Digest: Rate relations; Stenmark after SBS; Cross media selling ‘flawed’; Ready for Burp
I’m glad I’m not the ad manager on the Australian Financial Review today.
When I picked up the paper at the newsagent this morning I thought there was a section missing. Including the Education and Market Wrap pullouts, the entire edition is just 56 pages. By my calculations, once you take out house ads there’s the equivalent of six and a half pages of advertising in the entire edition – and that includes bank rates and property ads. It’s the thinnest I’ve seen it on a Monday.
And the state of the advertising market is a focus of the AFR’s Marketing & Media section with the latest edition of Neil Shoebridge’s popular weekly column “What’s Group M Up To This Week?”. (Actually, I may not have the name right, but it would certainly make it easier for regular readers to find it.)
And the piece does give some interesting insights into the signals WPP’s Group M is trying to send, with trading director James Parkinson offering a conciliatory message ahead of the group’s annual trading negotiations, promising to be “sensible in our dealings with media companies”.
It’s a relatively innocuous comment, but it ties in with the SMH story of a few weeks ago of media owners promising “a royal doing over” for those who screw them during the downturn. And indeed after last week’s reported loss of the Westpac pitch by Group M agency Mediacom to OMD I heard interesting speculation that media owners are badmouthing Group M when prospective clients ask about their ability to deliver deals.
The piece also carries an unusual comment from Fairfax Media boss Brian McCarthy that somewhat goes against the prevailing fashion for cross media sells. He tells Shoebridge:
“Do we really expect our salespeople to be able to sell print, radio and online? It’s a flawed notion.”
The AFR also reports the release of the digital tracker survey which he says found that 47% of homes have a set that can watch digital TV. The only slightly odd thing about the item – which is both a news story and the subject of Shoebridge’s column is that it’s a report that was released about three weeks ago.
Still with TV, Shoebridge reports on how Stenmark Organisation is planning to cope with the loss of most of its account repping SBS. In it Damien Stenmark promises to increase revenue for community station TVS from $600,000 to $1.5m. He tells the paper: “Why will it increase? Because TVS will receive more of our attention and focus.” Which, if I’d been that client for the last three years would leave me wondering what kind of service I’d had until that point.
And both the AFR and The Australian report on the annual screenings of new programming from LA. According to the AFR, Nine is claiming to have the best slate including a remake of the sci fi series V. The Oz agrees, with ten claiming “a ripping slate” too.
And The Australian also reports on Seven’s high hopes for its local franchise of TV Burp, an irreverent show to be presented by Ed Kavalee that looks at the week on television. The UK version was hosted by Harry Hill:
And still with TV, an opinion piece from Mediacom’s Philip Phelan predicts that Ten will be the best placed channel to survive the switch-off of analogue TV. Which is a brave pronouncement considering his agency has Seven as a client.
And in yet more TV news, Simon Canning reports that several Australian TVC directors have formed a collective – called Brolly – to promote their talents to the market.
Meanwhile, there’s also a good opinion piece from David Ash who warns of the transition to performance-based online advertising.
And according to Amanda Meade, tough questions will be asked tomorrow at the Astra board meeting. She describes the pay TV body’s recent awards event as “simultaneously amateurish, boring and R-rated“. But apart from that, it was fine.
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Tim. Names for recent products / companies have a distinct aqua feel to them: Mumbrella, Thumbrella, Google Wave… and now Brolly. I hear there’s a new-style agency/consultancy being launched by one of the big multinationals in Sydney called Seachange too.
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I’m thinking of launching “Pissing Down” … whatchathink?
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So you just rip all this stuff off from Shoebridge and the Oz and call it your work? Prick.
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Ah, my old friend with the Fairfax IP address! Thanks for dropping by, and for adding so contructively to the debate…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hey Nix,
You’ve really not got your head round this blog thing of people commenting on the news, have you?
Why don’t you go sell some ads? Wouldn’t that be a better use of your time?
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I think network 10 may be the best placed channel to survive the switch-off of analogue TV because of its new Sports only channel.
True sports fans have to watch the match live and cant skip the ads even if they have a PVR like I do.
So a sports only channel is much more immune to ad skip as well as stealing some of Foxtel’s viewers. AFAIK live sports coverage dominates the top 100 most popular shows on Foxtel
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Well wouldnt you be angry if you were working for a company that had just bought a whole bunch of media properties at the height of a boom and was therefore highly leveraged, and therefore unable to give you any kind of payrise or future because its about to go bust-a-roony?
Yeah… I would be REALLY bloody angry.
I might even send you a poo in the mail.
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I can’t believe you had the gall to call it a ‘digest’ and name the sources of each section. Talk about passing it off as your own work…!
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So the burp is just going to be the free to air version of the soup?
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More evidence of that brilliant digital thinking from Fairfax. “We’ve written it so nobody else is allowed to talk about it.”
I’m glad I’m not the ad manager of the AFR too. Because, Nix, it would either mean that I’m you or I work for you.
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Actually fans I was merely pointing out that Mumbrella knows nothing, lifts his “work” from others and passes it off as knowledge.
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Tim, did you change you name to ‘Mumbrella’? That’s an extreme bit of branding!
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