‘Future Of Outdoor’ Seminar Examines Agency Engagement
Yesterday’s MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future Of Outdoor’ saw the message come through that outdoor specialists haven’t really been engaging with agencies up to this point, but as digital becomes more important it will be imperative that they do so.
Panellist Roy Jeans, CEO of IPM, said that it had not been that essential for specialists to engage with agencies in the past, but the growth of digital would necessitate a change in that way of thinking.
Jeans said that it is possible that some media agencies see outdoor, along with online, as out of their day to day remit, and whilst they are perhaps changing their models due to the success of online, outdoor needs to continue to correctly market itself as an industry in order to get the same level of recognition.
Meanwhile, Craig Wills, head of strategy – Open at JCDecaux, said that engagement with agencies comes down to individuals. Wills said: “We’ve got different shop windows, we sell different wares, we have different points of view, we have slightly different products and slightly different approaches and we have different research.
“I think that the key is that agency involvement isn’t ring-fenced by specialists or anybody else, because if we’re going to get into econometric modelling we’ve got to understand what that box looks like, what the inputs are, what the outputs are, we have to have engagement on that level, and also to ensure that we’re not selling commodities, we’re selling business solutions to clients and we’re selling opportunities to engage with consumers.”
Jeans said that part of the problem with engagement lies with the way agencies can perceive specialists. He said: “Some agencies want us to do a bit of donkey work for them, but they don’t really want us to get involved in the planning at all. So I think we have a bit of tension in the relationship between specialists and the media agencies as to actually what we do.
“I think our relationship with contractors is pretty clear, I think we are a sales arm for the contractors, and I see IPM, for example, as a sales company first and a buying company second – if we haven’t got any clients we haven’t got anything to buy with, because at the end of the day we’re spending clients money.
“If you look at some of the bigger groups, Publicis don’t have an outdoor specialist operation, Omnicom don’t really have an outdoor operation, certainly not in the UK – they’ve farmed it out – you could argue that they’ve abdicated responsibility. You have this situation in the UK where you’ve got – it’s an image that was used by a research inspector last week – you’ve got two aircraft carriers, Posterscope and Kinetic, and you’ve got the frigate which is IPM, and you’ve got the destroyers as well.
“We would argue that we’re a bit smarter and leaner and quicker, and you’ve got these two huge monsters, both with about 40% market share. Is that sustainable? I don’t think it is frankly.”
Jeans added: “At the end of the day agencies follow money, so if there’s money there I think the clients will be convinced by the agencies to go [to outdoor advertising]”.
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