The idea that coherent marketing communications programmes should start with some sort of media planning, rather than deciding where to shoot a 30-second TV script seems so self-evident today that it is hard to believe that it could be done any other way.

Yet this common-sense practice is still by no means universal. All over adland there are flat earthers who insist on placing creative execution before media strategy. In fairness, this is often because it is assumed that the client has made the difficult media choices in advance of briefing the ad agency.