12 December 2019
BJ&A has done work for the7stars and Byline Times, both mentioned here.
This is the last Cog Blog of the year; Christmas, family, cooking, presents and fun all mean I won’t have time to post again until the New Year. So, it seems appropriate and timely to use my mighty platform to write to Santa. Here’s hoping.
28 November 2019
Media research has had a bad rap for many years. I have something of an inside track on this as I started my career as a media researcher before moving into comms planning and agency management. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, as pre my research days I had been an agency messenger, but even I could see that that was a career path with limitations.
21 November 2019
The last Cog Blog post referenced the announcement made at the 2019 asi TV and Video Conference in Prague by Phil Smith, Director General at the UK advertiser association ISBA of an advertiser-driven intervention in audience measurement via a cross-media initiative called Origin.
11 November 2019
The measurement of audiences to media channels is both essential and far too often ignored as a topic by many of those in agencies and ad sales organisations who seem to spend much of their time polishing their oh-so-cool social media personas.
31 October 2019
Remember all that fuss about media rebates and transparency? How naughty old network agencies were guilty of hanging on to benefits negotiated with their clients’ money? And how, no doubt following a charabanc ride to Damascus every one of them swore blind that they had put the bad old days behind them and were now focussed on charging their clients open and honest fees just like their role models the management consultancies?
24 October 2019
You would be forgiven for thinking that we’ve learned our lesson when it comes to bright shiny things. Time was when all a tech business had to do was announce they had discovered that they had the answer to some knotty (and unsolvable problem) and my social media feeds would, along with the trade press light up with ‘informed experts’ praising the solution to the skies. Especially if the ‘answer’ was entirely devoid of detail.
14 October 2019
As I’ve said before this is not a political blog, and so what follows should not be seen through any partisan lens. That said, it’s time we thought a bit about the state of political advertising.
30 September 2019
DISCLOSURE: BJ&A HAS DONE WORK ON THE KANTAR DIMENSION STUDY MENTIONED HERE
One of the dilemmas we face with online advertising is identifying just where relevance stops and stalking starts. We all want to see ads that are relevant to us and our needs, but to what extent are we prepared to give up elements of our privacy to achieve that?
20 September 2019
My apologies to GroupM for the click-bait title. I could just as easily have substituted OMG, MediaBrands or Publicis Media for the WPP media operation, but that’s what you get if you’re the tallest poppy – you attract all the attention, wanted or not.
12 September 2019
Disclosure: BJ&A has consulted with Kantar Media on the Dimension study mentioned here
It has been reported that both ITV and Channel 4 have been arguing for the maximum number of ads per hour limit to be lifted. Historically the major UK broadcasters have operated at 7 minutes per hour, rising to 8 in primetime. Smaller broadcasters have been known to run to 9 minutes, still way below the EU maximum of 20%, or 12 minutes per hour. In the US, the figure varies by network but averages around the 12-minute mark.
06 September 2019
I grew up on the P&G media account. When I first got involved, I didn’t understand them at all. They had their own processes, their own rules, and even their own language made up of acronyms.
30 August 2019
Disclosure: BJ&A works with Byline Times, sister to the Byline Festival mentioned in this post
The best, and most successful people within advertising have always kept an open mind. They recognise that ideas come from anyone and anywhere, and there is great merit in looking outside our own little circle both at the wider world, and at those engaged in other creative endeavours.
15 August 2019
Last week a post arrived in my feed from the sage Gary V. In it he reports being asked for his advice on how to make sure that you pick the right social channel on which to build your brand. His advice? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
02 August 2019
It’s hard to ignore the fuss over ‘Campaign’s’ decision to feature Nigel Farage on the front cover and inside their latest edition. That’s the problem with monthlies – they hang around.
25 July 2019
It’s strange to be saying so on a July day widely predicted to be the UK’s hottest ever, but the fact is there really is nothing new under the sun.
18 July 2019
Last year Reach (publishers of The Mirror and Express newspapers) produced a fascinating study into the differences between those in media agencies and the population as a whole. Reach (or rather Trinity Mirror as it was then) summarised their findings as follows: “We discovered that people in ad land unconsciously see, experience and interpret the world differently to large swathes of the UK population”.
