Absolute Gobbledegook

Everyone knows that in marketing the really big dollars are shepherded around by the media boys, the likes of Mindshare and Starcom.

In fact, Mediapost reports that a third of the world’s media spend is managed by the top six holding companies (Omnicom, WPP, IPG, Publicis, Aegis and Havas) which between them shuffled $195bn of media dosh around the world in 2006 – seven per cent higher than the previous year. Which sounds great.

But at the big bash of the media business in Venice last month clients were offering a slightly less rosy view of what the big dogs are up to.

P&G’s chief media boss, Bernhard Glock, said media agencies don’t get it and that measurement techniques were outdated, media-centric and conducted in silos.

However, the head of marketing at Fiat, Stephen Norman, took a rather wonderfully direct aproach:

“I haven’t seen much change in the way that media agencies are spending my money. You’re still spending 80% of our budget on TV. Go back to 1986 and we were spending around 80% on TV. If you complain about service they set up a strategy meeting and bring out the media planner…who puts on a tie and comes to the office with a chart and it’s all absolute gobbledegook.”

I think we can safely say the media business is deep in the mire of the innovators dilemma, which leaves plenty of opportunity for the now famous ‘frenemy’ to spread its wings.

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