Sorrell Tells Ad Industry To Go Neutral
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the world’s largest marketing and advertising group, WPP, has warned the industry to refocus on ideas and go media neutral.
Speaking at a recent marketing conference exploring media neutral planning, Sorrell pointed to brands being built in unconventional ways, highlighting the recent, much-acclaimed Mercedes adverts. According to Sorrell: “They focus on the ends and are fabulously disinterested in the means. They are discipline neutral.”
Sorrell criticised the continued isolation of different media platforms and agencies, commenting: “Visit a direct marketing agency with any business problem and the solution will inevitably involve direct marketing. Take the same problem to an ad agency and it would involve TV ads and so on, people redefine every problem in terms of their proposed solution.”
WPP, which handles advertising and marketing for companies such as Unilever and Ford, claims to be addressing the problem by hiring special co-ordinators to work across multiple marketing platforms. It is also understood to be training its staff to understand rival disciplines.
WPP’s initiative, follows Unilever’s recent decision to sign a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal to advertise brands such as Dove across AOL Time Warner’s TV, new media and print outlets in the US (see AOL And Unilever Strike Global Cross-Media Deal).
Sorrell is not the first to urge a refocus on creativity and integration across media platforms. Commentators have argued that the pressure for financial accountability, based on the efficiency of buying, has effectively blocked media-neutral planning from being anything other than a industry buzz-word.
According to Sorrell, the recession is a good time to start implementing media-neutral planning because in boom-time no one wants to challenge the status quo. However, his critics may argue the opposite, claiming that the ongoing advertising downturn will cause media neutrality to remain firmly in the realm of terminology.
WPP: 020 7408 2204 www.wpp.com
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