MEDIA COUNCIL
Conversation opener...
t Paddy Falconer Managing director, UK, N. Europe & MEA, International Herald Tribune
First job: Started in the newspaper business 34 years ago at the age of 12 when he took his first paperound. Then he got up at 5.30. Now he still works with newspapers, but gets a lie-in until 6.30. Email:
PmFalconer@iht.com
t Andrew Grieve Director, adsales & marketing,Travel Channel International
Party fun:Made friends with all the Gladiators (UK TV stars) and nearly got a TV appearance with Jack Dee (UK comedian) after claiming he was about to join the cast of ‘London’s Burning’ (old UK TV hit) at an industry party. Email:
andrew.grieve@
travelchannel.co.uk
t Sean O’Hara Regional director, Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America, BBCWorld News
Hobby: Outside work can be found digging over the allotment for signs of any crops or undercooking over-priced scallops for anyone who can squeeze through the door. Email:
sean.ohara@bbc.com
t Charles Yardley Managing director, Europe & Africa, Forbes
Hobby: As an undefeated light heavyweight boxer, any agency people might want to think twice about applying too much more pressure in this media owner’s direction. Email:
CYardley@forbes.com
you need to define what value add is, and in my opinion it’s free stuff – if it was valuable people would pay for it. It’s up to us to ask what they mean – free stuff or a slightly better price? Fine. As media owners, it’s really important we don’t go down that route and push back. PF: Added value was important four to five years ago; now it’s engagement reports. That’s where all of us are having to dig deeper, and the added value is now to incorporate that into the overall cost of the campaign. You also have to understand that some of that budget, which previously went into print, will now be going towards financing an event or another element. SH: I know it’s a tired thing to say
but I firmly believe that price is never a reason to buy. Did you buy a penny sweet because it was cheap, or because you wanted a sweet? The only time it comes into play is when the same thing is on offer at different price points, and that brings us back to value and what need you’re fulfilling. And that comes back to talking about what you’re doing. Yes there’s price pressure, there’s always price pressure, but there’s as much now as there was when times were good. AG: It’s interesting what you’re staying, because we’re at the different end of the spectrum in terms of offering... SH: ...but no-one buys you because you’re cheap. They do it because your offering fits their needs. AG: Which is what I believe, but it doesn’t happen as much as it should. We have a focus, just travel and tourism clients. We don’t have to fit a square peg into a round hole but people will still opt for CNN, BBC and the like. That has been a frustrating struggle.
It comes back to numbers and coverage, but it should be about reaching the right people at the right time in the right frame of mind. If I win that argument, it’s then: “OK, we’ll do that, but we’ve only got this amount of money”. CY: There are clearly vanity buys for clients and the agencies. But I think what’s made it harder for us is that the competitive set we’re in has expanded massively with social media. The ad networks have taken a huge amount of brand involvement away from the traditional players, and ad networks all are about the CPM, not about the right strategy.
22 M&MQ2 2010
PB: Do you use the ad networks? CY: No, we never will, they trash the brand. What is a good idea is to have a seat on the bigger exchanges, as that allows us to target
forbes.com users outside the
forbes.com wall. It widens our universe, completes the circle, and we can continue serving them relevant content and ads. It creates a lot lower CPM but delivers better metrics. AG: More and more often, people don’t buy a channel, they buy the audience. CY: The trick is to aggregate so you have that kind of audience – so we wrap around the audience we know we have, as well as having the brand, so in effect we’re covering off both. PF: Buying digital is like buying print 10-15 years ago. It is incredibly commoditised – they think “I want to reach this audience, I know what titles I can go into to reach them, then it’s going to be down to negotiation on price”. If you want to advertise with a media owner that reflects your integrity, you’re going to go to
forbes.com, BBC... and combine their might if need be. More people are doing that. SH: Content, platform, audience combined make the ad opportunity. Media owners have to focus on getting content right, and it doesn’t really matter what the platform is. We’ve got a transitional business model at the moment and that’s what media owners are struggling to work out – the emphasis on cost is the old business model. As long as the business model can keep up with consumer change, drive revenues and drive advertising then you’re OK. CY: Which goes back to the point that it is difficult to achieve while measurement remains so limited for the pan-regional business.
PB: Whose responsibility is it to improve that situation? SH: Media buyers – the clients, not the agencies – should club together to make sure better research happens. It could actually save them money. PF: And they’d pass the cost on and we’d end up paying for it. ○
www.mandmglobal.com
“It comes
back to numbers – but it should be about reaching the right people at the right time in the right frame of mind”
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