Our correspondent in China is possibly the gloomiest person in Beijing, in this the year of the Glorious Olympics. He shares his 2008 forecasts for the North West's marketing services community with How-Do's readers...
In a vastly out of character move for the Chinese government, a degree of censorship seems to be being imposed on the populace as Chinese New Year approaches. Sadly the traditional Chinese lunar calendar doesn’t seem to be pulling its weight with regards to the sub-Queen motif-ed “One World, One Vision-athon” that is the Beijing Olympics 2008.
With scant regard to patriotism, 2008 has turned out to be the far from internationally palatable “Year of the Rat” - hardly the image the PRC wants seared across the international consciousness. Year of the Dragon or Year of the Tiger would have been far more chronologically desirable, but Year of the Rat it is. Or rather was.
The good thing about single-party states is that 5,000 years of tradition can be given a gentle nudge aside when it is deemed expedient – hence the recent media-encouraged discussions of the forthcoming “Year of The Mouse” – hardly a dragon, but at least it doesn’t live in a bin and spit syphilis.
Ah, it would be right up there with the UK government, worried about offending some tumour-riddled oil potentate arriving to personally collect his latest BAE bung, insisting that, for the duration everyone with birthdays between June 22 and July22 should tactfully celebrate being born under the sign of the “benign melanoma”. Kinda catchy, dontcha think?
Anyway, so welcome one an all to the “Year of the Mouse” here on How-Do – a year when the latest information on media and marketing communications in the North West is, appropriately, enough, just a double click away.
Let’s get a little serious for once, albeit briefly.
The term “credit crunch” will have chilled the marrow of marketeers faster than Andy Jeal cashing a Northern Rock retainer. Doubtless, there’s going to be a lot of bollocks bantered about in the next few months about clients “spending their way out of recession” and a clutch of unverifiable claims from marcomms company about “so far not feeling the pinch.” Ignore them all. It’s complete and utter cak – and transparent cak at that (by far the worst sort for avoiding tredding in btw).
Belts are being tightened are budgets are being slashed like nubile teens in a B-movie even as, cheese and pickle sarnie midway to gob, you read this over lunch in early Jan. The mood is one of caution, not of panic, but quarter one spending will be reduced as much as feasible at this late juncture, with quarter two being the real casualty.
It’s not all despair – previous belt tightening exercises have seen spend reduced, pulled out of London and “wintered” in the v.f.m. regions. Similarly, looking at the early 90's as a point of reference, above-the line spend migrated below the line with all the alacrity of a Ukrainian plumber with Euro-Rover Family Ticket.
Historically, direct marketing (quantifiable pound for pound results) and PR (unquantifiable pound for pound results, but cheap and the chairman’s mum gets to see his picture in the business section) have been the beneficiaries here.
Well, a drop in above-the-line may see a resurgence in traditional direct marketing – with its bastard half-brother e-media still (whatever the pundits punt) heavily reliable on off-line spend to drive consumer traffic and database acquisition.
As to PR…well. I somehow get the feeling that PR will fare less well this time round, which leads me to my first 2008 prediction:
1) The Year When the North West PR Scene Gets Less Well Over-subscribed.
Carroll
At one time appointing a PR consultancy in the North West was easy. – you rang Paul Carroll, checked that he wasn’t handling one of your competitors and announced that you’d appointed Communinique the following Tuesday. This was unless you were a bit consumer-y brand-ery and then you rang John Williams or if you were a bit Manchester City Council-y then, for no apparent reason, you rang Phil Staniforth.
It really was that simple – true there were your Powells, your Cartmells, your Harrison Cowleys and your Greenwood Tighes – but serious PR clients inevitably wound up with one of the big three.
Writing a review of the North West PR scene was, for a long time, stultifying dull with its hierarchy being far the most inflexible of all the marketing communications sectors (advertising, design etc).
The absorption (and de-vitalizing) of Communiqué and Staniforth into international groups and the departure/lower key roles of their one-time owner-operators, has seen the PR scene, in Manchester in particular, explode. Scarcely a week has gone by since How-Do launched that the arrival of a new PR player in the city hasn’t been announced.
Bagnall
2008 will not see a lot of these players go to the wall – PR companies – have notoriously low overheads- but it will see a lot of discrete shrinkage in the sector and a lot of MD’s of nascent PR outfits wishing they’d opted for a chair less leathery or a city centre lease with less longevity.
Natalie Bagnall’s decision to shunt Vertigo under the MC2 umbrella, although being trumpeted as a strategic masterstroke, does smack somewhat of surrender – and if you can’t make it with private access to Paul Carroll’s contact book and his huge stack of cash, what chance then for the city’s other wannaPRs?
Recruitment of course is going to be the other mighty casualty here. All in all it’s going to be a grim year for graduates of media studies courses. So not all bad news then.
2) The Year When McCann and CBJWT get TBWA Manchester’ed
Harwood-Matthews
The former BDH has taken a lot of public pain and re-invented itself in the last 12 months. It has yet to show any real fruits from the process – cosmetically shunting stuff from your London office doesn’t count Mr Harwood-Matthews!
However, the changes, even in this most forlorn alcove of their global empires, will not have been overlooked by WPP and Interpublic, parents companies of JWT and McCann respectively. This, coupled with the twin imperative that both companies are overdue a management overhaul, will make for, as they say in Beijing West, “interesting times” for the employees of both agencies,
Little
At Bonis, its chief executive, Sue Little, after five years of fiefdom, must be ripe for the ungrateful bum’s rush that Interpublic seems to serve up to even it most loyal of regional retainers with predictable regularity (c.f, Brian Child, Ernie Bate, Jon Jeffries et al…). Interpublic instills ambition in its Bright Young Things to the extent that they always seem to deem it worth “killing the king” to keep them. I wonder how Bonis would have fared these last few years with Mr Child still at the tiller? One word springs to mind: “better”.
