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Opinion | Features
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Media agency remuneration: It's the smaller nimbler agencies which will thrive
As huge changes blow through the Australian media agency landscape Nikki Retallick argues the smaller more collaborative companies will be the ones to thrive.
It’s a great time to be in the Australian ad industry. The winds of change are blowing. With the recent launch of Department212 and the success of earlier start-ups such as Bohemia, there’s some real momentum towards the rise of the independent, performance-based media agency.
The big agencies are starting to follow suit, having seen the ‘race to the bottom on price’ hit their bottom line. It’s all about delivering measurable value now and being able to move the dial on the clients’ business. -
Content marketing moves to centre stage
Last night ANZ launched one of Australia's biggest branded content plays to date. Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes was at the launch.
It took a few minutes too long last night for it to dawn on me why there was a jazz band in the corner of the room at ANZ's Melbourne conference suite. Blue Notes - gerrit?
And what last night's event did make clear is that the opportunities of that developing subset of branded content, brand journalism, are beginning to dawn on local brands. -
Answers for Adam: Is reality TV the way to tackle climate change?
Recently there was another report from the scientists of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) telling us that climate change (what used to be called global warming) is upon us and there are real changes happening now (I bet I’ve lost several readers already!)
The scientists are urging us to heed their warning and change our behaviours, yet we ignoring them in droves. Even though information they are giving us is dire. -
The Tele's textbook example of how to run a winning newspaper campaign
The Daily Telegraph has delivered a great piece of old fashioned campaigning journalism, argues Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes
Back when I worked in newspapers, I was taught that if a newspaper is going to embark on a campaign, it has to pass three tests. -
Piracy: At least the Lannisters pay their debts
Following a series of special reports on piracy on Mumbrella this week Foxtel's Bruce Meagher explains why the company is airing Game of Thrones as it is.
Much has been made in the past few days of the fact that fans of Game of Thrones are unable to acquire the series through services other than Foxtel until after the final episode airs. Unfortunately, there has also been much misinformation about how Foxtel is making Game of Thrones available to the public. -
Why hard-to-win awards are good awards
This year's Mumbrella Awards are going to be tougher to enter than ever before. Which makes winning one worth even more. As the call for entries goes live, Tim Burrowes explains the changes for this year.
Please don't hate me.
I hear a common complaint about some industry awards, and I'm afraid it's mostly my fault. -
Encore Score: The newsreaders
With the battle for early evening eyeballs increasingly important for commercial TV networks Amanda Meade looks at the numbers to see if the most popular newsreaders are the most watched.
Despite dramatic changes to the media landscape in the past ten years, the traditional 6pm commercial news bulletin on free-to-air television remains a key building block in a network’s schedule - get it right and you can carry big audiences over to your primetime shows. Some bulletins have even expanded from 30 minutes to an hour in the main markets of Sydney and Melbourne.
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Answers for Adam: Should PR agencies and creative agencies be combined?
This week Adam Ferrier asks whether PR is starting to mean everything and nothing, and whether it is any different from traditional advertising.
I've been thinking about the PR industry lately and where PR fits in the broader communications landscape. I've thought about it a lot, and worked with most models from integration under one roof to partner agencies, and a few things in-between.
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Australia's class system of brands
After a rare business class flight, Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes argues that brands may miss opportunities when staff treat customers according to their perceived value.
So over the weekend, I finally got to make the metaphorical left turn getting onto a Qantas flight. And it was everything I could have wanted. -
Answering Adam: Agencies need ideas as their engine
This week in his Answers for Adam column Adam Ferrier asked whether agencies should imitate startups. Here Nic Hodges argues agencies need to focus on their ideas, but modernise processes.
In his column this week Adam Ferrier asks "would your agency be doing better work if it put data, behavioural sciences, and technology up on pedestal along with creativity? Or is a single-minded focus on creativity still the answer?".
Here's a secret - nobody at a startup is sitting around caring about acting more like an advertising agency.
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PR agencies will not exist in a decade
After Graham White's response to Joe Hildebrand's CommsCon speech generated some heated debate on the state of the PR industry, Rob Lowe argues 'PR agencies' are already dying out.
PR agencies will cease to exist in the next ten years. Is that shocking enough for you? Well it’s true. Too many PR agencies are outdated, the traditional media landscape is shrinking, and with increasing numbers of advertising, social media and even SEO agencies getting in on the action, we need to smarten up. -
Why you should pull an all-nighter to get to Cannes
With Cannes Young Lions entries closing on Friday former winner Iggy Rodriguez has the reasons why you should pull an all nighter to finish your entry.
