Media Week

Yes the system is totally broken and is best summed up by the quotation (below) from the commercial innovation manager at Channel 4 Lindsay Gibson, commercial innovation manager at Channel 4 said, “Broadcasters believe the traditional break must be reinvented. Yes, this is a risk and there are at least four scenarios where things could go wrong, but the idea is to break out of the confines of a 30-second advert and create a must see event.” The sad fact is that within the advertising industry the old (bad) way is invariably the comfortable option for most advertising people. New ideas have to be imposed or they will never be implemented. Bottom-up reform is as plausible as bottom-up rain. The huge sums broadcasters pay to land programmes and presenters are an indication of the weakness of the media. For example Channel Five paid £300m over 10 years to land the Australian soap “Neighbours” and poached newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky from the BBC. And the very source that funds such indiscriminate purchasing behaviour is advertising. And Customers are growing increasingly disenchanted with their overall television experience and dislike TV advertising more than anything else on the box, according to a recent survey. We live in a world where advertising and marketing constantly come up against an inconvenient truth, there is still to day no firm evidence that advertising works at all, especially television advertising. It is this self-proclaimed consensus amongst advertising agencies and the media that it does work that has detached itself from the questioning rigors of hard research. Those of us who dare question the dogma "advertising works" are vilified as heretics or worse as deniers. There is a need for heretics because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on the bigotry of vested interests. The truth is that there are no facts that link television advertising to sales, even after all these years! Dealing with the future will require significant changes in the ad industry. Media research- how advertisers measure what people watch and how they respond to ads-will have to get considerably savvier about gauging media consumption habits. Creative ad teams will have to understand the communication process better and then make involving ads that people are actually interested in reading/watching. However the new form of “advertising” has been around for a number of years, rejected by the advertising industry because it was totally accountable and far more effective. All is revealed in my book “Television killed advertising” to be published at the end of this Summer (End September) you should try it, it gives chapter and verse as to the new form of marketing communication together with heaps of independent research.

Let us know if advertising your book on this site worked or not.

Paul, may I point you to the IPA advertising works books, which, short of implementing chips in the brains of every man, woman and child exposed to commercial messages, do a pretty good job of demonstrating its effects. All based on the levels of mathematics that an AS level student can grasp.

All purchasing is becoming commoditised these days. Agencies need to base their presentations not on price, not on creativity, but on the ROI they generate. Isn't that what marketing should be about? If you can't prove your ROI then your proposals are unlikely to be given much credence anyway. Matthew Parker www.printandprocurement.com

Interesting point Matthew - I would argue that ROI might be a red herring as a proxy. It is about the value created and exchanged that is important - not just ROI - although that may be one of the key considerations. Procurement hasn't landed itself with the epitaph 'knows the price of everything and the value of nothing' for.. well - nothing.

My interpretation of the article is that the lack of transparency, the holding media owners to ransome, media owners playing the game by offering inflated commissions (which in itself is a dubious method of rewarding agencies for sending a simple booking e-mail) to ensure their options are pitched in, the rise and burgeoning dominance of the specialist buyers combined with the commodisation of certain media, the development of newer, more refined innovative media solutions which require variable pricing models (the costs of the development which are borne entirely by media owners I must add) are the real challenges because it is the client ultimately who pays for it all. To allow for all of this media owners artificially inflate their rates to include commissions to ensure they are able to achieve the margins required to keep themselves in business and continue innovating for the agencies. It would be interesting to see the current planning and buying model currently employed in the UK referred to the EU commission as I'm sure some agencies would be loathe to have investigators go through their books with a fine tooth comb - hypothesis only. Other industries (consulting, accounting, legal, finance etc.) are predominently fee based unless time is allocated to fully scope projects and allow real budgets to be applied to real jobs so perhaps it's time to follow suit and demand wholesale changes. To round up, in a previous role I have seen my company turn down business because the finances were all wrong. In the US the Sarbanes Oxley act requires financial controls to be implemented at all stages of the tendering process to ensure transparency with any major deviations in the tender process i.e. major discounts being the ultimate responsibility of the CFO or equivalent. Perhaps if this was the case in the UK agencies, clients and media owners would all co--exist in a happier world with no-one thinking they had been held over a barrel to win business...just a thought.

I have to be completely open and say that when I am requested to access evidence of accountability within the IPA websites I am, to say the least, reluctant to do so, why? Because the evidence is probably as reliable as that so thoroughly rebutted by Professor Robert Shaw recently in the Financial Times! It would appear that the Americans are more capable of being pragmatic regarding the value of the advertising contribution, and I would sooner listen to what they have to say. .A majority of US marketers believe that television advertising has become less effective over the past two years, spurring interest in exploring new ad and video commercial formats. Research published recently by Beyond Philosophy, a UK company specialising in customer attitudes, claims 82 per cent of people never believe their experience of an organisation will match the image promoted by television advertising. Beyond Philosophy concludes that television advertising may actually be harming, rather than enhancing, companies' relationships with their customers. Meanwhile, research by the Henley Centre has shown that while nine out of ten people will trust their spouse or partner and eight out of ten their children, fewer than a third (27%) trust retailers or manufacturers, while just 14% trust either the government or advertisers! ‘Consumers increasingly do not trust marketing messages.' A seven-word statement that could lead to the most fundamental changes yet experienced by advertising agencies world-wide believes Forrester Research. This continuing and seemingly perpetual belief of advertising’s enormous power and the almost inevitable effectiveness of image advertising grew as mass advertising followed mass manufacturing in the 50s’ and ‘60s. Mass manufacturing led to one-size-fits-all products. Local, individualised, and speciality products disappeared, and mass consumerism was achieved, yet strangely the recent statement “Advertising is a no win situation” appears to trouble the Advertising Community not at all! Hence the ultimate expression of advertising’s’ contempt in the customer is the utter waste of £500.000 recently spent on the Honda skydiving “advertisement”! My book “Television killed advertising” out end of September details just how ineffective advertising is and how clients can immediately resolve the problems of waste and clutter!