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2018

Q1

Front Foot:Members’ Quarterly

AA_Quarterly-Q1_Newsletter_3.0.indd 1 24/01/2019 10:24

2019

Chairman’s Letter Q1

The industry’s flagship event LEAD is taking place in London on the 30th of January. Featuring a raft of speakers from across the political spectrum and the best and brightest industry talent, LEAD ’19 will be tackling the tripartite topics of Trust, Trade and Transformation.

Speakers include Unilever’s Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

Keith Weed; Minister of State for Trade and Export Promotion, Department for International Trade, Baroness Fairhead

CBE; Economist, Author, and former Presidential Advisor Pippa Malmgren and many more.

For more information or to book your ticket, email [email protected]

I hope you had a relaxing holiday season after the pre-Christmas frenzy.

At Front Foot we’ve really enjoyed the fruits of your creative endeavours, with some standout adverts really capturing the public’s imagination. Throughout the festive period we have been out promoting the stats around Christmas media adspend.

As I look at 2019 I see plenty of opportunities for Front Foot and its members to do much more promotion of the UK’s pre-eminence in the advertising world. We have an incredible bank of talent, and we will be doing all we can to support our collective standing in what looks set to be an extremely busy year.

As ever, this Quarterly is an opportunity for us to touch base with our members who we always want to hear from. It’s also a chance for us to shout about what we have been up to and the activities of some of the companies we work with.

This time, we’ll be sharing a preview of Credos’ digitalisation report, demonstrating the excellent work of some our members in getting young people into advertising, and much more.

Look forward to seeing you very soon,

Mark Evans, Chairman, Front Foot

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Sharon Lloyd Barnes is the Advertising Association’s new Commercial Director, with a remit to revamp and tsuzj up Front Foot memberships in line with your needs. In this introductory interview, Sharon takes us through her path to the new position and sets out her aims for the coming months.

Your new Commercial Director, Sharon Lloyd Barnes

What was your path to Front Foot?My first job was in the media department of Davidson Pearce, then a top 10 ad agency, before moving to ad sales in women’s magazines in London and New York – where ultimately I was Ad Director for Bauer’s US weekly ‘Woman’s World’. It was an amazing experience working over there at that time – same language but culturally completely different.

My eldest son has autism, and when he was about three I set up a school with a couple of other parents. It opened in 2000 in a Portacabin with four children and now it’s grow to almost 80 children from almost every London borough, with a primary and secondary building. We’re looking at post-18 provision now, so it’s been an incredible journey from such humble beginnings.

I set up a business development consultancy about thirteen years ago – and then founded The Drive Partnership with my business partner David Mansfield in 2011, helping companies achieve profitable growth.

You have your own ideas, but from speaking to Front Foot members what do you sense are the main benefits of belonging to the exclusive network?For me, the biggest benefit for members is having a seat at the table of this powerful group. By funding Credos, the industry’s think tank, Front Foot is able to initiate landmark research and industry engagement on a range of key issues..

I want to find out what value looks like for each member, because it’s intriguing that so far it’s slightly different for every organisation. Some, for example, want more profile-raising opportunities, for some it’s networking and for others it’s the reports that we do. We’ll make sure that the Front Foot calendar continues to reflect all those things.

What would you like to hear from the Front Foot members over the next few months?I would love them to communicate with me and give really candid feedback or share ideas. : The membership is the sum of its parts, and they are all its voice. I want us to be an authority and lead on our strategy, but the strategy is shaped by our members.

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According to our members, one of the primary benefits of belonging to Front Foot is in the early access to

research from the advertising industry’s independent think tank Credos.

Talking Trust over Breakfast

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In October that benefit was in full display at the final Front Foot breakfast of the year. Taking place in the Scott Room in the Guardian’s offices in Kings Cross, 60 assembled Front Foot members were treated to a look ahead at our upcoming report into public and politicians’ favourability towards and trust in advertising.

The group heard from Front Foot chairman Mark Evans, Advertising Association chief executive Stephen Woodford, Credos director Karen Fraser, and IPA director-general Paul Bainsfair, with a focus on where we are now and where we should aim to be next year.

The report found that the public does value advertising, when it is seen as a source of information and a factor in our economic well-being. At its best, advertising is seen as a form of entertainment in and of itself, and valued as a source of public health information and promoter of social good.

