Children are not a homogenous group. They decide for themselves, and now for the household. Win affinity, not just attention.

Generation Media was founded by CEO Dean Weller on a simple observation: agencies were treating children as a homogenous group, when comparing a toddler to a 16-year-old brings real challenges. Generic insight tools started at 16 plus, so the agency built its own capability at a global level, giving it a genuine understanding of the marketplace. It has since launched a host of specialist businesses, from insight to creative, and its breadth extends well beyond children into video gaming, fandoms and culture. After rebranding last year, the slogan became powering brands generation by generation, because that audience centricity can apply to any generation.

The agency is 18 years old, coming up to its 20th birthday. The first cohort it spoke to has grown up and is now reached through the video gaming market, and before long it will reach the older end of the audience too. Morgan calls it a cradle to grave philosophy.

The defining trait, Morgan says, is unpredictability. Best laid plans count for little because kids decide for themselves whether they like something. Demon Pop Hunters went up with no strategy behind it and became a phenomenon. The agency's job is to put science behind that uncertainty and work out what combinations give the best platform for success, while keeping pace with an audience of early adopters as new platforms keep arriving.

Children are now deeply involved in household decisions, and parents are heavily influenced by them, which is very different from a generation ago. Morgan rejects pester power in favour of parent-child negotiation. Even on big ticket items like a holiday, a car or a home, children have a strong say, and a child's dislike of a car brand can end the purchase there and then.

Deep insight throws up small nuggets that then trend through everything the agency sees. With partner Giraffe Insights, Morgan's team spotted the Bluey phenomenon in the research 18 to 24 months before it skyrocketed. Catching trends and crazes at their inception, rather than arriving after they are already out and gone, is the whole point of investing early.

The agency stays very close to every licence across every platform, because some things are flash in the pan and the moment has to be seized while it is there. It is building a tool called Foresight to track what is upcoming, something clients want to buy into, whether a toy brand chasing the next licence, a video game planning for Christmas, or a clothing brand chasing the next craze.

Morgan reverses the usual story. At inception the business was 99% linear TV, and the rate of change was slower than the market predicted. There is still something safe in the children's space about a trusted platform like TV, and it took COVID for the big move into digital. So despite the early adoption narrative, parental influence still shows, particularly with younger children, and the segment took longer to change than the wider population.

With a global approach there is no one size fits all, so the agency works glocal: local knowledge with a strategy that fits everyone. Across EMEA the biggest pattern is the timeline of children moving into digital. North America went first, the UK followed, and the rest of Europe took longer, which the agency turned to its advantage by applying lessons it had already learned up to COVID.

There is something beautiful, Morgan says, about families coming together again for shared experiences, with linear TV still acting as a unifier and a real gap opening in experiential, where families want to be out experiencing brands together. The measurement story is moving with it: from attention and awareness to engagement and affinity, the theme of the agency's coming video gaming conference with Bauer Media. Long-lasting loyalty, rather than pushing messages out at people, is what matters next.

Even so, Morgan resists discarding the basics. When she looks at competitors' plans, coverage and frequency have often vanished, yet they still carry value for understanding and comparison. The discipline is keeping thirty years of learning instilled and relevant to the new world. And every brief must start with a clear, signed-off objective, or benchmarks move halfway through with half the budget already spent.

Media is being commoditised and AI is driving it further. Once anyone can book a campaign at the touch of a button, standing out is the challenge. Morgan believes the agency owes its teams and future generations the skills that will be required, so it teaches strategy and how to have more challenging client conversations earlier in careers, because the administrative work that once trained juniors just isn't going to be there anymore.

As soon as the social media ban was announced, the agency had Giraffe Insights in market with a results deck on where the impact will land. Taking regulation at face value and dropping social or YouTube would be detrimental, so the work is understanding, by platform, how parents and children feel and where a plan will actually land. Brand safety sits high on the agenda, with partners tested for COPPA and GDPR, and first party data limits pushing the team towards more creative contextual targeting.

Asked as a new MD to define the agency's culture when it was four people, Morgan built it around values, behaviour and, above all, training and development, having seen its impact on her own career. The agency has become known as a centre of excellence for young talent, recognised by CPD Platinum for nearly a decade, Best Places to Work listings and Investors in People, where it moved from Silver, awarded to only 5% of businesses on first assessment, up to Gold. Growth past 60 people has not changed the aim of keeping that culture alive.

A strong directive leader by nature, Morgan credits her coaching degree for teaching her to lean into other styles, using active listening, curiosity and unconditional positive regard. Coaching moved her from telling people what to do to empowering them, admitting they sometimes do the job better than she would. As an employee ownership trust since November 2024, the agency gives the team a voice while balancing the temptation to overshare against letting people focus. Her advice to others is simple: listen to your people, the engine room on the frontline.

Growth excites Morgan precisely because it gets harder. The agency acquired a creative agency last summer, launched in North America this year, and has more international growth planned, moving client conversations from local to a more connected global level. Portal Studio's slogan, creative that performs, can now be underpinned by linking it to media metrics, turning it into an easy conversation about the return small tweaks can deliver.

The opportunity Morgan thinks is under-recognised is the older segment, where spending power is high and representation is thin. She argues for keeping the old-school metrics and linear TV skills that still work with those audiences and monetising them while they exist. Evolving generation by generation depends on recruiting the right specialists, so the agency has permission to speak to each audience. Her advice to aspiring leaders: don't get in the weeds, trust and empower your teams, and stay at the macro level.