Okay, sure it’s the last minute, but plenty of famous campaigns have been written right before a big meeting or on the night before a pitch. You’ve got a few days, so you’re laughing. -
Answers for Adam: Is creativity still the answer for ad agencies?
This week Adam Ferrier asks whether ad agencies should be embracing startup culture more, or continuing to focus single-mindedly on creativity.
“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists”. Banksy (apparently?!)
The above quote is around ten years old and I wonder if it’s still relevant. I’m getting the sense that the new breed of creative folk who want to make a buck are not entering advertising – but rather being seduced by the technology fuelled ‘start-up’ culture. For example is it cooler to attend the Cannes Lions or tweet about the latest gadget unveiled at SXSW? -
Making the Mumbrella Awards matter - what you can tell us
It’s nearly time for the call for entries for the 2014 Mumbrella Awards. But before we publish this year’s categories and criteria, Mumbrella’s content director Tim Burrowes invites you to have a say...
I can still remember in excruciating detail the night we lost. -
Is total re-branding the only means left to end Network Ten's torment?
While the Ten Network's ratings woes well documented Luke Devenish asks if their best way to turn it around is a brand overhaul. We all find it difficult to get out of bed of a morning, but spare a thought for the powers-that-be at Network Ten, who must surely be belting the snooze button on a daily basis. Their annus horribilis is now nudging half a decade thanks to a waking nightmare that is two pronged in its torment.
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Plain and simple
The best pieces of marketing make a case so well, it feels like there can be no further argument.
Like this piece for Cancer Research UK making the case for plain packaging for cigarettes.
Case closed.
(Hat-tip: TP)
Tim Burrowes
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Comments
28 May 12
10:11 am
As you say ‘Case Closed’
Can’t wait for the tobacco companies to lose their case against the government.
28 May 12
10:25 am
wonderful
28 May 12
10:26 am
Take a bow clever ad company working for Cancer Research UK. I don’t think I’ve seen something as effective since the Grim Reaper.
28 May 12
10:29 am
This is bullsh!t, I don’t smoke, I don’t like people smoking, but give a bunch of middle-upperclass kids some packages and they will say that!! It’s the lower class who has trouble with smoking. Their parents smoke and it’s so normal to them. Changing the outside isnt what’s going to change whats inside… Ever heard of the saying lipstick on a pig??? It’s just a big fat waste of time and money. There are fundamental flaws with our society regarding cigarets. And making the pack they come in a simple colour will not fix those problems.
28 May 12
11:02 am
Just compelling.
28 May 12
12:07 pm
It’s clever. Perhaps it appeals to us as middle-upper class individuals, but smoking isn’t simply limited to the ‘lower class’. It’s prolific and if this change in packaging, and supporting ad campaign, can make a difference by reducing some of that dependancy, then it’s a good thing.
28 May 12
1:48 pm
Brilliant
28 May 12
1:51 pm
For this ad to work, you need to first be displaying the cigarettes to kids, which is already unlawful in the only Plain Pack jurisditcion.
Additionally, is no one going to point out that Cancer UK gave cigarettes to kids in order to make an ad?
As Nick Naylor says, the anti-smoking lobby want cancer boy to die.
28 May 12
3:24 pm
Adam Ferrier tweeted this some time ago.
It would have been interesting to do the same exercise with pharmacist-only medicine packaging and the colourful pills. In fact you could put anything in front of them.
When asked to say something about anything, people will say something. Even kids. In fact, especially kids. This is a known flaw of focus groups.
Plain packaging is simply fucking about, avoiding prohibiting it.
But then prohibition doesn’t work terribly well, either.
Price the stuff to the wazoo and tell people it’ll kill you is about as good as it’ll get.
Informed choice means that some will still make a poor choice.
That’s the price for personal liberty I’m afraid – some will accept the risk of killing themselves in the pursuit of their happiness.
28 May 12
4:26 pm
Here in Australia the tobacco companies launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to fight plain packaging.
Proof positive that it’s a VERY effective tactic.
28 May 12
4:57 pm
After seeing this, how would you sleep at night arguing against plain packaging? Bloody good job AMV BBDO.
