Thanks for the comment and for the link. A great talk from JWT – and great to hear a creative agency saying that those adverts for ‘global’ brands that are so obvioulsy ‘global adverts’ are as bad as we all know they are

One thought that was threaded throughout the talk from Guy Murphy was the strength of brands. And this applies to media brands. To go back ot my point, let’s take a look at one of the strongest media brands of recent years: Loaded Magazine, once selling over half a million copies in it’s mid 90’s heyday is now, according to the latest ABC figures selling just 95,371 copies – down more than 20% on the same period a year ago.

At the same time loaded.co.uk has received a 51% increase in its monthly unique users according to the lastest eABC figures released earlier this month. The same pattern is true for NME. So the media brands are strong, but people are drifting away from consuming those brands on paper and on to the screen.

And this is where the challenge lies. How does an advertsier adapt to the different delivery method of Loaded’s content? A razor balde manuafacturer may be happy to place a branding campaign in the magazine, but when the reader consumes Loaded digitally it becomes more of a challenge to assess the branding opportunities within the igital pages of the magazine? It should, but the common practice of only measuring clicks would suggest so.

Guy Murphy is right, on a global level we shouldn’t be rushing to do everything digital – it’s what’s right for individual markets and consumer groups. But where broadband penetration is high, and media consumption is drifting from analogue to digital, from broadcast to on-demand we do need to ensure that our assesment of the new delivery method is felxible enough to be able to base advertising and media decisons on more than a click through rate.

But there’s a loooong way to go before we reach a fully digital world (I especially believe that paper magazines will remain strong)

Look at the video embedded in this post from Sean Howard: http://www.craphammer.ca/2008/08/future-of-accou.html