Ad platform boss declares ‘the recession is already here’, so brands need to find an ‘angel’
While economists debate how dark the economic storm clouds hanging above us might get, one adman has declared that the recession is “already here”.
Speaking at the Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit on Thursday, Julian Peterson, APAC managing director of native ad platform Dianomi, said the hurricane had made landfall after brewing for the past year.
“As a result, marketing budgets are going to be slashed,” Peterson said. “How do you get more and get better for the same money?”
He led a panel of news publishers that included James Daggar-Nickson, editorial director of AFR Insights at the Australian Financial Review, who suggested concerned brands simply look for an angel.
That is, a media outlet with one particular angel-like quality that can help ensure good bang for buck.
“When you’re in a time of economic difficulty, there’s tightness on corporate budgets and marketing budgets, there’s tightness on household budgets, you want to know you’re maximising the effectiveness of every dollar spent,” Daggar-Nickson said.
“The idea of being able to partner with a trusted, credible, authentic publishing brand becomes that much more important.
“It’s trusted by the person you’re trying to reach and then that ‘halo effect’ lends itself to you and your brand, and what you’re trying to achieve.”
When the good times roll, looser marketing strategies that adopt something of a “scattergun approach” to get a message out are easy to justify, he said.
But when budgets are scrutinised, Daggar-Nickson said a trusted publisher can deliver targeted and engaged audiences.
It was a sentiment echoed by James Chambers, vice president of advertising and distribution at BBC Studios, who said reach in the modern world “is straight-forward and cheap”.
But it’s easy for “overall effectiveness” to be lost, particularly when potential consumers under financial stress pressure withdraw from the market.
“It’s incumbent upon [marketers] to speak to their agencies and their agencies to speak to the publishers to find out who their audience trusts and who they engage with,” Chambers said.
James Daggar-Nickson.
He also championed the value and effectiveness of general brand-building when straight plays for consumer conversions aren’t as plentiful.
When someone makes a purchase, 62% of consumers wind up buying from the brand they had in mind at the very start of the customer journey, he pointed out.
“There’s a lot of value to be found, especially when you think about the bounce-back and the ability to claim market share as more people return to market.”
With that in mind, Daggar-Nickson offered a recent case study of a Nine customer – or ‘partner’, as the media empire calls them – who didn’t have a specific financial goal in mind.
“Last year ahead of bushfire season, NRMA produced an amazing documentary highlighting the various issues around bushfires, then they came to Nine to help amplify the message, he said.
“It wasn’t all about getting people to sign up for NRMA, but positioning their brand in an area of trust and authority.
“Nine was able to offer spots on Today, the 6pm news, Brooke Boney from Today did a big introduction at an event in primetime, there were radio spots, there were spots in publishing… it went over an extended period of time.
“You saw at the end of it this huge increase in volunteers [signing up for] the Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service… awareness of issues around climate change.
“The outcome wasn’t solely NRMA writing more customer premiums, but as positioning them at a point in the market they wanted to be in.”
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