Hamish Nicklin

https://lnkd.in/eZaJzpEi My ten 'suggestions' for future CEOs are on Advertising Week. This is the summary of the work behind #CEOConfidential, done with Pierangelo Soldavini, for Il Sole 24 Ore. See you later today at Federmanager Parma, to chat about #future and #leadership. #change #MarTech #business #AI #Blockchain #future

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Really grateful to two market-leading Editors of subscription-led businesses and terrific ex-colleagues of mine, Catrin Griffiths and Alastair McLellan, for spending time with me last week on B2B content strategy. If you want to watch on-demand there is a link below. Highlights for me included: Impact on content strategy of the move to a paid subscription business model 17min46 Building a high value B2B content proposition 14min02, 23min05, & 31min29 How to motivate editors & editorial teams 29min42 & 50min47 Removing Print as a platform 45min02: https://lnkd.in/gbwftfwR

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Media Marketing Compliance helped the Association of National Advertisers study the market for 'Principal' (or 'Proprietary') Media, and the results have landed. The report is incredibly thorough and provides great guidance for advertisers. While not a new phenomenon, PM is increasing dramatically and becoming a much more controversial way for Media Agencies to make extra profit at the expense of transparency into their true revenues. Advertisers should take a firm view on whether this is in their best interests.

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Ad budgets are tight and we are all being asked to “do more with less”. Impossible? Well, there are some things you can do. #Advertising #Marketing #Recession Maximising advertising effectiveness https://lnkd.in/embmaEUh

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The UK general election is a timely reminder for consultancies about the importance of clear messaging. Political campaigns SHOULD generate support by: - Targeting specific audiences - Clearly stating their goals - Showing a proven process or plan to achieve them - Communicating without jargon And whilst I can’t say that’s how this current election is panning out, it’s a healthy reminder that the same principles should apply to businesses. Your consultancy must articulate: 👉What you do 👉Who you do it for 👉How you do it 👉How you are different Avoid jargon and buzzwords. If your potential clients can't understand your message, how can they trust you to solve their problems? Deliver on your promises consistently, and you'll build trust and loyalty. P.S. REMEMBER TO VOTE TODAY (AND BRING YOUR I.D. WITH YOU)! P.P.S Remember that much like in politics, the best marketers aren’t always the best candidates. #generalelection #positioning

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Did you know 45% of people say they are more likely to notice a catalogue sent in the post than a marketing email? If you're in the planning phase for your Christmas activity take a moment, grab a cup of tea and discover more fascinating more stats and benefits for catalogues in our blog. ➡️

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Key trends shaping email performance in 2024. The DMA (Data & Marketing Association) UK Benchmarking report is now out. And for the first time launched with a summary and context of findings from Ian Gibbs as well as a really interesting panel discussion. ▶ B2B delivery rates have plummeted ▶ Open rates have a 'new normal' average with the impact of Apple's MPP ▶ B2C click rates have increased with utilities showing a significant spike As a member of the research hub for the Email Council, it's great to see this work published - and always nice to see your considerations agreed with by fellow members. To get a copy of the report go to dma(dot)org(dot)uk/research _________ 📧 Email is easy. Great email isn't 🏆 I help double CRM performance for brands (and their agencies) YoY ✔ Follow me to find out how

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Three weeks ahead of voting in UK General Election. The National Centre for Social Research last week published its latest report BSA 41: Five years of unprecedented challenges: The impact of the 2019-2024 Parliament on public opinion. It warns trust and confidence in the government has fallen back to where it was five years ago, a record high of 45% “almost never” trust governments to put the nation’s interests first, up from 34% in 2019. Broadly then, what does the report identify for the fall in confidence? 👉 Got Brexit done. Yet despite anticipating lower levels of immigration, net migration has increased to record levels. 👉 COVID. Forces the economy to shutdown placing huge demand on public spending. 👉 Russia invades Ukraine. A worsening rise to inflation most noticeably in energy costs but also triggering a rise of mortgage interest rates and inevitably declining living standards for many. 👉 Two Prime Ministers brought down. Johnson and Truss due to disregard to lockdown regulation and the 'mini budget' respectively. I believe, above all else, trust is the single greatest component for successful agency/client relationships. So what parallels might apply to organisations and their agencies? ✔ Agency pitch done. But do you still have access to senior leader experts in your agency? ✔ Budget spending demands. Are you consistently surprised by unavoidable budget increases? Is your agency operating as an advisor...contingency allowances, impact of decision making, etc. ✔ Delivering against promises. Is your agency consistently meeting expectations or falling behind? ✔ Ask why? Good is asking why. The opposite is said for guesswork and assumptions. ✔ No mystery. Are working collaboratively with your agency in an open and transparent way? In much the same way then public opinion is reshaping the course of this General Election, so it might as you evaluate the value of your agency relationship. If this is of interest, I wrote a short post 'How to find the right agency for me' https://lnkd.in/eJSCfPeS

