Opinion | Features

• Look past the condom jar and see the real problem

  Southern Cross Austereo's Perth boss Linda Wayman's comments on work-life balance and handing out condoms to staff have made international headlines. SheSays Sydney head Yasmin Quemard argues these issues don't just affect women, but the industry as a whole.  My sole purpose in this response to yesterday’s article is to reset the conversation. Firstly this is not a discussion around motherhood it is discussion around parenthood. This is not a female issue this is a people issue. People have babies. People bring up children.

• Falling TV audiences aren't the problem, fixed inventory is

  As television audiences decline Carat's Paul Wilkinson asks if the problem is not so much falling audiences but rather the inventory model upon which free-to-air television is bought.   Ok, let’s not beat about the bush, let’s rip off the plaster and talk honestly for a moment; TV viewing is down. There you go. I said it. Somehow I feel better for saying it. Phew!

• The lowdown on The Economist’s APAC plans

  The Economist's chief marketing officer Michael Brunt talks about how the brand is perceived in Asia, how digital is sold differently to print, why it will never budge on ratecard and why Australia is one of its best markets, in an interview with Mumbrella Asia editor Robin Hicks.   So what’s the plan to grow in Asia this year? Asia is incredibly important for us because of the way we classify our audience.

• Vain, deluded, indecisive, biased: this is the 'average' consumer

  In this cross posting from The Conversation Paul Harrison of Deakin University looks at the problems posed by trying to define what the average consumer is. Who is the “typical” or “average” consumer? Is there such a thing? What do they look like? How do they make decisions? Am I an average (or perhaps a below average) consumer? It’s something that comes up a lot in discussions around consumer protection, consumer advocacy, and regulation. Judges in consumer cases, for example, often ask whether the average person would understand their obligations in relation to a particular contract to which they have agreed. Similarly, cases related to the advertising of over-the-counter medicines, often rely on a judgment as to whether a typical consumer would understand the intentions of a particular advertisement.

• YouTube's branded content crackdown - what you need to know

  In this guest post, Nick Fawbert highlights what YouTube’s rules for branded content mean for advertisers and multi-channel networks. There was something of an inevitability about last week’s dismay over YouTube’s ‘clarification’ on the fees payable for branded content on YouTube’s channels. No commercially viable major platform is likely to offer free access to valuable audiences in perpetuity.

• You'll struggle with the culture shift, Mat: The DNA of media buying is completely different to earned media

  In this guest post, Anthony Freedman argues that media agencies will find it harder than they think to shift into public relations territory because it requires an entirely different culture. Like a lot of people, I noticed the coverage surrounding Mat Baxter’s reveal of UM’s new “Creative Connections Agency” positioning last week. It started with a piece in Mumbrella provocatively headlined “Media agencies aren’t our competitors” and continued the following day after Mat was goaded into stating UM “won’t be entering media agency awards any more”. For anyone who didn’t read the stories, the gist of it is this; UM is no longer a media agency, it’s a ‘connections company’ that is embracing earned and owned media, and thus will herein compete with the likes of R/GA, Google and (closest to my heart) One Green Bean.

• Is content marketing myopic?

  Amid the ongoing hype around content marketing Mark Yeow argues agencies and clients are getting too bogged down in the detail and need to look at content more broadly.  Our industry’s fixation on content marketing is keeping us from seeing the bigger picture. The power of content extends far beyond lead generation, conversion, and other measures of marketing ROI. It is, perhaps the critical ingredient of any brand – essential to the vision of any discipline involved in creativity or communication, and indicative of their healthiness and longevity.

• Why SVOD is the catalyst for a TV evolution

  Streaming services have been getting a lot of headlines of late. OMD's Jeremy Gavin looks at what impact such services will have on evolving the television as a medium. The Netflix beast is a product of its environment.

• Curiosity killed the cat, not the creative

  A curious mind is a prerequisite for being a creative. So why don't more youngsters entering the creative world ask questions asks Will Clark. As a junior creative one of the most powerful creative tools is already at your disposal. Curiosity can be a crucial tool when starting work in an industry you know very little about. After my first few years in advertising I have come to realise the full potential of being a curious creative. Fresh out of design college and AWARD school, I was ready to get stuck into the world of real briefs, real clients and real award potential. However I quickly discovered that the world of advertising is vastly different to the picture that we often paint in our minds before getting there.

• Will greyhound racing ever get back on track?

  Following the expose of blooding and other practices in greyhound racing last week Damian Madden looks at what the sport needs to do to regain public trust.  As an animal lover, and somebody who has been to the dog track occasionally, I was abhorred when I saw the Four Corner’s footage earlier this week of greyhound trainers ‘blooding’ their dogs using live animals. Watching the fallout in the days that followed I began to wonder if greyhound racing could recover from this catastrophic blow. Has its brand been damaged beyond repair?

• How David Thodey helped restore Telstra's brand

  Today David Thodey announced he is retiring as CEO of Telstra after five years in the role. Richard Curtis who worked with the telco during his time with Interbrand, explains Thodey's role in rebuilding one of Australia's biggest brands.  Two experiences bookend recollections of my time working with Telstra, over a seven-year period in which I worked with three different marketing teams. “Didn’t we do the brand last year?” was how one Telstra executive put it, somewhat taken aback by the idea that the Telstra brand might evolve, let alone have implications for his own business unit’s activities.

• The data is in and Birdman will win the Best Picture Oscar

  

  After predicting the winner of the Best Picture Oscar two years in a row using data Bryan Melmed puts his reputation on the line for a third time. 

  Our audience data and insights accurately predicted the best picture Oscar winner in 2013 and 2014. So it is possibly foolhardy to put our neck on the line again but as the saying goes, go hard or go home so I’m here to tell you that Birdman will win. Or at least this is what the data suggests. And here is why.

• Doing work just to win awards? That’s worth nothing

  D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay argues scam is a disease and doing work to just win awards is worth nothing. You would expect us to say this, but it has been an exciting year at D&AD. With the help of the Glue Society, Google and others we’ve brought New Blood to Australian shores for the first time, launched our new NowCreate programme and forged new partnerships with creative organisations around the world – such as AWARD - to enable us to better support the global creative community. It has been a good year. However, as much as we’d like to focus on all the positives about our wonderful business, it’s important we don’t stick our head in the sand and ignore the more difficult stuff.

• Baxter buries the Big Boutique as UM reboots business model

  UM is shifting its focus from being the Big Boutique to the Creative Connections Agency. CEO Mat Baxter and chief strategy officer Sophie Price sat down with Nic Christensen to explain why the new positioning is more than just semantic, how it has torn up its remuneration model and why the traditional media agency focus on paid media is broken. Say what you want about Mat Baxter, the iconoclastic CEO of UM knows how to generate a headline.

• Six tips for a watertight contract to help when ambassadors go off brand

  Navigating celebrity ambassador agreements can be difficult, with several high profile agreements ending badly in recent years. Here Stephen von Muenster and his team give some tips on what to look out for when drafting the legal terms. Personalities who become brand ambassadors can be a powerful marketing tool for brands. From celebrities to social media influencers, they have the potential to make brands and products relatable and accessible, increasing exposure and successfully driving sales. Unfortunately for brands, their fairytale relationship with an ambassador doesn’t always end happily ever after.