So, other than the World Cup, what is there to be excited about? I can only answer this from the perspective of a media specialist, but I still see many opportunities for there to be fun in our industry.
I am an incurable optimist, but I really do believe that media is a bright area within advertising today. It's the part of the business that has attracted more investment than any other in recent years, so it seems I'm not the only person who feels like this.
Years ago, media was seen as the back room of the advertising world, slightly ahead of the dispatch department in terms of prestige.
In retrospect, this is all pretty sad. Most people do really boring jobs and would dream of an environment where there's interaction between newspapers, magazines, TV, advertising agencies and clients. How can it possibly be seen as dull? It's only boring if you make it so and if you are presenting it as such you are probably in the wrong business.
So, how can we inject more fun into media? Here are some basic thoughts:
- Remember that to a client the most interesting part of his day may well be the meeting with his agency or media specialist. Many aspects of marketing can be internally focused and relatively dull. As a starting point, be upbeat and sound interested in your subject.
- It does not have to be all about numbers. I have seen a magazine schedule presented by simply discussing the selected titles on the basis of their environmental qualities. Hence, the conversation is all about editorial quality, paper stock, advertising graveyards and relevance. This is automatically more interesting than coverage, frequency and discount. The numbers have to be supplied at some point, but if you build up client trust these things will be taken as a given.
- If you have an idea for a new medium or even something the client has not tried before, make the idea come alive. This can be achieved relatively easily. When the idea was conceived for Virgin Atlantic to become the first client to paint the Star Ferry red and cover it with Virgin logos, the client was pretty lukewarm. The turning point was when someone had the bright idea of getting hold of a model of the ferry and painting it in the proposed scheme. It made the whole idea come to life and was approved immediately.
These are just some basic thoughts but the challenge is to surprise and delight your client and make him see how hard you are trying on his/her behalf. At least by adopting this attitude you won't be selling yourself short, you'll have a happier client and you could even be winning an award for creativity in media. As an added bonus, you'll also have more fun.
