questions?
We got answers

What's your minimum media budget?

€10,000 a month. Below that you can't buy enough weight for brand effects to show up, and we'd be charging you to watch nothing happen..

Do you plan, or do you just buy?

Both, in that order. We won't take a buying-only brief against a plan we think is wrong — we'll tell you why first, and then you decide.

Which channels do you actually run?

Paid social (Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest), search (Google, Bing, Apple Search Ads), programmatic display and native, DOOH and static out-of-home, CTV, linear TV with some regional limits, and print.

Can you manage media separately from creative?

We can. We don't recommend it. If you've got existing creative we'll run it — and we'll tell you when it's costing you media efficiency. System1 found dull creative needs 2.6x the media spend for the same market share growth. That's your money, not ours.

How do you report?

Monthly reporting, quarterly business reviews. Reach, frequency, attention and brand lift alongside the performance numbers — because a plan built on last-click will keep recommending last-click.

How do you measure something as vague as fame?

Brand lift studies, mental availability tracking, purchase consideration, media mix modelling where the spend justifies it. Defined before the campaign starts, not reverse-engineered after. You get proof your CFO can't argue with.

Anything you don't do?

Crypto, high-risk categories, and anything connected to the russian federation or its allies.

Ready to leave competitors in the dust?
Send us your brief

Thanks. We'll read it properly and come back within two business days.If it looks like a fit, the next step is a 30-minute call about what the budget is supposed to achieve — before anyone talks about channels.

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