Media Week

Media 360 last week provided a heady mix of client, media owner and agency wisdom as senior representatives from all parts of the media triumvirate debated the big issues of the day, book-ended by keynote presentations from Unilever's chief marketing officer Simon Clift and VivaKi managing partner Jack Klues.

Numis' Lorna Tilbian offered delegates at Media Week's high-profile annual summit a crumb of comfort with her view that financial markets will rally properly in Q4. While ITV's Rupert Howell and Global Radio's Stephen Miron gave their expected smooth expositions of the enduring strength and "bouncebackability" of commercial TV and radio, bantering with each other and, in Miron's case - slightly surprisingly given the ad budgets they control - an audience that contained dozens of senior client marketers.

But Clift and Klues painted a broad-brush picture and got to the nub of the macro issues facing the media industry. Clift's thought-provoking presentation outlined his belief that the nature of brands has fundamentally changed, with the speed of change outpacing the advertising industry's ability to meet it. He suggested there was inertia in the old ad models.

Unilever spends 3bn on advertising euros - still mostly on TV - to sell 40bn euros of basic products people will always need, such as soup, tea and toiletries. Clift believes Unilever is ahead of its competitors, but lags behind its audiences.

Klues, on the other hand, suggested his new Publicis Groupe VivaKi structure was creating, sorting and distilling the content, technology, tools and people it needed to help its clients provide consumers with what they need in the 21st Century. Contrary to Clift, he reckons his organisation is ahead of the consumer.

But, if media agencies are to provide their clients with what they need in this fundamentally changed environment, that's how it should be. A reliance on outdated models and entrenched views won't cut the mustard in a modern multimedia environment - and the agencies that recognise this and reshape themselves accordingly will help clients reach their consumers more effectively.

• Check out video interviews with Media 360 speakers and delegates from today (Tuesday). More footage, excerpts from conference speeches, galleries and further analysis of the big issues from the conference will be added over the next week.

If there's a Holy Grail that everyone in media keeps coming back to it is the subject of making money from online content. Media owners of all types are struggling with the conundrum of turning the massive engagement in their brands online into real financial benefits.

As he announced another round of plummeting profits at his newspaper division, even the great media guru himself, Rupert Murdoch, is mooting the charging of access to online content at one of his main titles within a year.

Newspapers attract huge audiences to their websites, much of it from overseas, but still have swathes of unsold inventory and low ad yields. Magazines are doing better, particularly specialist titles, but face many of the same issues. TV companies are gradually getting their online video players in order, but the model is ad-led and still has some catching up to do, as the recent Susan Boyle case proved when YouTube got the benefit of the traffic, not ITV. Radio is waiting for a switchover date before it can realise the benefits of digital audio.

Meanwhile, display and classified advertising is disappearing faster than Liverpool Football Club's Premier League title challenge. TV advertising is down as much as 20% in 2009 and there are doubts about the long-term viability of an ad-funded broadcasting model. Even digital pure plays are getting used to single-figure growth.

Whether Murdoch and co will impose a flat charge for content or an up-charge for added-value services remains to be seen. But the truth is News Corp's newspapers are already doing the latter, charging for online services such as bingo, betting, games, dieting and dating. The dreaded "micropayments" word has reared its ugly head again, although no one has made this one work in the past 10 years.

In these circumstances, there are two courses of action: sink your head into the sand, wail "Woe is me" and wait for the death of media as we know it - or be proactive and positive and look for the bright spots of optimism that exist if you look hard enough. If I know anything about this industry, it's the latter option that will be picked up and run with.

One of the things that can disappear in a recession if we are not careful is a commitment to attracting the brightest people into commercial media and retaining them within the industry once they have arrived.

Recruitment, retention and training can appear tempting targets for the accountants' pens when they are looking to strike a line through a particular cost centre in the budget that the chief executive wants re-forecasting.

This is, of course, short-sighted. Businesses must become lean and mean in an economic downturn, but they must also have an eye for the time when recession ends and the economic outlook improves. Talent is one of the key ingredients in ensuring businesses come out the other end fit for purpose and ready to drive on. And media businesses need to keep doing all they can to sell the careers on offer and encourage the best talent into our industry.

That's where Media Week's 30 under 30 initiative comes in. Launching this week, the competition is open to anyone in a media agency, media owner or client position who is under 30 on 28 July 2009 and hasn't appeared in a previous 30 under 30 list.

The 30 will then be cut down to a shortlist of five candidates who will present to our judging panel of senior industry figures for consideration as Rising Star of the Year in the Media Week Awards 2009.

Interestingly, when we caught up with last year's final five, all of them were working for the same companies they were when they won their award, proving that this process is not just a benefit for headhunters. Their companies have recognised the talent they possess and given them the opportunities to progress their careers internally, thereby retaining their best people and helping them contribute to the success of their organisation.

Last year, the initial number of entries exceeded 100 and the overall standard was exceptional.
To find out more about how to enter the competition yourself - if you feel particularly bullish about your own ability - or, alternatively, how to nominate someone in your organisation, request one from harriet.dennys@haymarket.com.