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Travis Lusk Good to see you highlighting this report again. It needs to remain in the spotlight even at the risk of repetition for those already aware. Bill must be able to recite this blindfold. Yes, we need more advertisers adopting the extremely comprehensive playbooks in the report and hopefully they will. Education is the key. But more than anything we need the big agency groups to gradually wean themselves off the drug of easy money from programmatic trading, arbitrage and undisclosed margins. No agency group has supported the study and they won't, so advertisers have to make it clear that they won't allow this to continue and then work through new compensation methods that work for both parties. Trying to fix this problem without addressing fees and performance-led rewards is not going to shift the needle. Bill Duggan Association of National Advertisers

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Will the next government bring increased regulation for the UK advertising industry? The UK general election falls on the last day of MAD//FEST LONDON, so by the time Grace Carter gets on stage to start the party in E1, many of the votes for the political parties will have already been cast. One change that the new government could oversee is increased external regulation and governance of the advertising industry - would that be a good thing or a bad thing for you? Let's take AI for example. Katherine Viner, editor of the Guardian, recently called for AI regulation. She said, "Without quality journalism to train and ground large language models, these technologies would struggle to make sense of the world around them." Without quality, trusted data to train the AI models on, it is easy to see how we could get into a vicious circle of AI choking on its own exhaust fumes: 1 - Incorrect content published 2 - AI reads that incorrect content 3 - AI therefore writes incorrect content Crap in, crap out, as they say in the trade! ;-) I would also add that digital advertising relies on quality content that consumers spend time with, so that the advertising has a chance of having an impact. For example: The difference in dwell time on an MFA site, which uses GenAI to create the content and click-bait to get somebody there, to a page with 10 ads, is a world away from the experience of a subscriber to a premium publisher site, who logs on to consume the content they pay for and only sees a single ad next to that valued content. 💬 - What do you think - more government regulation or not? #ai #regulation #advertising

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What happens when retail media overtakes TV advertising? Last week, George Nott at The Grocer published a really comprehensive article on the current state of Retail Media in the UK. Here's some of the highlights: - Supermarkets have long worked with brands on ‘shopper marketing’, and since the launch of loyalty schemes in the 1990s have been sharing data insights. So, if that's the case, where is retail media up to in its evolution? According to Nick Ashley of Tesco Media & Insights Platform, retail media is only now “coming of age“ - it’s not the toddler some talk about. But it’s not an adult yet either - it's in its teenage years. I like this way of thinking about it. - Retail media innovation is at its fastest pace yet & this is presenting challenges and opportunities for advertisers, and their agencies. To assess each, Marketing Directors should be making sure they have a retail media measurement strategy in place, to compare activations across platforms consistently and quickly to allow them to redirect investment to the most effective places. It’s a good time now to be intentional about experimentation. - The IAB is working towards standardised metrics to enable “consistent comparisons” across retail media investments for buyers, initially covering online media but eventually in-store. Tools are emerging, too, to help advertisers assess retail media opportunities – among them Plan-Apps, which is used by the likes of PepsiCo, Diageo, AB InBev, Mondelez and CCEP. - Retail Media is sparking a wave of creative collaboration. Supermarkets are open-eared to ambitious campaigns. As Matt McLellan, Asda VP customer planning & propositions, leading its new LS Eleven Media Services, told suppliers recently: “If you’re a brand that wants to do something different, we are really up for it.” Some brilliant industry voices featured across the article, which you can find below. Nick Ashley Steve Gray Catherine McGarry Marie-Clare Puffett David Sables #retailmedia #retailmedianetworks SMG Plan-Apps {Capture} Samuel Knights Emma Dean Lee LeFeuvre David Bromfield Mark Sweatman David Moore Georgina Evenden

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Understanding the nuances of #OOHadvertising effectiveness is crucial for maximizing impact. Talon OOH UK's research unveils key insights: simplicity and central placement are paramount, with brand logos noticed only 42% of the time. Understanding viewer behavior and optimizing creatives pre-campaign or mid-flight ensures a stronger impact for brands. 🗣 #OOHAdvertising #CreativeEffectiveness #TalonOOHUK

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The latest Cog Blog updates on the Advertising: Who Cares? topic of a month ago, that has morphed into something of a movement. This is about helping progress improvement through discussion, as opposed to finger-pointing and blame. Nick Manning and I both really appreciate the support and want to encourage more to join us. We can be reached at brian@bjanda.com or Nick@encyclomedia.international IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising)

