Media Week

The release of The Nielsen Company's annual agency billings table is always an eagerly awaited event in media-land - and this year is no exception.

The data is not 100% foolproof, especially for digital spend, but it does provide a bellwether for how each of the media agencies and their networks did in the previous year's trading.

This year's table, covering the 2008 calendar year, demonstrates further consolidation of UK media billings into the top four marketing services agency networks - WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and Aegis - but very different fortunes for the respective groups.

WPP demonstrated its might yet again, with all four of its agencies increasing their billings in 2008 - MediaCom by 4.11% to officially break the £1bn billings barrier for the first time, Mindshare by 0.03%, Mediaedge:cia by 4.92% and Maxus (formerly BJK&E) by 10.41%.

Aegis also performed more than creditably, with Carat up 6.47%, Vizeum up 13.21% and Feather Brooksbank holding steady, down just 0.76%.

But the results were much less positive for Publicis, Omnicom and Interpublic. Billings were down 15.5% at Publicis' Starcom UK Group, 15.03% at ZenithOptimedia and 13.31% at Zed Media.

Billings at Omnicom's OMD, which includes Manning Gottlieb OMD, were down 10.34%, and PHD was down 13.78%.

At IPG, the bad news continues, with Initiative billings down 21.62% and Universal McCann falling 17.27%.

In today's economic climate, the trend for the strong to grow stronger will only continue, with clients increasingly looking to consolidate their media accounts with one global agency network, as HP, Fiat, Renault-Nissan and Santander have all done to some extent in recent months. There is also a smaller trend for choosing media agencies in the same marketing services group as clients' creative agencies.

There is still room to manoeuvre, however, and an independent such as Walker Media has maintained its place in the top 10 agency list with its line-by-line trading offer. But the evidence suggests Phil Georgiadis' agency is bucking the trend rather than providing a template that will shape the future.

Billings aren't everything, but over at WPP Towers, Sir Martin Sorrell will look at these figures with some satisfaction and conclude that his media agency strategy is working extremely well, thank you very much.

It was somehow appropriate that I found myself interviewing Guardian News & Media managing director Tim Brooks and ShortList Media chief executive Mike Soutar as the latest magazine ABC figures were released. But at Publishing Expo last week, the former Emap and IPC executives displayed distinctly different attitudes to the future of print media.
Brooks reiterated his view espoused in Media Week recently that he couldn't see himself launching any more print products. Soutar, on the other hand, still sees print as an opportunity. Soutar's views merit respect, but fly in the face of popular opinion. From his early days editing Smash Hits to the editorship of FHM and becoming editor-in-chief of Maxim USA, he gained the experience that stood him in good stead as editorial director of IPC, where he led the development of Nuts, Pick Me Up, TV Easy and, two years ago, women's weekly Look. A year ago, he took a step into the unknown by launching ShortList, the ad-funded free magazine that has defied sceptics and now distributes more than 500,000 copies in 11 cities across the UK.
ShortList, Sport and Look are the only significant consumer magazine launches of recent years. Condé Nast is keeping the flag flying in the coming months with its biannual Love offering and a UK edition of Wired - but these could hardly be described as being in the mainstream. The rest of the magazine industry has pulled in its horns.
As Soutar pointed out at Olympia, the days of nurturing a launch carefully and gradually impinging it on the public's consciousness, as Emap did with Heat and Bauer had a habit of doing in the past, are gone. For a launch to be successful now, a title has to make an immediate impact from day one. Otherwise, like Chelsea football managers, they quickly find themselves on the scrapheap.
Soutar recalled the first issue of ShortList as the lowest point of his career, as bundles of copies of his beloved new magazine reappeared at the depot after the first day of distribution. The target audience just wasn't familiar enough with the concept of a free magazine. But Soutar persevered and has seemingly established the title as an attractive proposition for advertisers. How many other publishers will have the courage to make the same leap into uncertainty over the next 12 months?

Last week's fiasco during ITV's FA Cup football coverage was another reminder of how far ahead Sky is when it comes to covering our national game.

Viewers missed Everton's winning goal in a high-profile tie against Liverpool because ITV inexplicably shelled out to an ad break two minutes before the end of extra time. When pictures returned, Everton fans were celebrating the winner. It was not ITV Sport's finest hour.

When Setanta appeared, some observers predicted a serious challenge to Sky's football dominance. But in the latest round of Premier League rights negotiations finalised last Friday - for 2010-2013 - Sky won back one of Setanta's packages of 23 games, leaving the Irish broadcaster with just 23 of its own.

It's easy to forget what televised sport was like before Sky. The satellite pay-TV broadcaster was 20 this month and has been covering top-flight football for 17 of those years, since the inception of the Premier League in 1992. And it is football that has really driven the take-up of its subscriptions.

By the end of 2008, Sky had 9.2 million subscribers, in sight of its target of 10 million by 2010. It is signing up HD customers hand over fist and Sky+ has revolutionised TV viewing habits. It also has nearly two million broadband subscribers. Average revenue per user hit £444 in 2008, and that's before the company sold an ad.

The subscription model insulates Sky from the vagaries of the ad market. Indeed, in a recession, viewers are more likely to stay indoors and watch TV than go out.

Viewers have been enticed by the broadcaster's fresh approach to sport, which made even the BBC's coverage look old and dusty. Excellent presenters, 24-hour coverage, super-slo-mo, multi-screen, Fanzone and many other innovations define Sky football. And who would have thought watching four blokes watching football on a Saturday afternoon would make compelling viewing. But Jeff Stelling and his team have established an effective format that has been copied by other broadcasters.

Some initiatives didn't work. The UK was never going to adopt the Monday night live extravaganza that is a mainstay of American broadcasting, so the dancing girls and pre-match entertainment are long gone. Sky just does football, and does it very well. Anyone who wants to challenge its sporting dominance has to at least match those standards.

One of the most telling bits of this week's profile of Carat's outgoing managing director, Neil Jones, is his description of a typical working week.

Jones, who is leaving the Aegis agency to take up a commercial strategy director role at News International, is hard at it by 7.15am each day and doesn't leave until 7.45pm. It's typical of his no-bullshit approach and underlines the dedication needed to get to the top in media. There are those who say if you cut Jones he would bleed Carat, so it was a big decision to sever the umbilical cord and decamp to Wapping. After 18 years at Carat, Jones probably felt the next move would be pivotal and couldn't see an upward path.

His boss, Aegis Northern Europe chief executive Nigel Sharrocks, shows no signs of moving on - and when he took the European role last year, there was no accompanying promotion for Jones. If Sharrocks has been considering candidates for an Aegis UK chief executive position, Jones hasn't been one of them. The industry rumour mill had already gone into overdrive earlier in 2008 when agency veteran Mark Cranmer was brought in to Aegis on a part-time consultancy role. Rightly or wrongly, it was perceived as a snub for Jones.

Jones is an excellent appointment for News International and will bring with him superb client and media agency experience. He leaves big shoes to fill at Carat - in more than one sense. His position will be taken on an interim basis by the agency's capable deputy managing director, Steve Hobbs.

But the move is not without its complications. Jones' expertise with clients will be vital, but how will agencies used to facing him in hand-to-hand combat feel about dealing with him in his new guise, including, presumably, revealing their trading strategies? What happens if the NI move doesn't work out and Jones returns to agency-land with this new-found intelligence?

Then there's the question of how Jones will work with NI trading director Dominic Carter, who is understood to have been sceptical about the separate strategy role and fancied combining both tasks under his own remit.

But that's all for the future. For now, let's congratulate the likeable Jones and wish him well at NI.