FOCUS: 2000 Previews - Challenges still remain the same in 2000

Many of us are still trying to digest the prophecies and hype the new millennium has generated. The demise of advertising is certainly one such theme. While the new millennium will see many businesses becoming obsolete, the ad business will not be one of them. Advertising will survive, trust me, and it will continue to grapple with the same issues - proliferation of choice, rapid technological change, clutter, fragmentation and the insatiable desire consumers have to be treated as individuals. But while advertising will survive, not all agencies will. Those that do not adhere to the following time-tested principles will fall by the wayside: - Our fundamental role is to create success for our clients by building their brands. What we do must result in better value and better business performance. - We must stay committed to offering the highest creativity in everything we do, regardless of how it is delivered. - We must put the consumer at the centre of everything we do. Only by recognising the importance of these fundamentals can we begin to address the new challenges of the millennium; be they about the convergence between advertising and information, the unbundling of media services, the confluence of branding and corporate strategies, ecommerce, database marketing or any such other intense subjects. In seeking solutions, we must admit that the ad business is inherently a reactive, not a proactive, one. To ensure we stay ahead of the game, we need to ask some basic questions: - Are we investing sufficiently in training and retaining our stars or acquiring new talent? - Are we prepared to take risks, whether to explore untested methods or a new media option to reach the ever-elusive consumers? Or are we thinking every solution comes in the form of a TV or print campaign? - Are we being tenacious enough to work out integrated solutions for our clients - developing an understanding of the new tools such as data-mining, digital branding or customer relationship marketing, so we can produce more measurable results for them? - Are we confident enough to forge new alliances with outside partners to deliver more value to our clients? - Are we brave enough to ask to be rewarded on a performance-basis, not just on the amount of media we purchase?

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