IPA Annual Review 2010
The IPA has released its 2010 Annual Review with a round-up of the year and topline data from industry surveys.
And in his last foreword as president of the IPA, before Nicola Mendelsohn (chairman and partner of Karmarama) takes over, Rory Sutherland gives his predictions for the future of the IPA and the industry.
Sutherland talks of his genuine surprise how little attention is paid to “what you might call the human-led approach to problem solving”.
“My only problem with our industry is this,” he says. “Why is it so small? I recently spoke to an agency head who was not thinking of joining the IPA. ‘I only do two things: I win clients and I keep clients. Nothing else matters.’ But what about creating clients? Or new problems which may not even be funded by a traditional marketing budget at all.”
The Ogilvy Group UK vice-chairman also notes that “agencies need to learn, temporarily, to drop some of that gloriously robust independence and join forces, to conceive and promote, more thinking” around attaching extra value.
“Individually, as businesses, we are all too small to make this happen. Collectively we can. The IPA, with the help of Janet Hull and her team, has offered the perfect platform for this common cause.”
The review says 2010 will be remembered as a year of uncertainty and change with the formation of the first Conservative/ Liberal Democrat coalition government in UK history.
“The focus of the new government was to tackle the huge public sector deficit and to ensure the UK recovered from, and then did not suffer from, a double-dip recession. The impact on the COI, the UK’s biggest advertiser, was immediate with a 40% cut in budget and a review of staffing costs, in spite of the fact that a number of COI campaigns have a long-proven effectiveness track record.
“The impact of this decision on government targets, for example on reducing obesity through the Change4Life campaign, can only be guessed at, and will only be revealed in a few years time.”
2010 also saw the IPA/BDO Bellwether Report celebrate its tenth anniversary in July – charting an almost barely discernable return to recovery in its first and third quarter figures. The final
fourth quarter report revealed that although the overall figure for new budget setting in 2011 was higher than actual 2010 spend, more companies were revising their budgets down than increasing them (22% vs 17%) and business sentiment at the start of 2011 was at a low ebb.
The IPA Agency Census reported a 7.4% cut in staff numbers in agencies at the end of 2009 and a small rise of 1% at the end of 2010.
For agencies, it was a year of survival; for developing new ways of thinking and revenue streams, according to the IPA.
To download the full IPA Annual Review 2010, click here.