As Robert Frost wrote in Mending Wall, “Good fences make good neighbours.” Good fences are contractually required by advertising agencies with conflict accounts. As part of your agreement with each of your conflict accounts, the agency promises to build a “Chinese wall” around all of the advertiser’s work to prevent information from leaking to a competitor.

The problem with Chinese walls is they are very difficult to enforce at an advertising agency. Most agencies still operate on Microsoft Excel-based manual workflows. These generic office tools lack the security features to enforce the Chinese wall. The manual workflow doesn’t enforce the Chinese wall. So, it’s up to the advertiser’s client team to remain diligent.

But as warned in Mending Wall, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.” With Excel-based workflow and tools, it’s hard to enforce and to prove compliance with the Chinese wall. Even Donald Trump couldn’t build a wall around a hodgepodge system like this.

As a solution to this problem, Bionic has enhanced its media planning software to enable media agencies to enforce Chinese walls with security and confidence.

Specially designated administrators can now “lock down” access to sensitive accounts. You’ll find a new “Security” tab under the advertiser settings that enables you to choose between open (the default) and restricted access. When restricted access is chosen, you can then specify who can access the account. Those not on the list will not be able to access the account.

Here’s a screen shot:

bionic-security

If you’re already using Bionic media planning software, you already have this new feature installed as part of last week’s upgrade. If you don’t yet have Bionic, you can learn more about it, see a demo, and get your account here: https://bionic-ads.com/planner/