Fraser and Bainsfair elaborated on the state of public trust in advertising, noting that the findings of this research suggest that favourability is equivalent to general satisfaction and can be affected by many factors. These factors range from trivial matters of personal taste to serious matters of public concern such as advertising to children.

“Trust is a more specific measure and is affected by fewer factors. These factors tend to be more serious matters of genuine concern. When trust is damaged, it can lead people to question the morality of advertising.”

Following the presentation of the data, the guests separated into groups to discuss potential solutions over pastries and coffee. The groups included representatives of Mullenlowe London, M&C Saatchi, Royal Mail, Grey London, Guardian News and Media and many other Front Foot members.

The ideas that were returned represented the breadth of experience and disciplines present within the network: from ideas about how to protect the right of the industry to self-regulate to plans for better communication with consumers, each table returned thoughts that have since gone on to inform the Trust Working Group’s approach to the issue.

Restoring trust is one of Mark Evans’ main concerns as Front Foot chairman. In collaboration with our members and Credos, we will be working hard to identify best practice for restoring public trust in the entire industry. The full report into restoring public trust in advertising will be revealed at our upcoming LEAD 2019 conference in London, and disseminated through the network shortly thereafter.

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VMLY&R is a powerhouse brand – what is its key philosophy?

We live in a world of radical transparency where replication is cheaper and easier than ever. This new landscape had disrupted our playing field completely, and this is reflected in our philosophy as an agency.

We believe that creativity is the last competitive advantage. Creative people come up with ideas and ideas matter. Ideas can make brands a company’s most valuable asset. It takes creativity to come up with market disrupting ideas. It is not efficiency that drives growth; it is ideas. Ideas create markets.

For those of us who run agencies, the most important thing we can do is be ready for creativity when it happens. That means building a culture where all voices can be heard, and no one is afraid to share their thoughts. It means a culture where it is perfectly acceptable to change everything just before a deadline because someone’s had an even better idea.

Front Foot members’ profile:

Amanda Farmer is Managing Director at the newly-merged VMLY&R,responsible for implementing the strategic direction of the agency, ensuring that commercial and operational targets are met. Her extensive experience includes working with Nestlé, Diageo, International Olympic Committee, Cadbury, Heineken and ASDA. In this Front Foot Member’s Profile, she explains why ‘creativity is the last creative advantage’, how the role of the agency is changing, and what ‘freedom’ means for a huge player in the advertising space.

At the time of the merger Mark Read said: “VMLY&R will be a powerful brand experience offering and a core agency brand for WPP. VML and Y&R have distinct and complementary strengths spanning creative, technology and data services that make them a perfect match” – what are those strengths and how do they set VMLY&R apart?

When people ask about the ‘whys’ behind the merging of the VML and Y&R brands. We say: ‘it gives us freedom’. It gives us the freedom to be truly people-focused in our approach to creativity. Because, as we all know, real people in the real world don’t care about channels or platforms. They don’t say, “I saw this brilliant digital idea” or “have you seen this experiential thing”. They just interact with, and use, the stuff they like.

Our value is that we create connected brands. And that’s because our job is to make our clients’ brand their company’s most valuable asset, and there is a direct correlation between how connected a brand is and its value.

We better understand consumers in order to better connect with them and, at VMLY&R, we now have the freedom to bring our ideas to life wherever they need to live to help fix business challenges. We connect through creativity, which we are now free to apply to any part of the consumer journey and which we use to get to truly big ideas which can work wherever they need to.

“Change is the only certainty. The job of an agency like VMLY&R is to use creativity to disrupt ourselves and our clients before someone else does.”

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How has the role of ‘the agency’ changed over the past few years, and what trends do you see being carried forward for the next few years?

The agency landscape is shifting in many interesting ways - but I believe this is in direct response to the world of our clients changing dramatically too. 70% of brands are stagnant or in decline, 50% of brands in the S&P 500 didn’t exist in 2000, and CMOs have the shortest tenure in the C-Suite.

Technology is beautifully disruptive. We are living through a fourth industrial revolution which will be more impactful than any of those that preceded it.

This age of disruption has seen clients demand more than just advertising from creative agencies. This has given rise to the ‘cagencies’ we see today, with huge consultancies like Accenture and Deloitte making steady inroads into acquiring creative shops as clients look for more definable structures in the face of tightening budgets.

However, the big assumption being made is that creative agencies being swallowed by consultancies is the only direction of travel. At VMLY&R we think it is the wrong way around and that it is better to bring consultancy into the creative process where it can add depth and rigour to ideas.

