Back in the day when newspapers were newspapers a good media quiz question was: Who has the most upscale male readers? ‘The Financial Times’ or ‘The Sun’?
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares? Onwards.
04 November 2024
In April, Nick Manning and I started a grassroots movement called ‘Advertising: Who Cares?’ (AWC) because of a number of serious, even existential, threats to not only the craft but ultimately the business of advertising.
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares? Now What?
10 October 2024
About a month ago (September 12th) we launched the Advertising: Who Cares? movement with a 4-hour long event at London’s Royal Society of Arts. We had an exceptional speaker line up; we sold every seat; we paid no-one and spent nothing. We took no sponsorship money. We raised money for NABS, the advertising industry charity.
This all demonstrates a few things to me. Not least on the importance of encouraging free debate and discussion, something that rarely happens at sponsored conferences where speaker selection and sponsors are intertwined – but that’s for another post.
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares? Who Wouldn’t?
29 August 2024
Advertising reflects society, it doesn’t drive it, which would go some way to explaining why the industry today is so divisive. Everything is black or white, you’re for me or against me. You love or you hate. Compromise is for wimps. Discussion wastes time, debate is the enemy of progress.
In April, Nick Manning and I had one of our regular two-old-guys-in-a-coffee-shop-moaning-about-the-state-of-the-ad-industry sessions. This one was a little different – for two reasons.
Read moreGARM Gone
15 August 2024
Elon Musk’s decision to start legal action against the World Federation of Advertisers (the WFA) and their working group the now-sadly-departed Global Alliance for Responsible Media (X was a proud GARM member) on the basis that advertisers are not advertising on X is, to use a word of the moment, ‘weird’.
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares? Altogether Now
04 July 2024
Last week the ad business came together to celebrate creative excellence at the annual Cannes Festival.
Or: last week the ad tech giants along with a number of circling bankers and assorted money men came together in Cannes to celebrate the takeover of the ad business by a combination of machines and mathmen.
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares? Redressing the Balance
13 June 2024
Since Nick Manning and I started what has become the Who Cares? movement we have been asked by various people what our motivation is, and why such a thing is necessary.
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares? The Pros and…
23 May 2024
Advertising: Who Cares? “Let’s Start…
09 May 2024
… at the very beginning. A very good place to start”. [Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers]
The last Cog Blog post, co-authored with Nick Manning created a stir. Described by some as a ‘call to arms’ and no doubt by others as ‘two old blokes desperately seeking relevance’ (which by the way we neither need nor want), the point we were, and are making is that for many in the advertising industry the advertising itself has become an after-thought.
Read moreAdvertising: Who Cares?
25 April 2024
The craft of advertising faces a crisis. And without the craft the business per se is in trouble, adrift in a sea of creative and media sameness without verifiable, solid data to cling on to.
Read moreSaying and Doing
04 April 2024
During a video interview with Havas Global’s Managing Director Jon Waite (soon to be released as an asiCast, watch this space) Jon referenced an event he had been at during which a poll of the audience revealed that 79% were familiar with attention metrics. When members of the audience were asked how many adopted an ‘always on’ approach when it came to using these data the number dropped to 1. Not even 1%, just 1.
Read moreRelationships, Dear Boy…
15 March 2024
Harold Macmillan, UK Prime Minister in the 1960s was once asked by a journalist what was the most difficult thing about being Prime Minister. His reply: “Events dear boy, events.” It may be unfashionable to say so but the most difficult thing about being a media agency in the 2020s is not systems, algorithms or even blog posts from smarty-arsed consultants but relationships with clients.
Read moreThe Wrong Metrics
28 February 2024
This post is made up of elements that have appeared previously on ‘The Media Leader’ in two separate pieces in February 2024
For some while now the industry has faced a problem with its basic metrics. I say ‘faced’ although the truth is we haven’t faced up to the issue at all, doing that curious media dance of sticking our fingers in our ears, twirling round three times, clicking our heels, and hoping the problem will go away.
Take share-of-voice, or SoV.
Read morePolitics in Measurement
01 February 2024
Opening one of the sessions at last November’s asi Conference in Nice, Richard Marks (who, with Mike Sainsbury does a sterling job putting the event together each year) made the point that he has never known a time when the politics of measurement is so all-pervasive.
He’s right – and it is disturbing.
Read moreThe Post Office: Lessons in Media
18 January 2024
One of the unintentionally hilarious things about LinkedIn is the number of earnest posts telling us all what we can learn from this event or that occurrence. ‘5 Things Every Marketer Should Take From King Charles’ Coronation’. The fact that I feel the need to explain I made this up says it all.
Read moreWhen Reality Meets Marketing – A Cautionary Tale
07 December 2023
Full Disclosure: I am a Non-Exec Director of MESH, mentioned here.
In his speech to this year’s MRG Conference Phil Smith, DG of the UK advertiser association, ISBA made the point that advertising isn’t quite as powerful a force as its creators like to think.
Read moreFeeding the Monster – The Tyranny of Big Numbers
22 November 2023
Earlier this month I chaired the advertising session at the annual asi video and audio measurement conference in Nice. This post is based on my opening remarks.
This session is all about looking at the world of audience measurement from an advertising, and advertiser perspective.
I believe we are fast approaching a tipping point. We have for years inhabited a world within which the most important, some would say the only thing that mattered was how many ‘somethings’ you bought, and at what price.
Read morePassing the Measurement Buck
26 October 2023
This post is based on an article in The Media Leader published on 23rd October 2023
I didn’t go to Adwanted’s ‘The Future of Media’ event the other week – it seems inappropriate for an old guy who started his career in the full-service era to attend anything with ‘future’ in the title. As one delegate put it: “This is The Future of Media, not the future of 1980s ad agencies.”
Read moreThe Future for Media Agencies
12 October 2023
I did consider titling this post ‘The Future of Agencies?’ With a question mark. As in: ‘Is there one? But on reflection I settled on the above. There is a future, but my old friends and colleagues need to get their skates on.
Read moreSomething Lost Along The Way
21 September 2023
I come from a generation that grew up professionally in full-service ad agencies – where everything, including creative, planning, media, even in some cases packaging and market research was all done under the one ad agency roof orchestrated by account people.
I mention this as the concept of integration of media with creative is hardly new. It’s where we started.
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