Recap of Australia Media event on Advertising and Media trends in the Australian market

Background of event: http://mumbrella.com.au/events?event_id=126

Major advertiser News Limited and key heads of Ad Agencies DDB, Y&R and PHD talked about trends in media and advertising. My thoughts on what was discussed below...

Ten things I think I think:

1. Great turnout with both client and suppliers in the audience
2. My CMO agrees with Joe Talcott (News Limited) - the media must connect media buy with sale transaction much better
3. Expert pannel and My CMO all agree that ROI is going to replace Nielsen and other current traffic metrics as the curency of advertising
4. Agree that the media needs to find ways to charge for content
5. Don't think agencies or Media gets Social Media in terms of product development/co-creation. Te panel dodged this question when someone brought it up
6. Like Joe Talcott (NEWS) quote on how Radio was supposed to kill papers in early 1900s. It's not Twitter that will kill papers, it's quality of the product or lack thereof.
7. Liked the debate on brand equity - best answer from Matt Eastwood DDB - Brand is tangible to the balance sheet; distrust directly correlates to battered share prices of Citigroup and Bank of America
8. Like Matt Eastwood DDB comment - pay content works with easy micropayments and quality product
9. "Best ads are ones you remember and bad ones are those you forget" - Joe Talcott (NEWS)
10.  Agencies still talking ads more than ROI

Overall, the Big Agencies and Big Media acknowledge the concept of ROI needs to become more ingrained in the product/service offering. The big challenge is making the organisation adapt to achieve this. Old habits dies hard. 

An excellent panel observation said that Social Media environments best show natural tendencies and behaviours that focus groups don't give (or ads for that matter). Combine that with the observation that product quality and creativity will dictate success - more than half the battle has been won. Things are not as dire for media as people make out.

Next steps are to use Social Media to capture the customer and use co-creation to find that which can be monetised in terms of content. This is not doing a Tweet to customers and saying "what will you pay for". Instead, it's taking the time to understand the customer problem and use cases through dialogue. That's not advertising or marketing, but relationship building over time.

Social media and related strategy is a methodical process and company wide approach. When done correctly, it delivers a wonderful discovery process. The critical added ingredient is the willingness of the business to 'co-create' new products based on this. The opportunity is there and there are many success that I could reference to show how this works.

**If your business faces such a challenge, feel free to contact me to discuss your own company and industry and how Social Media can make a difference to your ROI***

Rick Speciale

Director My CMO

http://xeesm.com/speciale/

0434079762

Who is My CMO?
My CMO is a marketing service and strategy business that works with clients to achieve ROI through marketing, product development and social media