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We're UK Digital Growth Awards finalists 🎉✨ Our CRO team has been shortlisted for the Best use of Conversion Optimisation with @ageasuk! Fingers crossed for the results later this month 😁 Read more about our nomination and the impactful project https://hubs.li/Q02zqpkW0 #UKDGAwards #performance #conversionoptimisation #digitalmarketingagency #marketing #digitalmarketing

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There is both a democratic and business benefit for advertisers to support news brands in the lead up to a general election. When accuracy and fact-checked information is an absolute necessity, such as with a general election, news brands really come into their own, and it’s really important that advertisers support that. This is a cornerstone of democracy, and it costs money to provide it - can you imagine a world where deepfakes and influencers tell us how we should vote!? 👀 Not only is there a democratic need for advertisers to support trusted news brands, but there is also a huge business benefit as well in the shape of more attention. For example, The Spectator sees a 30% increase in audience numbers as we approach a general election, and the dwell time on an article pertaining to the election is also increased. In short, more people spend more time on our content, and I am sure other premium news brands see a similar trend. On top of that increase in audience and dwell time, there is a higher share of voice because the UK government, one of the biggest advertisers, stop activity in the run up to the election. I think that’s what they call a win-win? #ukelection #news #advertising

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Impact is our output. We talk about modern marketing being able to deliver two types of impact - cultural and commercial. How do we move beyond the brand purpose debate and into a more grown up and nuanced conversation about the different types of impact we all create as marketers every day? Come and join us to find out.

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With a handful of copycat 'Pint Protection' campaigns popping up from the likes of Aldi UK and The HEINEKEN Company, it's a good reminder that speed of execution is the single most important advantage startups have over massive brands. Our original plan was actually to launch a little later. But we recognised the opportunity of going live before the Euros started, so we hustled hard to get it done in a way that a massive brand could never have done. It turned out to be the ideal moment for us to introduce Pint Protection and by the time England kicked off on Sunday we had well over a thousand people signed up. A week later, Heineken launched a very similar campaign built solely around England games... when England had already played twice lol. The entire positioning of their campaign as "the first of its kind" and "just in time for the football" is comical now it's neither of those things because they were too slow. Somewhere along the line things got stuck and they missed their shot. A few days can make all the difference. A similar thing happened last year when we launched a stunt to 'unofficially' sponsor The Queue at Wimbledon. The team worked all weekend so they could be there at 3am on the first day of the tournament. We went viral by lunch. By the end of the week there'd been half a dozen other brands try the same thing. A day later and we'd have missed our chance. The two ideas above are, in my opinion, quite obvious opportunities and I wasn't surprised to see them come from other brands too. But while well-resourced brands may beat startups on execution quality, they don't stand a chance at execution speed.

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Nick Manning has an excellent piece (https://lnkd.in/ebjX_YUF) in The Media Leader today on how agencies make money on what I always knew as broking and which today has been relabelled 'Principal-Based Media', presumably in the hope that that makes it alright...! There's a danger that Nick's points will be dismissed by many as the mechanics of media buying, the dark arts perfected by the few in order to squeeze a better deal for their clients by the agencies. As Nick shows it's nothing of the kind. And it's far more concerning than that. If you accept that the agency can act as a broker, or reseller of media space and time then you have to accept that the media agencies doing this are no longer objective in their recommendations; that their plans are not worth the paper they're written on; and that measuring the advertising's effect by channel is no longer possible. Trading media becomes just like trading a commodity. If you think that 'media' is more than a commodity defined by largely meaningless numbers on a spreadsheet, that instead 'media' is an integral component of advertising; and that creativity and craft matter, then you can join Nick and me (and an increasingly large group of supporters from all corners of the ad business) in the 'Advertising: Who Cares?' movement, and maybe join us at our event in September. Mail me on brian@bjanda.com or Nick on nick@encyclomedia.international for more details. Geraint Davies Julia Linehan

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This is a very well-informed and detailed examination of the complex and murky area of 'principal-based' media buying with particularly insightful comments from Ruben Schreurs It shows just how difficult it is for Advertisers to truly know what is going on in their name and with their money, so seeking independent advice, the tightest contractual terms and the most thorough audit rights are all vital to avoid the many elephant traps. But why has the world of media reached a point where the advertiser has to count their fingers after they've shaken hands with their media agency? Radical new approaches to accountability and transparency are needed, but these have to include a grown-up discussion about terms of business. We can't get to a point where fees are zero and all the margin is made on media trading, surely?

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