Opinion | Features

• 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.

• Seeking out the pink dollar

  

  Brands are increasingly cashing in on the popularity of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in an attempt to lure the pink dollar with the likes of ANZ's GAYTMs leading the charge, writes Robert Burton-Bradley.

  Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is attracting an ever increasing pool of funding from a growing number of premium ad and sponsorship partners, including social economy booking firm Airbnb, as well as a return of last year’s high profile ANZ Bank GAYTMs campaign.

  Ben Mulcahy from specialist agency Pink Media, which targets the LGBTI community, said advertising and sponsorship growth around Mardi Gras had been growing strongly each year.

  “It gets bigger every year and from the sponsor perspective there’s huge value to be derived,” he told Mumbrella.

• Across print and digital, newspaper customers are turning away

  Today’s newspaper and digital subscriber numbers are the worst yet, says Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes. Soon I’m going to stop writing about this each time the quarterly numbers come out. It’s too depressing.

• Want real audience engagement? Move on from snackable content

  Listicles, quizzes and cat videos might be the flavour of the moment for content marketing, but it's only through in-depth long form content brands can really engage customers argues Atomic 212's Richard Quinn.    In today’s time-starved world, people just don’t have time to read longer content items. Give them short, quick snippets which can be quickly digested, like snacks on the run. Or so you think. In truth there is substantial evidence pointing to the contrary, which could have significant implications for your content marketing strategy.

• Why politicians can't sell

  Recently Prime Minister Tony Abbott was criticised for not being a good enough salesman for his policies. Here Elliot Epstein looks at how politicians could improve their sales technique to their electorate.  Law, Unions, Engineering, Journalism, Small Business, Academia and Agriculture have all delivered people to politics. But the world of high stakes senior sales professionals, steeped in the art and science of winning complex, competitive multi-million dollar deals has not regularly supplied our parliaments with its exquisitely skilled members.

• Calling bullshit on customer loyalty

  In this opinion piece Dan Monheit argues people don't buy a brand out of a sense of loyalty, but out of habit. The current divorce rate in Australia is the lowest its been since 1976 when ‘no fault’ splits were introduced, and still stands at a staggering 40 per cent. If almost half of the adult population cannot commit to a life partner, next to whom they’ve publicly declared ‘til death do us part’, how much weight can we really assign to studies that track customer loyalty to brands of cars, electricity, canned beans and deodorant?