2012: To be, or not to be, a better year… that is the question

Elliot Parkus, media director, AdConnection, gives a list of new year’s resolutions to carry us through 2012…

For many people working in media at the moment, there are twin concerns. Firstly, will I be able to get through December with my liver intact? I’m afraid I will be offering no advice on that one.

Secondly, and perhaps a more pressing question being asked, is whether 2012 will be an even tougher year than 2011? If so, and many including the government seem to be talking down the chance of economic recovery, what can we do to make our output more interesting and more able to cut through to a jaded and cynical audience? I have put together a list of new years resolutions, which could help along the path;

Challenge

The key to producing great work is to challenge. Challenge ourselves, challenge our teams, challenge our media owner partners. Most importantly we need to challenge our clients. In tough economic times, we know that behaviours of marketing professionals split into two camps; those that seize opportunity and those that fear failure.

I will come on to how to deal with failure below, but a client whose brief is a list of what they expect to see on the plan, or worse a cut down version of the previous year’s plan needs to be asked some questions.

If, as an industry, we want to try to stop the commoditisation that we bitterly complain about, doing the ‘harder, but necessary’ thing should never trump doing the ‘easy, but wrong’ thing. Push back, question, re-examine, redefine the problem, reframe the issues. If there is no brief, write it yourselves.

Accept (and learn from) failure

Of course, fearing failure is natural. No one wants to have the blot of failure on their CV. Our culture in the UK is much less forgiving than our cousins across the Atlantic when it comes to business mistakes.

However, as ‘The Undercover Economist’ Tim Hartford points out in his excellent book Adapt, the way that human beings learn and grow is through a succession of trial and error experiments. The greatest triumphs in human history are the culmination of hundreds of mistakes.

The trick, as ever, is to fail quickly and in controlled ways, then learn and adapt. This goes to the heart of the plethora of new opportunities presenting themselves to us in the media industry; how we measure our successes and learn from our failures is the key to plotting a path through an increasingly cluttered landscape.

Be a Consumer

The fragmentation of media opportunities, and the pace of change in the marketplace requires clear thinking. However, it is easy to overcomplicate. The clearest point of view is that of the consumer.

The consumer doesn’t care that you have a different communications objective on one media than another. The consumer doesn’t care that your strategy is from 2011 and, oh look, its January 2012.

The consumer sees messages from a brand. Are they consistent? Are they clear? Are they persuasive? Given consumer control over media, we can no longer be sure that consumers will view messages in a particular order. Each message must therefore stand alone, as well as marry up with other touchpoints to provide a coherent communication to consumers.

Beware fools gold

The rush for the new is exciting. We all want to be part of an innovative opportunity and to be able to stamp the words ‘media first’ onto our work. But we should not lose sight of the fact that there are still opportunities within mainstream media for high reach, high impact and also highly credible communications.

Traditional media owners are opening up to more flexible ways of working. The power of their content and their brands can be harnessed for the benefit of our clients. Consumers often have deeper relationships with this content than they will with our clients brands, so developing deeper partnerships with content owners are a way to stand out in media that consumers trust.

Have Fun

It’s a truism that we spend more time with our work colleagues than our families or friends. We work hard and often work long hours. But if 2012 is going to be another tough year we may as well have fun doing it.

Ours is an amazing industry, full of bright talented people. It’s an industry where socialising is positively encouraged. Let’s enjoy each other’s company, respect each other a bit more and make our work places areas where we encourage learning, drive personal development, and allow creativity and ideas to flourish.

Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year to all. Here’s to a great 2012.