“When you find yourself in Hell, keep going”
December 16th, 2008
Kaila attended Media and Marketing’s Advertising in the Recession seminar last week. Here’s what she learned about why you shouldn’t keep your online advertising spend locked up.
It was a bit of a hidden venue for a conference, through a barely-noticeable door on London’s busy Shaftesbury Avenue, up a long flight of stairs, but actually it was quite impressively done for an event put together on such short notice.
The event began with Adam Smith of GroupM discussing advertising expenditure in 2009. He pointed out that media growth is on a big downward spiral in 2009. Bit of a downer, but onward he went. He demonstrated how in 2009, China will make by far the largest contribution to global advertising spend, with the US making by far the least (no big surprise there). What was interesting was that Brazil came in second to China in this category, and next to it was Indonesia!
I suppose this again reinforces the massive contributions emerging markets are beginning to make in the global economy. I, personally, had no idea that Indonesia was so advertising-keen.
Another fact he pointed out that was again not a huge surprise, was that Internet is by far the most popular medium by which this advertising would reach its audience. Television was next, with magazines quite far down the list. While internet advertising is predicted to grow by £120 million in 2009, regional newspaper advertising is predicted to decrease by £250 million. Yikes. Perhaps we really are coming to the death of regionals, as so many are predicting.
Following Smith was General Manager of Fortis bank, Adrian Martorana. The host pointed out, when introducing Adrian, that if anyone has a challenge building a brand in this credit crunch, it’s the banks. How true.
Adrian was easily the most charismatic and interesting speaker. He also showed some videos of ads that truly impressed.
He began by quoting Churchill, who famously said: “When you find yourself in hell, keep going.”
Thus began his presentation on how to actually take advantage of the times we’re in to maintain and increase revenue through creative means, saying that in these tough times, you find new benefits because you are forced to be more relevant to the world around you. Basically, tough times make us better. Kind of like the Japanese proverb – what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
As a banker, it made sense for him to tell us a bit of history about the economy. He pointed out that the US economy has taken a downturn at least once a decade for the last 200 years.
He stressed the importance of companies making themselves more relevant to their customers through innovation, imagination and ingenuity.
Then he ended with a 2Pac quote which he refused to rap, which was all about being strong and holding your head up high.
There were, of course, other presentations, but I found these two to be the most relevant. I found it very interesting what Adam said about emerging economies, specifically which emerging economies, were going to be contributing the most to online advertising. Adrian built on this information, but acted as a more inspirational leader, showing us how our war wounds, once we come out of this, will heal into thicker skin and we will be better prepared for anything that may come our way.
Another speaker also pointed out (but I can’t remember who) that in the last recession, it was those companies who maintained (or even increased) their ad spend, who came out on top. In the same situation, those companies who decreased their spending were able to maintain budgets throughout the recession, but ended up with significantly lower profits once it was over, for their brand hadn’t been maintained and they suffered the consequences.
The overall message of the conference was predicable: keep spending. But the means of delivering that message was quite interesting and relevant. Now we’ll just have to wait and see what happens to determine who predicted accurately.
Cheers! Kaila x
