Weekly Wrap – Chris Lovell
Golley Slater's Group CEO – Chris Lovell with a roundup of the week.
The “power to the people social media tracker – wave 3” research reported that there are now 184m blogs worldwide, but within the research you find there are 280m people reading blogs, so that is on average 1.52 people reading each blog. So while the research claims that Citizen Journalism is becoming a reality, the real reality is that what most citizens write about is either of no interest to other citizens or is so badly written they can not be bothered to read it. True talent is learned and practised and the fact that everyone now has digital access to broadcast to the world in the written word or the creation of film or content, does not mean that all of it is any good, in fact quite the opposite. Keep up the investment in journalism I say.
Meanwhile away from the internet, in the last 7 days it has been confirmed what we all have known for at least 9 months, that the UK economy has shrunk in the past 2 quarters. And we are officially in recession….phew, thank goodness for that, it means we can now all get on and enjoy it. Recessions are good for business, it gets rid of the weak and ensures that the strong take stock and gird their loins and wait in preparation for the green shoots of recovery.
I love the quote by one of the shamed US bankers who said in banking when the tide goes out you find out who has been swimming naked. It is as relevant for business as a whole, in recessionary times it is easy to spot the companies who are masquerading in the emperor’s new clothes.
But in spite of the R word the other thing that struck me this week is the amount of pitching that is still going on, the AAR reported that they worked on 143 briefs in 2008 with a billing value in excess of £550m. When I look at our weekly new business pitching report we are pitching for 24 pieces of business right now across the network with a billing value in excess of £28m and if we are doing that one must assume other networks are in the same great position, purely by the nature that we are having to compete against other agencies for the business.
And as the AAR are predicting the volume of pitches will continue in 2009, we better make sure we continue to wear our Sunday Best.
Chris Lovell
Group CEO, Golley Slater