This year’s annual gathering of industry thinkers, leaders and creatives in Brighton has given us all a lot to think about. Newsworks reflects on some of the event’s key takeaways.
Media360 brings together the industry to discuss how to tackle media’s biggest challenges such as trust, purpose, regulations, brand building and collaboration.
‘With challenges come opportunities’ and out of the talks, panels and discussions came a few pointers to help us all navigate the disruptive advertising environment we work in. These included collaboration, transparency, long-term brand building and creating value for the end consumer.
Highlights included:
Trust in advertising
“Advertising without trust is just noise” said Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed. This phrase set the scene for the panel discussing trust in advertising. The panel brought together Newsworks’ Tracy De Groose, Facebook’s Nick Baughan, Credos’ Karen Fraser, Ad Association’s Stephen Woodford and Direct Line’s Mark Evans. The panellists called on everyone to, as De Groose called it, “be more demand-led” so that providing value to the consumer is put front and centre. This came after insights presented at the panel, uncovered the public’s mistrust in the industry.
The Digital Duopoly
Damian Collins’ talk on ‘The Digital Advertising Duopoly: will 2019 be a game-changing year?’ discussed the negative impact fake news has on democracy and society and the lack of regulation for companies such as YouTube and Facebook. Collins called for independent regulation – that continuously keeps up with the pace of the industry – across all platforms. This will ensure that all companies act responsibly, resulting in greater trust amongst consumers.
Reimagining partnerships
TSB’s chief marketing officer Pete Markey and The Weeks executive director David Weeks talked about ‘Reimagining partnerships: utilising the power of partnerships to deliver brand and business results’. Markey presented TSB’s brand purpose and how it is brought to life through meaningful partnerships and storytelling. He highlighted a campaign with The Guardian called the “relationship project”, which tapped into the idea that people are more likely to leave their partners than their bank. The partnership fuelled the campaign with meaningful content, creative ideas and access to an engaged quality audience.
Building value and respect
The Guardian’s chief revenue officer Hamish Nicklin was joined by Barclays’ manager director for global brand & insight Claire Hilton to discuss how they build long-term value and respect in their organisations. At Barclays, Hilton said “trust is at the heart of everything we do” and explained how they work according to key principles around integrity, accountability and authenticity. Nicklin later explained how they had to deal with the question “what do we (as a newsbrand) need to do to bring back your money?” – and the answer was to build long-term trust, value and real relationships with consumers.
Looking to the future, Anna Forbes, UK general manager of Tradedesk asked the industry to move away from quantity and towards quality – as De Groose later pointed out: “it has never been easier to be less effective”. In the future, Forbes predicted, there will be fewer and more relevant ads which will drive ROI and be more impactful.
Pearl & Dean’s chief executive officer Kathryn Jacob and Mediacom’s chief transformation officer Sue Unerman finished the event with “if we work together, we can create an industry we are really proud of”.
Also speaking at the event was Daniel Finkelstein OBE on Brexit, BBC Media Reporter Amol Rajan and Twitter’s EMEA VP, Bruce Daisley amongst others.
Find out more here.