Seven West Media's chief executive David Leckie once scolded advertisers for creating dud TV commercials that turned audiences away during ad breaks and now Ten Network’s chief sales officer Mike Morrison has done likewise.
Morrison, the former chief strategy officer at George Patterson Y&R, said a corporate preoccupation to “de-risk every piece of creative” and an obsession with media channels as the primary focus for the industry meant “advertising effectiveness had been bludgeoned by advertising efficiency”.
Australia needed a major TV event like the Super Bowl to put powerful advertising back on the radar for consumers and create acceptance in the corporate community that showcase advertising was a smart and effective strategy.
“My sense is that people are talking less and less about great ads,” he said. “There used to be an awful lot of water-cooler talk about ads. There were more regular outbreaks of excellence. It’s still there as we’ve seen from the public interest around the Super Bowl ads this week. People love watching and talking about compelling advertising. We need something like that. Given we’re in the content business, it’s worrying that we seem to have become quite complacent and ready to settle for mediocrity.”
Morrison said the local industry had “developed risk-averse behaviour” which was at odds with how the public wanted to be entertained.
“Entertainment always has an element of risk,” he said. “We’re paranoid that we don’t want to offend or upset anyone.” Morrison said Australian marketing was “going to a low point” where risk aversion dominated marketing behaviour at the expense of creativity and compelling commercial messages.
“Media has become the new marketing but we’re forgetting the other half of the equation, which is creativity,” he said. “There are over 6,000 media channels to choose from so we’ve become incredibly focused on getting the efficiencies right but we’ve forgotten about effectiveness. That’s about the compelling nature of content. Efficiency and effectiveness equals business growth.”
Morrison said the “elephant in the room” was that “we no longer want to talk about Australia being a truly great creative centre of excellence for marketing and advertising. “I’d love to have a high point for Australian advertising to give people something to invest in and aim for,” he said.
This article first appeared in the 10 February 2012 edition of AdNews. Click here to subscribe for more news, features and opinion.
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