Campaign magazine’s table of the biggest UK media agencies showed eight of the top 10 suffered a drop in billings between 2008 and 2009 – including a more than 10% slump by number one agency MediaCom, a 16.5 % fall by number four Mindshare and a 22.5% plunge by number six Starcom UK Group. The headlines also showed that WPP Group, which owns Mindshare, saw its profits fall by 16% in 2009.

But is there more to these figures than just the recession? We are now living in an age where companies are realising that they can rely less on traditional media vehicles such as newspapers, radio and even television and can instead speak more directly with their customers through digital media.

We already see print media owners struggling as newspapers and magazines grapple with ever-shrinking page counts and staff cuts. The long-term trend may be that the fragmenting TV marketplace, radio and other conventional media will be facing similar issues sooner rather than later.

Before the recent news on media agencies seeing their billings slump, we had a lot of talk in PR Week about Richard Sambrook, former head of global news at the BBC, jumping on the PR bandwagon to become “chief content officer” at a global PR agency to help clients create written, video and audio pieces.

This recognition that, in future, communicating with customers, stakeholders and the public at large will be about more than traditional PR – ie. placing articles in print publications or arranging broadcast interviews for clients – is nothing new to us here at Lindsell Marketing. Generating content that can fuel PR initiatives, marketing campaigns, websites, sales programmes and other ways of talking to the marketplace is a future that has already arrived here.

So while the recession may have accelerated the process, the change we see taking place in the way companies, government departments and other organisations communicate with the world around them is a permanent shift we have seen coming – and that includes PR as well as other traditional ways that companies communicate. The key going forward will be to develop the right content to fuel the new communication engines that are replacing traditional media vehicles.

Our sector seems to have an extraordinary propensity for internicine squabbles, and a highly developed talent for being unable to see the wood for the trees.  Part of the issue has to be that our trade bodies are hugely fragmented into a series of subcategories – sales promotion, advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, live events, and so on.  These are all largely the result of a yesteryear situation where different media were competing for the same above-the-line media spend.  Yet are we not now living in a converged world? The majority of campaigns and customer management strategies are now conceived – media-wise – as multi-channel.   So the old  negotiating position, pitting media against one another in a largely false  ‘either/or’ fight, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  Therefore, a fragmented set of trade associations makes no sense, even from a practical point of view.

It’s time the marketing industry had a single body to represent its interests.  None currently exists.  There would be no point in an existing body like the IPA or the DMA taking over the whole marketing scene – their single issue past (and frankly flabby track-record on effective lobbying), would not help present a holistic image.  So a new group is needed, possibly a federated concern of which existing associations make up the subgroups.

Getting agreement that such a body should exist is probably not going to be too difficult.  Getting co-operation between the egoistic heads of trade associations may be a little more challenging.

Last year saw a turning point in its organisation. The organisers stepped up their game in terms of thought leadership, and this year are offering up to 80 sessions and keynotes from leading industry organisations like Google, Chartered Institute of Marketing and YouTube. This was also helped by the move in 2008 from the smaller Olympia venue to a larger presence at Earls Court. All this has transformed the show into a valuable industry leading event at a time when it would have been easy for the organisers to sit on their laurels being the only DM show around.

Thought leadership, analysis and industry insight has clearly become the focus, drawing in the visitors and exhibitors. And yet looking at the TFM press room, the exhibitor publicity is seriously lacking in effective thought leadership content.  The usual, mundane, “We’re going to be at TFM, this is what we do, please come and visit our stand” is the rule rather than the exception.  Snoozzz. Why not generate original research or publicise your client successes to help you stand out and draw interested punters in?

Luckily my colleague Hugh Filman will be visiting the show.  If you want advice on how to create an effective trade show PR strategy, that is more than a bland press release, flag him down – he’ll be more than happy to help!

The trend has already started with companies turning to everyday employees to promote the brand rather than expensive famous faces. High street banks are an obvious example (although, ironically, the gurning Halifax Howard has now become a minor celebrity in his own right).

Then, of course, there have been the major brand embarrassments. Tiger Woods, John Terry, Ashley Cole – all previously lending their name and face to at least one product in between their extra-curricular activities.

Surely, any clear-thinking marketing managers will now think twice about the relative benefits of celebrity endorsement. Perhaps there will be a swing back to true creativity – where it’s the message and the image that sells, rather than the face.

First there was the issue of the apparently defective accelerators that led to lawsuits in the US and, splashed across the global media, the heart-wrenching story of a family heard on a 911 call to emergency services in the US as they sped into a crash that killed them because their Toyota Lexus was accelerating out of control. You can’t buy publicity that bad.