At CBJWT its protagonists will have, I suspect, much greater say in their destinies. It is an open secret that creative director Andy Cheetham would be happy to quit the business and spend more time with his yacht, but the future plans of chief exec David Bell are a much more interesting question…
Bell
Bell is still in his mid-forties and not a likely candidate for the thermos and fishing stool just yet. However, he does have a significant interest in Brazen, the PR company set up by his missus, Nina Wheeler. Maybe he’ll decide 2008 is the year to capitalize on the significant client base that the CBJWT and Brazen has come to share in recent years.
I guess, in 2008, Bell will either commit himself to hacking his way up the WPP ladder – a difficult task as they don’t like promoting “in-comers” all that much – or he’ll look at doing it all again for himself. Maybe worth keeping an eye on anyone URL shopping for “brazenad.com”…
3) The Year When Design Companies Get Less Fussy
The current new wave of North West design companies have grown up an in a period where both the North West and design have been sexy. Clients have paid lip service to investing in high-end design work, often of an innovative, off-the-wall or even indulgent nature, and have maintained that good design is a vital part of their image and subsequent profitability.
Temporarily at least, that notion is going to the back of the wardrobe. Design consultancies who have previously eschewed certain kinds of client and certain kinds of work on the grounds that “they didn’t want to be known as that kind of consultancy” will suddenly find either their tolerance levels or ability to pay the rent substantially lowered. It’s going to get a lot less quirky guys.
Jeal
4) The Year when Andy Jeal Dances For Pennies Outside of Piccadilly Station
Few in the industry – outside of media sales people – are going to shed many tears over the corpulent uncles that constitute media independentdom having slightly less of other people’s money to make a commission on than last year. However, the fate of the region’s media buyers will obviously be the most accurate barometer for the health of the sector in the North West.
With house buyers, financial services and holiday operators common features on the client list of many of the region’s media independents; it is fairly obvious that many of them have a major blip on the horizon. However, as many of these companies source their other marketing needs elsewhere – largely in London – the decline of media spend in the region doesn’t necessarily betoken the wholesale problems it might once have done.
The credit crunch will not see Andy Jeal dancing for pennies outside Piccadilly station – unless in an innovative campaign of promotional irony, NABS can prevail on him to so do – but the sector is facing a six month “wait and see” situation, where staff are neither laid off nor replaced.
So a bit of a lean time for recruitment consultancies on all fronts – but then they often remind me of a Gary Larson cartoon about estate agents which, with but slight revision, could apply equally well to recruitment consultants:
Life Before Recruitment Consultants: Company: Hello. Would you like a job? Candidate: Yes.
Bhatti
5) The Year In Which Classified Sales People Get Bar Jobs
The media scene in the North West took a few knocks in 2007, led by GMG in a true “et tu brute?” moment when they sacked (sorry “offered a tempting re-location package to”) their recruitment department. Sal Bhatti’s subsequent departure from the Metro should have been something of a forewarning that 2008 was not going to be a great year for media sales people. If someone of Sal’s vintage faces the push then what of the resumé-aly challenged folk that constitute the classified sales cannon fodder class in the NW? Ah, well there’s always call centres or bar work.
Smith
The demise of the “Magazine”, founded by the eminently fruity Nicola Smith, will surely not be the only publication to suffer from the apparent downturn – though it is surprising how frequently magazine publishers blame “economic circumstances beyond their control” for their own mismanagement when it comes to closure.
A number of publications – Time Out Manchester most notably – will be pre-casualtied by the current economic question mark. Chimp magazine, of course, remains entirely fictitious no matter what the prevailing economic conditions.
Possibly the only sector to be benefit from North West publishers in early 2008 will be the digital media companies surely already being briefed by Insider, EN and the MEN to up-vamp their business site offerings. Crain’s Manchester site may be worthy but dull, but that’s still a whole “w” word better than its current on-line competition.
(Sticking with Crain’s Manchester Business – fie on the anonymous emailer who reckoned How Do’s 22 October headline: “Crain’s Manchester Business Dummy Out This Week” led him to believe publisher Arthur Porter was about to be sacked…)
Back in the early 90’s certain marcomms proprietors had this rather self-satisfied mantra: “This is not a recession, this is real life” with the impression being given that it was eighties boom time that had been the exception. 2008 will not plumb the depths of the early 90’s but it may prove a timely wake up call to the sector, both within and without the North West, that the laissez-faire years which have nurtured many of the region’s current players are, at best, on hold.
Flabby and self-indulgent
The sector has grown flabby, self-indulgent and unjustifiably self-celebrating during the relatively bountiful opening years of the 21st century. The next 12 months will inject a welcome dose of reality into the sector, but shouldn’t prove a body blow to the genuinely innovative or entrepreneurial.
Those that go have been living on borrowed on time, those that remain will no doubt benefit from a playing field devoid of the smoke and mirrors provided by organizations unjustly propped up by a lack of commercial awareness on the part of those paying them to do sub-standard and unaccountable work.
Happy New Y’all.
Tony Murray is 43 for the next five days. He was born in the Year of the Rabbit but is finding it increasingly difficult to live up to the reputation of his burrowing mammal chronological counterpart. He comes from the South of Manchester but now lives in the West of Beijing. You can vehemently disagree with his prognosis of fairly uncertain doom on: tonymurray37@hotmail.com
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