The first Cog Blog appeared on 2nd July 2013; which means our 6-month birthday is January 2nd 2014. As I won’t be posting then I thought I would share some of those things that have caught my eye this year as a novice blogger. You’re welcome; consider this a (rather cheap) early Christmas present.
Lessons from History
11 December 2013
This post is reproduced from an article commissioned by the UK magazine ‘Media Week’
It’s a good time of the year to be an agency veteran (my official title these days) – especially if you like wallowing in nostalgia at advertising agency reunions.
For younger readers, ad agencies used to have media departments before a few visionaries decided that they were tired of being patronised by account people, and felt they were worth more than the ten-minutes-before-lunch slot in client meetings. These forward thinkers took a risk and established the first media independents, later known as media agencies. Today’s media professionals owe them a huge debt.
The Elusive Advertiser
04 December 2013
A couple of weeks ago I took part in an event organised by the US-based ad technology business Pubmatic. My role was to moderate a session on what the hosts called ‘The Progressive Advertiser’. The notion was simple – to debate what we could learn from forward-thinking advertisers when it came to data management and analytics, and to online buying of space. Were they for example starting to bypass the agency groups?