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Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, Speaks @ Ad Tech

Sir Martin gave the keynote address at the Ad Tech conference yesterday morning.  It was his first time attending the big Internet conference and my first time hearing him speak.  Although Sorrell thought he would be presenting to a "small intimate group" the auditorium at the Javits Center in NYC was packed.

Sorrell spoke without the use of PPT slides (which was a nice change), walked among the attendees, and discussed a variety of topics relating to the agency business ("we're not an agency anymore"), the Internet ("big change is coming"), the impact of the economy ("never in all my years in business have I seen clients so focused on cost") and the road ahead.  The Big 3 things on his mind (and therefore what should be on the mind of everyone of WPP's north of 100,000 employees) are:

1. New Markets - there is a "shift in power" to markets like China (China Mobile has more than 500MM subs), Brazil (just picked up the Olympics), and India (big numbers)

2. New Media - 25% of WPP spending is going to New Media which includes web, mobile (needs to be a shift in spending to mobile but so far it's been a "big disappointment"), video ("video content is going to be the most powerful force"), etc.

3. Consumer Insights - WPP spends $4B per year on data, analytics and measurement, this is one of the reasons WPP acquired TNS last year

A few other sound bites:

- Very few companies are making money today and those that are have done it "ugly" (cost cutting)

- In the future there is going to be an overcapacity of product and an under-capacity of people

- Watch out for retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Home Depot (they are fastest movers)

- Internal company communication is critical ("robotic control doesn't work, control is a very un PC word")

- "Doing good is good business" (in talking about corporate social responsibility)

Sorrell spoke eloquently and provided a great deal of "food for thought" which was just what was needed at the beginning of a conference like Ad Tech.   I, for one, was engaged and impressed.

Sad Day in Publishing - Conde' Nast Folds 4 Publications

Truth be told my first sales job was at a Street & Smith's Sports Group.  Thanks Sal Schiliro for giving me my big break.  Street & Smith's was a little-known group of sports "annuals" on Baseball, Pro/College Football, and Pro/College Basketball.  Long before you could get every stat of every player on the web sports fans turned to Street & Smith's as the "bible" in each sport.  If you ever played fantasy football or rotisserie baseball before 1995 you used Street & Smith's.

One of the little secrets about Street & Smith's was that is was owned by Conde' Nast.  You can bet we mentioned this association on every conversation and every sales call.  Sure we printed much of the magazines on pulp stock, but being able to walk into a buyers office and use the Conde' Nast name - creator of such well-known and successful publications as: Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair and GQ - helped open a lot of doors and close a lot of deals with agencies and marketers.    

I left Street & Smith's after 3 years for Golf Magazine (then owned by Times Mirror) and later Travel & Leisure (then owned by American Express Publishing) but I will always have a special place in my heart for Sal and the Conde' Nast family.

This is one of the reasons I was sad to hear the news yesterday that Conde' Nast was closing 4 of its titles including 68-year old Gourmet, arguably the best "food" publication of all time.  The other 3 titles include Cookie, Modern Bride, and Elegant Bride.  It will be interesting to see the fate of other publishers and how many of their magazines shut down or move to a 100% online model in the year ahead.

     

 

Newspaper Ad Revenue Falls Nearly $2 Billion

Ad Age alert this afternoon screamed out at me.  Newspaper ad revenue fell almost $2 Billion in Q3 '08 for a record 18.1% decline.  I'm not making this stuff up.  It came from some new stats from the Newspaper Association of America.  I know the newspaper biz is in trouble but a $2 Billion drop is crazy huge. 

What's more surprising is that online ad sales at newspaper's dropped, too, for the second straight quarter.  And that's after consecutive quarterly growth dating back to 2004 when these kind of stats started being measured.  If newspapers can't make it work online or offline that spells disaster for the industry and it means we're going to be seeing a lot more journalists looking for work and a lot fewer newspapers to read  in the coming years.

Final quote on the subject from our friends at Mediapost:

"What we have here is an industry in a nosedive. Blogs, social networks, 24-hour news sites like CNN.com and real-time communication services like Twitter are stealing eyeballs from newspaper sites as the weak economy forces financial services, automotive and retail advertisers to greatly cut back on their spending."