Ad Week Europe Day 2 - quotes marketers need to know

Jill McDonald: “To be a successful marketer in the boardroom you have to speak the same language of the rest of the board.

“You have to understand what the objectives are. Whether that’s creating shareholder value or being mindful of the particular metrics in an organisation. You have to make sure that you’re aligning your language and intent around what the board wants doing. Marketing isn’t a science but the more grounded you can be in terms of the numbers and the returns from recommendations."

Benny Higgins said: “The only way you can develop trust is by earning it. It takes time. There’s no quick route. You have to behave your way to trust.”

Experts from brands and agencies gathered to discuss the role of the CMO in the boadroom as well as the remaining disconnect between data and creativity during the session 'Is the CMO the most powerful player in the boradroom', hosted by Media iQ chairman Stewart Easterbrook.

Tony Quinn, strategic advisor to Tesco CMO and former Publicis chief strategy officer:

"The reality is they [creative agencies] are still operating in a broadcast-dominated world, and that is what they are geared up for. I was part of the IPA Effectiveness Committee for a while, and they used to have 60 submissions every two years, and half of those were charities, which don’t count. So that’s 30 entries for effectiveness. Of all the brand spend out there that's all we can muster. In contrast to that I saw something recently saying £18m is spent just in submissions for the Cannes Lions awards. There is something wrong there."

Marco Bertozzi, VP of global clients, VivaKi: "There is still a mindset which is intrinsic in the marketing teams, which is that they want to pay what they have always paid. But agencies are investing significant amounts in data and analytics, and that needs to be taken into account.

"We all have to fundamentally change. We are great about talking about agencies remodelling themselves, publishers remodelling themselves but I don't thinking any of us challenge the CMOs enough to challenge their organisations. We let them continue to do what they have always done."

Cineworld vice president of marketing Justin Skinner: The challenge when you’re client side is too often CMOs are talking the language of data but at Cineworld a lot of our guys don't get marketing. The finance guys only care about bottom line for instance...so marketers are often the only ones who can talk about the use of data, but it needs to be infused across all the disciplines. There is a tendency towards relying on one discipline to own it but it should be a collective area.

Chris Duncan, chief marketing officer, News UK: "The single view of the customer is a concept for the 90s and has been dead for years. It is a cumulative amount of intelligence about the customer that you want.

Unilever vice president of brand building for foods and ice cream, John Goldstone said it is more important to invest in digitally upskilling a company’s employees from the bottom up rather than bringing in specialists who can “dumb down” the rest of an organisation.

“The big famous brands that we try to create are dependent on reaching a lot of people with relevant messages. And digital channels are the way to do that,” he said. “It’s an interesting conundrum; it is possible to buy in specialists but in a way that can dumb down the rest of the organisation.

“We made the choice to really raise the floor and upskill everybody in digital capabilities. It’s a big changes for us.”

Discussing the evolution of the ad industry Ben Sutherland, head of performance, Vizeum, said: "The king is dead, and in this instance, I belive the king is advertising. Creativity is alive and more invigorated than ever, but advertising as we know it is dead. What you see now is the final twitches of a dinosaur struggling to understand its own doom. The old approach to advertising, which has a slight egocentric arrogant point of view about how we push messages to consumers, is outdated and outmoded."

He also later said: "Brands need to live and die by the value they provide for consumers, not something that is created within an ad agency. Ultimately more brands need to die."

Jane Wilson, managing director, corporate affairs, MHP said: "Having a brand is like having a child. In your eyes they can do no wrong until they go into the big wide world, then you see what little shits they are. That's where PR comes in."

"If people spoke to people the way advertising speaks to people, you'd get a punch in the face."

Discussing the evolution of the ad industry Karmarama founder David Bouniguidi said: "It used to be the case that if you were freelance you were shit but now if you are sitting behind a desk you are kind of fucked."

Julia Smith, independent consultant & former head of IASH: "The 'War on Ad Fraud' panel at Ad Week Europe (pictured) was another case where this discussion was had without the presence or input of an advertiser. Is that becuase we are protecting advertisers from the fraud epidemic or pulling the wool over their eyes to protect ourselves from losing their precious ad spend?

"We keep saying it is the responsibility of advertisers, buyers and sellers, but no-one seems willing to tell the advertisers."

PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Leo Johnson - brother to mayor Boris Johnson - said the advertising industry has used technology the “same way bankers did in 2008” to perpetuate a false market of consumer demand,

He urged advertisers to stop using technology to "squeeze demand out of a dry, flaking sponge."

He added: “I’m talking about advertising that is based on real-time bidding, native advertising, content farms, click farms, that is based on trying to squeeze more out of a dry flaking sponge that is unsaturated in the demand for people that will buy more stuff.

“There will be geniuses that will come up with more data harvesting techniques that will create some more demand. Is that a long-term future-proof model?”