"Data-led" advertising planning should be the big trend in the industry over the next year, according to Aoibhin Lennon, the MediaVest client director who has won the "Rising Star" gong at the Media Awards 2014 – a ceremony that recognises the best work on the commercial side of the business.

“It just depends on whether clients are willing to share their data with media agencies,” she says.

Investment
Agencies are constantly working on "getting a lot closer" to their clients' business, notes Lennon, who is the lead planner for two of MediaVest's largest clients, O2 and Aviva.

“We are looking at where their sales are coming from and we are basically able to change what we’re doing on the media investment side quite quickly,” she says of the insurance company.

Lennon recently returned to Dublin and took up the position at the Core Media-owned agency after two years of “extremely hard work” in Sydney, where she managed the multimillion dollar Volkswagen Group Australia account.

The main difference between the Australian and Irish industries, she observes, is that the budgets she managed there were “huge” by comparison.