What is the value of a Front Foot membership to agencies, brands, publishers and everyone involved in the club?

These are tumultuous but ultimately exciting times for advertising. As our industry evolves and shifts its shape, organisations like the AA provide reliable support and act as a voice for advertisers, media owners and agencies alike are truly invaluable.

Front Foot is an unrivalled network for advertising; forging tangible connections between its members, constructing consistently captivating research and proactively generating advocacy for the big issues that will affect all of our businesses. As we approach Brexit, I believe that groups like Front Foot which champion the place of advertising in the UK economy and emphasise its positive role within society have never been more valuable.

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Celebrating Christmas in

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This year the Christmas ad season contributed £6.4billion to the UK economy. More importantly, between broadcast advertisements like John Lewis’ ‘The Boy and The Piano’ campaign featuring Elton John and Sainsbury’s ‘The Big Night’ campaign, both produced by Front Foot members, the impact on UK culture was invaluable.

This Christmas advertising season also saw an increased focus on the

politics surrounding advertising, as Iceland’s ‘Meet Rang-tan’ campaign, originally published online by Greenpeace several months prior to Christmas, was deemed to be a political ad by Clearcast and therefore ineligible for broadcast. It, and the work done by Karen Fraser and the Credos team, demonstrate how advertising becomes a real focal point for the public over the Christmas period.

The Christmas advertising season is the high point of the year for our

industry. It is the period during which our agencies’ and brands’ interests align

most closely, as they seek to create a festive feeling among the British public.

Image: John Lewis, ‘The Boy and the Piano’

Image: Sainsbury’s ‘The Big Night’

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Kelly Williams is ITV’s Director of Commercial. In this Front Foot member profile he explains why

he’s proud of the work of the industry around causes that benefit society, why television is transitioning to a more diffuse model, and why emotion is key

to advertising.

Member Profile:

ITV

Kelly Williams

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Television has historically been very good at demonstrating ROI. To what do you attribute that?

Television’s advantage to make emotional connections and grab the attention of the nation is ultimately one of the key attributes of the power of television. That ability to deliver emotional connections effectively means TV can influence millions of people to think and feel differently about brands, and ultimately that’s what brand-building is all about.

For example, the work we did with Love Island over the summer… we worked with eleven different commercial partners on that show, from headline sponsors to product placements to in-store on-pack licenses, to podcast sponsors, to merchandising and licensing. The fact that we’re an integrated producer-broadcaster just puts us in a unique position to deliver ideas that integrate with shows that can create real business impact.

Mass simultaneous reach is really hard to do. I don’t think on any other medium, 10 million people sit down and watch the same thing at the same time as they are with I’m A Celebrity every night when it was on, so I do think that is unique to television.

ITV’s Simon Daglish told the delegates at our Media Business Course that ‘TV isn’t dying, it’s having ****ing babies’. How is ITV taking advantage of changing consumption habits?

Lots of people talk about the death of TV, or the structural decline. I think I’d say it’s in structural change; we’re transitioning. We use the phrase ‘TV isn’t going anywhere, it’s going everywhere’, because you can now watch it whenever and wherever you want, because the whole on-demand side of our business is the fastest-growing side.

On our linear channels, we offer mass simultaneous reach and that great emotional connection, in our linear business, and on ITV Hub in our online business, we now are able to offer that more targeted, addressable, data-driven products to advertisers, all in a very brand-safe, fraud-free, viewable, quality environment. That ability to offer the best of both worlds will put us in good stead for many years to come.

What do you think in 20 years down the line, we’ll be able to look back on with pride about advertising in 2018?

We often spend our time worrying about the negative things in advertising, rather than concentrating on the positives – what advertising does economically, culturally, in society, so if I look back at this year I think some of the work that’s been done by some big companies has really, really shown advertising doing good.

We’re really proud of the work we did around Project 84, which is the work that was done by the charity CALM, to prevent male suicide. We launched the Daily Mile on ITV this year. We’re about to launch a campaign with the Food Foundation around getting kids to eat more vegetables, which we’re really proud of. I look at what MediaCom are doing around mental health, and what Channel4 are doing around diversity and inclusion, and particularly disability, and what Sky are doing around plastics in the ocean and sustainability – wherever you look, there are big companies using advertising to do good.

What do you think is the value of a Front Foot membership?

