A Media Christmas Carol
2001 is nearly over…how was it for you? Jon Wilkins of Naked Communications, takes a literary view of the year just gone, and offers his ideas for the way forward in what could prove a challenging year.
2001 – Ghost of Media past 2001 has been a weird old year. This was supposed to be the year the media agency grew up, the year media challenged for supremacy at the top table of boardroom debate. Media agencies were going to kick advertising agencies up the arse, and kick them into shape, they were going to become more like management consultants, they were going to advise on all the new digital channels, they were going to start making creative work themselves blah blah blah.
So where did it all go wrong? Media companies are now bloody big, and changing them takes time. Media agencies are dependent on many sources of income, some brand spanking new and exciting, others really old fashioned (commission, interest from money swilling in bank accounts etc). It is this weird dependence on all the old stuff that is stopping them going forward. Globalisation started to hinder as well as help, as big agencies won big clients and lost them again on a whim of some fat Yank in Denver.
Media owners have also had a funny old year. Many of them had had bumper years riding the back of a positive economy and incredibly famous brands like shoesdirect.com, with their millions of pounds of budgets getting people to realise what a stupid idea it is to buy shoes over the internet. When people returned to Dolcis and normality, and the global economy disappeared up its own proverbial, all of a sudden the money started to dry up. Panic set in, people suddenly realised you had to work hard to fill ad spaces, and actually be strategic and creative at the same time.
Media owners, with their vast portfolios of media brands, are now finding it tough. Clients will always love brand leaders in any walk of life, but if you are one of forty women’s magazines, and are precariously placed at number 39 in terms of circulation forget it, as IPC has found out.
Ghost of media present… So where are we right now? Well there are vaguely promising buds of optimism around the economy for later next year, but in the meantime life is tough. We’ve all got to get our heads down, be professional, get on with our jobs. Ideas are the premium people will pay for, not systems or process and the sooner our industry realises this the better…
Ghost of media future So where next? Well, let’s start delivering and filling some of the hot air we’ve all been spouting for the last few years. Let’s practice what we preach and act like the creative businesses we really are. Let’s lose all the dodgy malpractice that still makes our industry whiffy, let’s all move to fees, let’s all pay the right price for great ideas, let’s really understand the word media value, not media discount. Only if we do this will we all have top Xmas.
For the media Christmas Carol, let’s not let Tiny Tim die, give up our Scrooge-like tendencies and have a bit more faith and fun!
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