Digital industry to old media: grow some nuts
The head of Australia’s digital media industry body has told old media: “Grow some nuts”.
Speaking at the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association Awards, president Guy Gadney – until recently GM of digital services at ACP and Nine – told the audience:
“It astonishes me that there is still a hierarchy in big business that just, will, not, move. Sometimes I talk to businesses about their future, and I feel like I’m Mr T. in the Snickers ad.
” The marketing director for one of the top three Australian retailers recently told a colleague, that he thought the internet was a fad, and he would wait until it all died down. The other day, a major book publisher mentioned that over 60% of their online book sales in Australia come from Amazon.com in the US.
” I want to tell these sorts of companies to quit their crazy jibba-jabba and Grow Some Nuts.”
Gadney, who now runs The Project Factory, said that when the dotcom crash happened, many traditional media owners reverted to their old ways “with an element of schadenfreude”.
He said: “How things have changed. During this decade, audiences have shifted into digital media. For many companies, the digital audience is now the core audience.”
He said that one upside of the recession is that companies are finally having to come to grips with digital. He said: “Recessions force businesses to address issues and inefficiencies that they might have otherwise ducked. They force businesses to rethink their established revenue streams in a more confronting way than the rise of digital has to date.
“As painful as this recession is, it is the opportunity to forge businesses for the future, and it is an opportunity for digital to deliver these new businesses.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Old media to new media: no – we’d rather stick our heads in the sand til we’re totally screwed.
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Thanks for posting this Tim. The gist of the speech was also that it is up to us as the digital industry to explain the new business models to our clients and customers. We cannot expect anyone else to do this for us – there is no government support for the digital industry as there is for film and television or Digital TV switchover.
The digital industry has the tools and knowledge to that traditional businesses need to structure themselves and their revenue streams for the digital future. It is up to us to help and support these businesses, and this is the time to do it. The last thing we want to see is traditional businesses (AKA our clients) going bust because we had had not shown them where the new revenue streams are.
I’ve posted the full speech on The Project Factory website at http://theprojectfactory.com/a.....ts-speech/
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you can check out the Snickers rich media creative here:
http://tinyurl.com/bcq23s
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Two weeks ago we gave a speech in Sydney and Brisbane to the Australian Publishers Association (the smaller version of the MPA about which there was so much controversy on one of your previous blog entries). The overall gist of the speech was intended to shock – if you do not adapt quickly via a paradigm shift in your thinking, your middle of the road magazines will die. We see this from the front lines of retail. We were confrontational and extreme in relation to what we said.
While some of the publishers nodded and concurred, others astounded us with their lack of acceptance. One long established publisher said “But don’t you think that the impact of this whole internet thing is overstated?”. Not sure if Guy should be saying “Grow some Nuts” or rather “Pull your heads out of your Ar**s”.
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Speak their language and maybe they’ll start listening.
It’s easy to point fingers and laugh at the “ignorance” of old media but maybe we’re speaking two different languages and they’re not understanding it.
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Guy, Re “NUTS”
Have had similar coments from some “brand owners” as well but as soon as we say “re-purpose” or “monetize exsisting inventory” they pay attention.
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What has put a lot of publishers and companies off digital media in the past is the over-boated custom-built CMS systems that go with a lot of these sites. The digital realm need fresh thinking too, looking at ways to create more light weight client, and customer, friendly user experiences.
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What would have happened in the US elections if Obama hadn’t embraced the new media? not that he had to, a lot of us were supporting him via the internet anyway.
Wolfie!
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And until the digital industry gets some robust audience metrics, why would an advertiser rely on “trust me, these are our numbers down to the last click”, when the next business also says “trust me, these are our numbers down to the last click”? When the advertiser wants a campaign across multiple sites, what do they do then? Choose the third-party system that suits their current sales pitch?
I urge the digital industry to “get some nuts” and appoint experts in and audience measurement system that is regularly audited and reported on. Oh, of course, that would mean investing in, and ‘annointing” a system – and that costs money. Oh yeah, and the data reported would be lower (but believable for once).
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hey “anon”, that’s a joke entry, right?
merchants advertising online have the ability to utilise their own measurement systems and define value on their terms. the connection between campaign activity and actual observed behaviour has never been more direct.
surely you’re not challenging the value of digital media vis-a-vis old media on ‘measureable-ness’?
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Guy, I am as tired of digital being silo’d as the next man. It is just another channel and as you rightly point out, to some business it is indeed their core channel. However by approaching its develoment by encouraging old media (and companies who use it) to get some nuts, is to be as blinkered as they are. Consumers increasingly interact with brands online and drop those they can’t. However from a communication POV, digital is more often than the pointy end of the funnel that brings them to the brand. Particularly for retailers. Surely its about the digital industry making itself relevant in 2 areas:
a)To better translate how it works in tandem with all other channels – communications
b)Show the company how to provide a better digital user experience for their customers with their business – commercial
Without this all you are doing is a bad ‘them and us’ argument for digital over offline and some cases, even with the digarati, your main awareness is still going to be via offline
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Love the “Grow some nuts”, but in reality advertising agencies are in the business of make money, if they can’t be bothered to invest time and energy into looking ahead at the future of advertising and how this will affect the agency model…then, they need more than nuts.
Tim keep the good work-up.
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On metrics: the numbers are real. You want to talk about speculation? Let’s look at TV and panel based measurements. Please. Online gives quantitative figures inside a very small margin of error.
The lasting problem for online is impact — it carries nothing like what you see on television or on a half-page mag and is more prone to ‘fast paced’ users, as opposed to more placid TV watchers and radio listers. It’s different in it’s behaviour.
Once again, there’s no solution to transplanting ‘old ways’ on new mediums.
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Dave – the focus of the speech is about how it is our responsibility as the digital industry to better understand what is happening with the traditional businesses we work with, and help them out with the knowledge and expertise that we have.
I fully agree with (and frequently talk about) the value of translation. We need to understand both languages and use this to build the digital industry as well as bolster the diminishing revenue streams that traditional businesses are experiences. It is up to us to do this, and I’m certainly not telling all non-digital businesses to grow some nuts 🙂
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