It allows us as an industry to speak with one voice. You’d like to think that we are more than the sum of our parts – marketing is a multi-platform discipline and needs all voices. We’re aware that from an advertiser’s point of view it’s not just about TV, it’s not just about radio, it’s about getting that balance and having all platforms – representing all platforms.

I think when we come together in advertising, we tend to agree on what the priority areas are for the industry as a whole, and that’s important.

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How is Artificial Intelligence changing Advertising?Data has transformed the advertising industry. It is no exaggeration to say that accurate user data is now simply table stakes for any company looking to succeed in the business. Recent developments have thrown some potential roadblocks in the path of marketeers’ ability to gather and utilise that information. For the most part, however, the industry is increasingly reliant on data to create and measure the effectiveness of modern advertising.

Pippa Malmgren is the founder of H Robotics, in addition to being a former Presidential Advisor, Economist and Author. In her book ‘The Leadership Lab’, co-written with Chris Lewis, she argues that artificial

intelligence (AI) is the transformative technology that will finally deliver on the promise of digital advertising. Using machine learning marketeers will be able to personalise advertising based on user data, and deliver it in ways that take context into account:

“One of the main issues here isn’t lack of data. It’s making sense of them...AI knows what the customers want before they do. It can uncover customer insights and trends to deliver predictive service. In advertising, AI can personalise advertising to change parts of it, depending on the audience, to include different music or other content.”

Malmgren and Lewis point out that a Salesforce study of 3,500 marketing leaders found that high-performing brand leaders are twice as likely to be employing AI in their day-to-day operations. That report found that the marketers surveyed anticipate their AI use will grow more than 50 percent over the next two years, helping them deliver ‘more targeted campaigns, smarter personalization and higher ROI’.

Despite that, and despite Jeff Bezos stating that ‘there is no institution in the world that cannot be improved by machine learning’, AI is still a tool. It is an enabler of advertising, rather than a creator. In that sense the role of the individual creator or agency is still paramount; it takes human creativity and gut instinct to put together some of the more emotive campaigns on behalf of brands.

Moreover, AI is still in its infancy. A number of recent high-profile examples of machine learning based on human behaviour and biases have proven the need for a human hand on the tiller. To that end, Keith Eadie, VP and GM of Adobe Advertising Cloud, says:

“In advertising, great creative that drives an emotional connection always requires a human spark. What AI can do is free people up to focus on the problems humans are best at.”

Malmgren will be speaking at the advertising industry’s premier event, LEAD ’19, on January 30, joined by fellow speakers including Karen Blackett OBE, country manager for WPP; David Pemsel, chief executive, Guardian Media Group; and Baroness Fairhead CBE.

The agenda for the half-day event sees Malmgren expound on some of the biggest issues facing the industry in 2019. The tripartite topics of Trust, Trade and Transformation will take centre stage, as representatives of the advertising and political worlds discuss and debate how best the industry can tackle endemic challenges using new tools like AI.

Additionally, the event is the first time the general public will have the opportunity to hear our new president and outgoing Unilever CMCO Keith Weed setting out the Advertising Association’s mission for the next three years.

For more information or to stay abreast of the conference as it happens, visit adassoc.org.uk.

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Advertising Pays 7: PreviewOne of the primary benefits of a Front Foot membership is in access to Credos, advertising’s independent think tank. In this exclusive preview of its upcoming report into digitalisation, Credos’ deputy director Dan Wilks sets out some early findings and a statement of intent for the final report.

Within a quarter of a century, UK advertising has undergone a fundamental change. Around 80% of all ad spend is spent on ads delivered to their audiences via digital technologies; virtually none was in the early ‘90s. Over half of all ad spend goes to media that did not exist then. Creative approaches and techniques that are now commonplace were not then imagined.

With disruption also comes confusion – digiltalisation, digitisation, digital advertising, online advertising, internet advertising, programmatic advertising…the list goes on. These terms are used across the advertising industry, sometimes incorrectly and often with different meanings. The report will unpick some of these definitions and offer clarity where possible.

Does the UK also lead the way in online advertising? We believe it does. The UK has the largest ecommerce market in Europe and per capita the world. In addition, our initial analysis suggests that the UK’s online ad spend is amongst the highest in the world and as a proportion of GDP, the highest!

Why are we in this position? What makes the UK such fertile ground for digital growth? The reasons are many and varied, ranging from our early adopter mentality and comfort with personal debt to female labour force participation and government initiatives.