Here’s what the Cog Blog had to say about it at the time.
04 July 2019
Last week’s Cog Blog was all about how traditional media auditors need to evolve along with the rest of the media industry. Simplifying ridiculously, this involves a move from the focus being solely on the price paid for executional buys to a more balanced assessment of how best to use the many media options out there.
27 June 2019
Certain elements of the media business have been getting excited about the third anniversary of the ANA transparency report. Self-congratulatory pieces have appeared from Ebiquity, and their sibling Firm Decisions. Both have a point in that they (and in particular their ex-colleague Nick Manning) drove one key output from the ANA work.
20 June 2019
Last week’s Cog Blog made the point that a significant number of people worry about expressing their point of view on platforms like Twitter. One concern is that such open-ness might negatively impact their job prospects; another is the fear of online attack from those holding a contrary opinion.
13 June 2019
This is not a political blog. It may be irritatingly opinionated, annoyingly smug, depressingly backward-looking and insufferably pompous but it isn’t political. So, apologies for using a political issue as the framework for what follows.
06 June 2019
Who would have thought it? Imagine yourself back in the early days of media agencies. Buying shops, one and all. The biggest got the best deals, because…well because the biggest always got the best deals regardless of the industry. Planning was front-of-house window dressing. Research was for geeks. Just walk around swinging your wedge and you’ll be OK.
22 May 2019
There’s nothing like a break (this is the first Cog Blog for about 4 weeks) to give one a sense of perspective. Stumbling around Mexican archaeological sites wondering how the Mayans managed to track astrological movements so incredibly accurately 1,000 or so years ago creates an even greater sense of wonder than the average programmatic conference (most of which only feel like they’ve lasted that long).
17 April 2019
When I was a mere Coglet, two of my formative clients were Kellogg’s and VW. It would be hard to pick two better clients to grow up with.
05 April 2019
In-housing, whereby the advertiser takes over certain functions traditionally handled by their media agency is in vogue. The key drivers are the recognition that data is a valuable asset best developed internally, the growth of direct selling by the major media vendors and platforms, the availability of talent, and a lack of trust in certain agency behaviours.
22 March 2019
Everybody seems agreed that the context within which ads appear is an important factor in determining performance. This was not always accepted as being the case. At least it’s progress from the blind following of ever-larger, and ever-more-meaningless numbers.
14 March 2019
Media agencies are facing a major challenge – from media vendors going direct, and from their clients setting up in-house operations. And that’s to name but two. It’s a good time to ask what exactly are agencies for?
08 March 2019
I’ve been in the ad business almost 50 years, starting as a messenger in an ad agency in the days when the UK had one commercial TV channel, no commercial radio stations and precious little in the way of formal training for budding agency staff. Despite myself I’ve absorbed lessons, and so from time to time I’m going to devote the Cog Blog to attempting to summarise a few things I’ve learned.
This one focuses on people. What follows could have been much longer and included real-life examples (and will be if I ever bother to work this up into a speech!). The first post, on what I’ve learned about agencies is here. Read more
28 February 2019
I’ve always admired journalists. This goes back to my days as a Coglet, when I fondly imagined a future life as a travelling sports journalist; continued through a stint as the account director on ‘The Observer’ (winning creative awards); right through to today when I watch with admiration as investigative reporters like Peter Jukes and Carole Cadwalladr refuse to be deflected or intimidated.
14 February 2019
We seem to have hit peak media.
Times change; principles don’t. The trick is still to put the right message in front of the right people, at the right time and at the right price. These days we are so focussed on points 2, 3 and 4 on that list that we spend less time worrying and thinking about point 1.
31 January 2019
Call me a dinosaur, someone so out of touch with today’s media world as to be but a distant spot in the rear-view mirror of today’s electrically-powered, driverless transportation module, but I really don’t get the fuss about online influencers.
24 January 2019
I rather like the Gillette ad, and as it would appear to be a legal requirement for everyone in the industry to have a point of view, and to make sure that everyone else knows what it is, here’s mine.
08 January 2019
Well, that didn’t last long. Remember all that talk from network agencies about buying plans instead of justifying agency deals, of negotiating client-by-client, and their greater focus on planning, research and insight?