Marketing Technology

David Muir from WPP starts by apologising for his Scottish accent.

By the end of this year 7% of marketing expenditure will be spent online. In the UK, 18% of all advertising revenues will be placed online. Lots more charts showing rises when it comes to the internet, and declines for TV, newspapers, etc.

"Sex and alcohol chart" – v-shaped graph plotting age and number of hours of TV watched which dips drastically around the age of 16/17 (when people discover sex and alcohol). Marked difference between those born in 1985 and those born in 1989, signifying a fundamental shift in habits.

David shows us Stardoll – online brands being built in record time, surpassing the reach of traditional brands such as Bratz and Barbie. Switches focus to TV – fragmentation, control, and the inappropriate response of broadcasters and advertisers (i.e. they’re just doing more of it, which consumers resent). Suggests that broadcast skills are going to become more and more important in the PR industry. Demoing examples of corporate broadcasting: Greenpeace; Land Rover; Cisco.

Quotes John Hayes, CEO of American Express: "We, as advertisers, are paying more to reach less. Now, the definition of insanity is to continually do the same things over and over and expect different results."

Moves on to talk about the way in which consumers can now expose companies’ failings through the use of blogs, audio recordings of telephone conversations and videos taken on camera phones. David defines the shift that clients are going through – from transmission marketing to networked marketing, via dialogue marketing.

In summary:

• You can’t hide anything any more
• Be likeable
• PR is the killer app. Brands need to become better story tellers. PR is all about story telling.
• Be a better brand parent

Next up: Paul Gillin