Whatever the reasons, whether mainly luck or judgement, the UK has certainly benefited from the digitalisation of advertising. From diversifying revenue streams to strengthening the brand-customer relationship to reducing barriers to advertisers, the impact cannot be overstated. It has brought new opportunities to businesses large and small, and to their customers alike. 25 years in, it seems timely to appraise the remarkable story of advertising’s digital revolution.

Adver t i s ing Pays 7 : The Digitalisation of Advertising will be released in April. For more information or to register your interest please visit adassoc.org.uk.

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Advertising needs young people. The need to sell on behalf of brands with understanding and authenticity is paramount, and ad history is littered with examples of brands assuming they can reach young

audiences and getting it badly wrong. Beyond that, advertising is an industry that requires regular injections of young blood to stay vital,

relevant and representative of a changing society.

Getting young people into Advertising

“Talent is distributed equally throughout London,

but opportunity is not.”Ally Owen, founder, The Brixton Finishing School

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Despite widespread acknowledgement of those truths, too often the UK ad industry lets itself down by failing to provide young people with a route into the industry. Grey’s Head of Marketing Sarah Jenkins explains:

“The reality is that for an eighteen-year-old kid on a sink estate in Hull, advertising doesn’t have the allure that it would have done 20 years ago. If you say advertising to a group of school kids now, they talk about ad blockers and annoying ads, digital banners and stuff – advertising is not, in young kids’ minds, what it was 20 years ago, and we need to recognise that.

“I think there’s a lack of awareness of how glorious our industry is, for many young people. It’s an incredibly opaque world as well. We’ve got probably 500 or 1000 different job titles in our industry, and there’s no way a young kid could possibly navigate that and work out that they could a) play a role, b) be brilliant and c) that they don’t need a degree to get there.”

It’s a problem that is endemic to other creative sectors as well, but is compounded by the fact that few other industries rely so heavily on authentic communication of brand messages. Additionally, since the UK’s advertising sector is overwhelmingly based in London the challenges around rent and transport costs simply price a large proportion of young people out of the market.

There are schemes in place at some brands and agencies designed to mitigate those issues. Livity, for instance, is a Brixton-based agency that is attempting to lead by example through its Digify programme, while MediaCom are consistently singled out for its sterling work around making the industry more accessible through affordable apprenticeships. Saatchi, too, has made huge strides in making internships a plausible route into the industry, with Jenkins saying “that meant doing some really hard remodelling of their salaries”.

The Advertising Association has taken over the role of rep for the upcoming Young Lions event, which is designed specifically to attract young people to the industry. Taking place over five days at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the event gives the best and brightest talent in the UK advertising industry the chance to shine in front of an audience of their peers. For more information visit adassoc.org.uk

Alex Goat is Livity’s chief executive. She believes that involving young people in advertising shouldn’t just be a box-ticking exercise, it also makes good business sense: “We do a lot in the entertainment industry as well, and they are always looking and needing people who represent the audience that they’re talking to. The music industry has probably done it longer – [employing] young people who actually represent their core demographic, and I think they realised that a long time before the advertising agencies did.”

Consequently, Livity offers under-25s a free coworking space in Brixton to alleviate some of the issues around providing young people with a route into advertising.

It’s a sentiment echoed by The Brixton Finishing School’s founder Ally Owen, a veteran of the advertising and publishing businesses who stepped off the usual career ladder to help young people find a path into the industry. She argues that the industry’s lack of provision for young people has implications for representation more widely:

“Every hire needs to be the right kind of hire because otherwise the profit margins are compromised. It’s not embracing the fact that advertising is the one industry for everybody, and doesn’t represent everybody in any way. The quality of work suffers. Every brand, its customers are the key stakeholders. If you’re not involving the majority of the customers in the actual brand itself it’s like you’re disenfranchising a whole range of people because they don’t fit this safe idea of what an employee looks like.”

While the industry is in the process of reinventing the paths into advertising to make it more accessible, providing the means by which young people can sustain themselves while in training is vital. In doing so, the wider industry can potentially help treat some of the more endemic issues around trust and representation.

PBAA_Quarterly-Q1_Newsletter_3.0.indd 15 24/01/2019 10:24

“Wherever you look, there are big companies

using advertising to do good”

Production Credits:Editor - Chris SutcliffeCopy: Chris Sutcliffe, Matt Bourn, Matthew Evans, Francesca WoodhouseDesign: Fiasco Design


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