South Africa, July 4 -- Media would typically be briefed separately by the client, and there was little collaboration with us on how the strategy was being built or how it influenced the creative.

If we were lucky, our slides might be collated into one deck a few hours before the presentation - a superficial show of "integration." But meaningful, joint strategy development? That just didn't happen.

In 2018 that changed. I had recently joined the Absa team at Wunderman Thompson when I had my first real experience of collaborative strategy - with the team at Carat.

Their strategists were so eager to share their thinking, it felt only natural that we'd do the same. Despite being briefed separately, we started reaching out proactively, exp...