There will be no Cog Blog this coming week; normal business will be resumed the week of July 7th (when we’ll be 1 year old!).
Magic, Logic and Money in Media Agencies
25 June 2014
A few years back (2006, gosh how time flies) a white paper was produced by a combination of the ad agencies (through the IPA), advertisers (through their trade body ISBA) and procurement professionals (via CIPS). The paper called ‘Magic and Logic’ was authored by the brilliant Marilyn Baxter and if you haven’t read it it’s an excellent summary of many of the issues that still cause tensions around agencies and their clients.
OPera and the Discord of Agency Deals
16 June 2014
Last Thursday the UK trade press reported on a spat between Channel 5, one of our smaller commercial channels, and furthermore one that sells its own airtime both creatively and independently, and Opera, the central trading operation serving the Omnicom media agencies. You can read the piece, by Media Week’s Arif Durrani here.
From Digital Madness to Advertising Collaboration
09 June 2014
Imagine this. A newspaper publisher decides that the easiest and cheapest way to increase his circulation, and thus his readership and ultimately his advertising revenue is to dump large numbers of his publication in convenient, local rubbish bins. He reckons that no-one will care – as at the end of the day the buyers only buy gross numbers and can’t be bothered to look into how they’re made up. Furthermore, by the time anyone works out that advertising in his title isn’t working, he’ll be over the hills and far away.
Market Research – Pity the Respondent
02 June 2014
We recently had a Bank Holiday. Traditionally this is when the nation’s men pile off en masse to the DIY store, buy a load of gadgets they’ll use once at most, rush home, put the gadgets in a drawer where they’ll stay for some time, and settle down to watch sport on the TV. But this year was different – at least for me. For this was the year that Bank Holiday Monday was Market Research Day.