28 May 12
9:10 pm
You guys have not obviously read the many complaints about this advert and the activities of a once respected research charity – in the UK. … showing cigarette packets to kids. Really?
Had you shown kids packets of condoms they would have said same thing – would the hysterical cry be “condom manufacturers target kids” – of course not.. Classist claptrap.
29 May 12
3:01 pm
Condoms do not kill people @Sara B. The more colourful the better if it got peeps to use condoms rather than not…
29 May 12
3:29 pm
To the naysayers,
As you’re reading this article, I’m assuming you either work directly for a marketing company or work for a company that services them. So, with your rationale that the packaging has no effect, could you please explain why you either spend or charge (depending on you aforementioned role) large amounts of money designing it?
Thank you, and good night.
29 May 12
11:10 pm
Ronnie,
As you said something so ridiculous about packaging, I assume you don’t work in marketing or brand design.
If your assertions had merit, then illicit drugs would have no appeal, as they have no packaging whatsoever.
Yet they do. One for you to ponder tonight.
Sleep tight.
30 May 12
2:57 pm
Adgrunt,
I noticed that you failed to address the question I posed.
However, if you want to compare the marketing strategies of illicit drugs with legally marketed products, so be it. Once again, I’ll use your rationale.
I can’t exactly recall ever seeing an ad selling the virtues of heroin, or a bus-side telling you where you can get a good deal on some. Therefore, using your own logic, advertising in these mediums must be an entire waste of time. Hmmm.
30 May 12
5:59 pm
Ronnie,
I didn’t answer your question as the fallacy you propose is what is comprehended in Marketing – broadly in lesson 1 or 2. That’s what marked you out as having little grasp of the overall concepts of marketing, influence, etc.
You’re also not very good at parsing “rationales” or logic – I was suggesting that perhaps advertising isn’t some amazing mesmer machine. That there is some rational and emotional thought and filtering process occurring in the viewer. Otherwise every anti-smoking ad that has run for 30 years would have stopped smoking in its tracks.
Do you mindlessly go out and buy nappies because you’ve seen an ad for them?
So, some homework for you.
Read this lot http://tiny.cc/lm23ew (it’s a link to Mumbrella) – it should cover most questions.
Do come back and ask any questions it doesn’t answer. Which should be very few.
Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
31 May 12
3:42 pm
Yeah, I started smoking at age ten because I loved my father’s Viscount pack design. It was all red and gold with a seductive burred silver paper liner that you pulled out to see the fags.
No, I fucking didn’t. And what’s more, in those days I actually bought his cigarettes for him. He’d give me fifty cents to go around the shop and get him a packet of Viscount and a box of matches while he listened to the races on 3UZ in his workshop. Why? Because it wasn’t illegal for one, and for two he didn’t jump to the stupid conclusion that just because I’d seen/handled a box of cigarettes I’d immediately want to start smoking the things.
The premise of the commercial is completely wrong. Children take up smoking because their peers do it, or their parents disapprove, or they are just contrary little bastards. Plain packaging won’t stop any of that and neither will anti-smoking lobby commercials with cute imagery and no logic.
31 May 12
6:36 pm
BTW – This http://bit.ly/myquitbuddy seems a more worthwhile effort than plain packaging.
1 Jun 12
4:34 pm
What a result! Produced, directed and heavily edited (not suggesting scripted) footage endorsing that packaging and branding works! Hope every packaging and branding agency includes this video in their value proposition.
One question before I go… Why do so many take illicit drugs? Do they also come with a royal crest?
4 Jun 12
9:45 am
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that packaging design is the sole influence in any purchase decision, but whether you like to acknowledge it or not, it is one of the influencers.
4 Jun 12
12:09 pm
Ronnie,
You didn’t read that thread, did you.
In order for it to influence you, you’d need an established need or desire in the first place. Brand is about a choice.
Do you really believe people start smoking because they see a pretty packet?
The evidence from Canada cited by even the Cancer Council suggested that price and education are the strongest influences. Or just ban it.
Dont’ be lulled by the belief that doing anything, is doing something. Sometimes it’s just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
12 Jun 12
3:29 pm
Any of this ‘evidence’ to ban fancy packaging for filthy tobacco is worthwhile.
The twits who oppose attempts to get rid of tobacco are just that — twits.
Surely they must be aware of the dishonest and devious tactics of big toboacco?? or are they just showing how they too have been conned?