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Ad Industry Value: Up or Down?

In one of her latest post on the Forrester Blog for Agencies Mary Beth Kemp (who spoke at  marketing2.0 Conference by the way...) is trying to better analyse the evolution of the advertising industry. She says that "The ad industry has lost its spark. " and is wondering "why and how did that move from partner to vendor happen? And more importantly, what can agencies do to move the dial back - if anything? Any thoughts?". As cofounder of VanksenGroup I spent lots of my time wondering about the ad industry next move and the skills to develop to keep our clients happy, our team motivated and keep the business running. Therefore, please find below my 2 cents about Marry Beth questions...

I think that the challenge lies in breaking the barrier between digital and offline advertising. If digital agencies are only digital, they will only be considered as technical and design supplier... and you can always find a cheaper one regarding technology in Bulgaria, India, China, ... No wonder that leading web agencies in France such as Fullsix (and don’t get me wrong they do a really good job) are losing money.

On the other hand despite traditional advertising still keeping the main share of the marketing mix, it is losing ground each year to digital and alternative marketing. The few big traditional players that have succeeded in integrating digital will probably win both the digital and traditional business of their competitor agencies that have not.

Therefore I think that digital players should be quickly moving up the food chain and integrating strategy and traditional advertising skills. No brand is going to offshore their UK or France marketing strategy to an Indian or Chinese firm... on the contrary to their website development. In the web world, they are trained to adapt quickly and be constant learners. I bet that some of them will follow this path and will go after big agencies traditional business. This is the only way they will get paid good enough to survive and thrive... and to hire and pay talents properly...

Then developing efficient and smart multicultural and international capabilities is another way to go. Despite leaving in the EU unified market, I am always amazed about the strong differences existing from one market to another. Very few players can assist they client on different market. In the cosmetics and luxury market there is a strong demand for agencies able to deal with Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Middle East and Russian strong developing markets...  Even the big advertising players that only offer poor coordination and very expensive fees are not always up for the job…

Finally conceiving tools and platforms that offer real added value and proven measured ROI is another way to avoid competing only on prices. Creating platforms to monitor brand use and abuses online, to manage Search Engine Marketing, to seed and distribute digital branded content on the growing number on social media, to better track and optimize ROI on banners campaigns, to panel consumers and co conceive or co market products and services, to connect influential consumers and brands...

At least these are the approaches we have been trying to follow for the past few years at Vanksen (www.vanksen.com) and we have grown from 25 to 100 employee ( 14 nationalities) in just 1,5 years... This is just a start and critics may say that today small achievement is no proof or guarantee of tomorrow success… but I think passion despite being required is not enough… innovation is key.

Find more about this conversation on Forrester blog for agencies : http://blogs.forrester.com/agencies/2008/05/ad-industry-val.html?cid=116250186#comment-116250186

The future of media... a few links

While surfing I gathered a few really interesting links about the future and challenges met by traditional media with the digital era :

- WSJ is forecasting even more gloom in Newspaper Ad Sales. "Print-ad revenue plummeted 9.4% to $42 billion in 2007, according to an NAA estimate released Friday. Classified ads, which account for a third of the total, were hit especially hard, down almost 17%."
- It is maybe due to the fact that Communicators Are Out of Sync With the Way Consumers Use Media and that some are already realizing hit and shifting their media spendings, according to Ketchum?
"The way communicators dispense information is out of sync with the way consumers use media. Consumers Rely Most on Personal Experiences and Experts When Making Decisions.Advice from family and friends is the No. 1 source that consumers turn to when making a variety of decisions – ranging from purchasing consumer electronics to planning a vacation – and advice from an expert rates highest when making medical decisions and purchases based on a product’s environmental impact. Despite the strong evidence that friends, family and experts play a key role in influencing decisions, only 24 percent of communicators report having a word-of-mouth program in place.
Advice from family and friends is the No. 1 source that consumers turn to when making a variety of decisions – ranging from purchasing consumer electronics to planning a vacation – and advice from an expert rates highest when making medical decisions and purchases based on a product’s environmental impact. Despite the strong evidence that friends, family and experts play a key role in influencing decisions, only 24 percent of communicators report having a word-of-mouth program in place. Communicators must focus on speaking to individuals, not just broadcasting to the masses, when getting their messages across to this new ‘public of one."
- Mahmood N. Al-Yousif wrote an interesting article on the Huffington Post, about the complicated relationship between new and old media, the western and arab media.  He says : "Sites like the Huffington Post which generate over 100 million page views a month through to the Jordan-based Maktoob which enjoy over 270 million page views and many hundreds of thousands of registered users and over 100,000 registered blogs. These sites use all the new approaches and tools to attract more eye-balls (...) something that traditional news papers cannot emulate without intrinsically changing their business models (...) The sad irony; however, is that a large proportion of what is posted in new media sites is almost always dependent on what has already appeared in news papers (...) Entrepreneurs and publishers should recognise that pressing for change through innovation is right now. (...)The potential for this new media is multi-facetted: it's impact is economic and cultural. (...)In the cultural aspect, this media is dichotomous as it could be used for both closing the cultural gap between East and West as well as expand the fissures between the two."

- Google is on the raise and Newspapers are too pessimists (and freaked out to rethink their model?). "So, while newspapers have told me directly to my face what won't work, what isn't in their business plan, how holy their journalistic quality is, Google buys another property, puts another beta program into the consumer space, imagines what is possible. Google is an optimist. Newspapers are pessimists. I honestly don't care what happens to newspapers. The market is the jungle. The market is natural selection and will take care of this debate without us."

- IHT gives some good hints to print media on what advantages to develop to attract advertisers
- there are a lot of opportunities to leverage Traditional Media Placements in an Online World and Gregg Stewart from Search Engine Watch has published some interesting thoughts that many traditional media players should be reading... He is even imaginating that "publishers may negotiate traditional media placements on performance-based pricing scenarios similar to the CPC"

- Hopefully some counter example in the media world are showing that when excellence is there (I am talking about the amazing Monocle magazine (from Tyler Brûlé, an ex Wallpaper guy)), perfomance is following up too. One of their ex collaborator of have published an amazing analysis about their online strategy and design choices during this 1st year of existence

If you have found some great links about the subject, feel free to share them with us ;)

The future without media... but with EPIC?

In the year 2014 the New York times has gone offline, the Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned... What happened to the news? and what is EPIC. Thanks Joël for this really interesting (even if a bit grey) video that reminds us that technology can always be used for the best or the worse...

Source : http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/ (thank you Joël for the link)