ISBA Annual Conference 1999: Fast Forward To Marketing’s Third Millennium
Much of the talk at yesterday’s Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) conference was of uncertainty – uncertainty as to the short- and medium-term economic outlook for the UK, European and global economies and, more specifically, the future implications for advertising in a rapidly diversifying media landscape.
Opening the proceedings, ISBA president, Peter Blackburn, reported an upbeat ISBA bill of health. Operating in an economic downturn, ISBA membership now exceeds 300 advertisers with subscription revenue topping the £1.4 million mark, he said. This marks an approximate 40% increase on 1995 figures.
Blackburn’s address centred on a rallying of the advertising troops, saying there was a need for advertisers to stand together and to use ISBA to help convince company managers of the need for marketing and advertising. Branding, he said, should permeate the thoughts of all company directors – not simply those directors directly responsible for marketing and advertising.
In a future market environment, where the number of platforms will increase and potential customers fragment even further, advertisers need to be able to exercise their ‘right’ to advertise “freely and competitively”, stressed Blackburn. Opponents of this freedom were ‘dinosaurs’, he suggested. Perhaps not realising the potency of his own metaphor, Blackburn argued this school of thought was bound to die simply from the sheer strength of media competition – the more players competing for a share of the cake, the more the need for a ‘level playing field’. It is now up to ITV and ISBA, added Blackburn, to schedule flexibly and competitively in delivering higher audiences of the ‘quality’ that advertisers seek.
A healthy advertising industry, we were told, is not just built on deregulation. It must be premised on sound economic predictions. Whilst many of the conference discussions asked whether we were indeed in a recession, the underlying theme was very much concerned with how to disengage from short-termism. It was suggested that trust should be placed in a mid- to long-term flexibility to clients’ needs and that all new market/technological opportunities should be explored.
This theme was eloquently outlined by David Kern, chief economist at NatWest, who emphasised that even where economic growth hovers close to 0% it is wrong to speak of being “in a recession”. We should, he warned, speak instead of the current state of play as being an economic “downturn” – a downturn, he was quick to assure, which is flatter than the recession of the early ’90s, when base rates had to rise to over 15%.
Of all the world economies, added Kern, Western Europe and the US are easily in the best positions. This is after we take into consideration the launch of the euro and Y2K incompatibility. Leaving himself open, perhaps, to the Keynesian adage that “in the long run we’re all dead” Kern said that advertisers shouldn’t live and die by exact predictions in the short to medium term. He certainly didn’t. In fact as chief economist of the NatWest Group he said he couldn’t:: “too many political and/or economic spanners can appear”. Advertisers should do likewise, planning sensibly and rationally, but overall recognising the need for flexibility, says Kern.
Ken Vivian, marketing director – Consumer & Dental Brands, Stafford-Miller – also stressed the need for clients and advertisers not to panic in the short-term, changing track too quickly. He advised against the churn of staff and agencies, especially in an economic downturn. The thrust of his address clearly urged us not to ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’. He pointed to the work by McGraw Hill and others who “…in analysing the benefits of advertising in a recession demonstrate remarkably consistent findings, that maintaining or increasing advertising expenditure during a recession not only results in benefits during the recession itself, but longer-term benefits which continue well into the next economic upturn”. These conclusions mirror those outlined by the Advertising Association recently.
Continuity should not, however, lead to complacency. As the UK managing director, Mars Confectionery, Bill Ronald reinforced, both industry and advertisers will need to work even harder in locating customers but, more importantly, responding to customer needs. Whilst it is perfectly valid to speak of globalised branding (‘One World’), he said, there will still need to be a company presence at a community/local level (‘Our World). But advertisers and industry, especially in the fmcg sector, cannot afford to ignore to fact that individual customer needs will be paramount (‘My world’). Industry will have to continue their customisation of brands across cultures and into individual environments.
Much of the afternoon at the ISBA conference was devoted to developing the theme of the Future Media Marketplace. It drew on two related sub-themes: locating the audience/customer and the right or freedom to advertise to those customers. Developing on Peter Blackburn’s call to “increase the role of advertisers as major participators in the funding and self-regulation of new media”, Nick Shepherd, general manager, Coffee & Food, Kraft Jacobs Suchard, suggested that:
“If [we imagine] programmes are brands, it’s not a very big leap to see TV channels as retailers. Most of these programme retailers provide a hypermarket type offering where something of everything is increasingly available. But if you want something more specialist you go to where you’ll have the range to choose from, for example, for Lilly Whites, read Sky Sports.”
Having identified where an audience is located, former ISBA president, Simon Bullimore, suggested that advertisers must then be allowed to address that audience. Choosing the example of advertising to children, Bullimore clearly questioned the introduction of any regulation that may restrict the numbers and type of audiences advertisers can address.
“The proposition”, said Bullimore, “…is that the issue of advertising and children is a menace not just to those who advertise to children but a menace to all advertisers”. There is simply no clear evidence, he says, which identifies a linear causality between children’s advertising and health and social deprivation – the argument being that advertising to children increases their demand for products which, in turn, impacts on the finances of the family or parents. One can only wave a regulatory wand if this link is firmly established by a firm body of evidence, he argues.
Even in a hypothetical context, says Bullimore, where a direct link between children’s advertising and social harm is accepted by all as existing, what good does a ‘wave of a regulatory wand’ do? Have the Nordic countries with their recent attempts to restrict children’s advertising set an example we should all follow, he asks.
To restrict children’s advertising, and here we are primarily speaking of television advertising, is to ignore the fact that children, whether we like it or not, are socialised beings. Sitting in school they are aware of the trainers others are wearing, the pop groups being listened to, even before they decide which can of fizzy drink to have at lunchtime. Restricting children’s advertising, concluded Bullimore, will not, and indeed can not, circumvent this social interaction.