Legendary and outspoken adman Sir John Hegarty is the first big name announced today by the AANA who will keynote the Global Marketer Conference (GMC) next March in Sydney in conjunction with the World Federation of Advertisers.
In what promises to be one of the most important and high profile international events next year for the $25 billion Australian marketing and media sectors, the AANA will host the WFA’s flagship conference, held every two years, at Doltone House in Sydney in March. The WFA’s members represent 90% of spending power in the $700 billion global advertising sector.
Another six international heavyweight keynotes will be announced in coming weeks by the AANA but Sir John has already flagged his initial thoughts on the theme of his address - “10 reasons why it’s the best time to be in Advertising”.
Unsurprisingly, however, Sir John has a caveat - the industry’s “product” is in long-term decline.
“It’s one of the best times ever to be in advertising but why is it the work is poor,” he told AdNews from his organic and biodynamic vineyard in France. “I don’t know of any other industry in the world that would say the way to succeed is to make a worse product. And we seem to be in that situation in advertising. That’s the theme of my argument.
“People say to me ‘you’ve been in the industry a very long time so what’s the biggest challenge? Sadly it is a very long time. You can talk about technology being the reason but for me the biggest issue is the globalisation of our industry. We don’t seem to be able to create work globally that has impact. I think marketers today are losing contact with people despite the fact they have many more ways of communicating with them. Globalisation is one of the problems. We’ve gone for the lowest common denominator. So many just use a bit of computer graphics of some kind or another because nobody objects to dancing buildings. It sounds wonderful and wacky but it’s not a great idea. Marketers are at fault. Advertising agencies are at fault.
“Look at the work which gets raved about. I mean, look at your own piece of work for the Melbourne transport system which won all kinds of awards around the world – Dumb Ways to Die. You look at the piece of work which was created purely for a local community, for a local problem and yet it was picked up around the world. But it was done for a local project.”
Sir John also warned about the dangers of data and analytics – he was not against the trend but said the industry globally needed to be reminded that there is still a role for judgment.
“Clients are desperate for salesmanship to be a science. They would love it to be. They would love to be able to say this equals that and this will be the return on investment so let’s do it. But they can’t. In the end it’s a judgment call you still have to make.”
Registration and details of the Global Marketer Conference can be found at: www.aana.com.au/gmc2014
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.
Have something to say? Send us your comments using the form below or contact the writer at paulmcintyre@yaffa.com.au
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.