But Toyota was slow to concede that there was anything seriously wrong with its cars and questions are being raised about how long the company knew about problem. Toyota is now in the midst of the recall of eight million cars worldwide – but attempts to deal directly with the issue by the company have come only after the story has snowballed.

Now there is the additional story of the recall of nearly half a million Toyota hybrids due to faulty brakes, the ramifications of which will be compounded by Toyota’s slow handling of the accelerator recall crisis.

Toyota could have been proactive about its safety problems as soon as word began to spread but waited until the media bandwagon started rolling with the momentum of a rocket ship before deciding to take firm and open action. Companies today just can’t wait for a situation to reach crisis point before taking action to deal with the fears, concerns and questions of their customers.

In today’s world, where the lightening speed of communications on the internet magnifies much smaller problems than Toyota is facing, preparing to deal with the spectre of a major recall or safety alert before things start to spin out of control is vital. A brand may take a hit – maybe a big financial hit – by being up front and admitting if it has a problem, but this will help to mitigate longer-term damage and distrust that could ultimately be much more costly. And it has to have call centre capabilities and a contact strategy it can roll out quickly.

One of our clients, Blueview, has been beating this drum for a while now. As a company specialising in multi-channel communication and contact, Blueview sees having a contingency plan in place in case a recall crisis breaks as vital. Existing customer contact facilities are never enough to deal with the flood of queries that comes in when a major recall or safety alert is announced.

To showcase Blueview’s expertise in this area, we have worked with the agency to put together a research report on product recall management, the results of which were widely reported in the media,  and also a how-to guide that shows how a company can prepare for and tackle a crisis.

If a company can at least have enough people in place to take calls and reassure its customers – or at least tell them where they stand with respect to a product problem – while its PR team is talking to them openly in the media and through online channels, then it stands a much better chance of recovering from a major recall crisis sooner. And the sooner a company tackles a problem the better. Unfortunately for Toyota, it seems to be just learning this lesson now.

This must be welcome news indeed for News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, who would have begun to feel just a little alone on a very high limb after announcing last August that his newspapers were planning to start charging for content.

But now The New York Times, arguably the most famous and influential daily newspaper in the United States, has said it is formulating plans to introduce a system in 2011 that will provide readers with a limited amount of free content and then start charging them.

Now that the NYT has weighed in, both Murdoch and the New York paper’s proprietors, the Ochs Sulzberger family, will be hoping desperately that others in the industry will follow suit.

Since buying The Wall Street Journal in 2007, Murdoch has warmed to the business paper’s highly successful paid-content web model but his News Corp has yet to take any concrete steps to roll it out to its other newspaper brands, which include the New York Post and The Times and The Sun in the UK.

Nonetheless, Murdoch has clearly signalled what just about everybody in the media and marketing industry already knew: that newspapers are haemorrhaging readers and are failing to migrate advertising revenues to their sister web brands.

This is a fundamental problem for the industry. With more people – particularly younger readers – turning to the web for their daily dose of news and information, as well as content that informs and helps them in their working lives, newspaper brands have to make their online operations start to pay. And they have been singularly unsuccessful at doing this.

Unfortunately, a decade of free newspaper launches, the emergence of Google and loads of free online content available on websites run by the media owners themselves have conditioned the great mass of readers consuming daily news to believe that content is a free commodity – water from a well that they should be able to dip into and drink from any time they want at no cost.

Of course, as Murdoch himself has pointed out, there is a great cost to producing useful and credible content. To start, for each article there is the digging, the research, the filtering of information, the interviewing of sources, the checking of facts and the distillation of all this material into a digestible story. That all takes a great many man-hours put in by trained, professional journalists.

That has to be paid for and online advertising is just not cutting it as far as revenues go, so Murdoch, the Ochs Sulzbergers and most likely a number of other bigtime newspaper publishers are looking at the paid subscription model as a possible salvation.

The trouble is they need everyone in the newspaper business everywhere to buy into the idea of charging for content – and of their own accord, as anti-trust authorities won’t like them to hold a big board meeting like a bunch of James Bond villains and decide to cut off free content collectively.

If readers can simply click onto another site or search through Google and get very similar content for free, then those that are charging will find themselves with very few readers very quickly. And in the UK there is the prickly issue of the BBC website, which has its own remit and the license fee – and certainly does not seem to be positioning itself to charge for content any time soon.

Of course, many in the industry will worry that ultimately readers won’t pay for content anyway. It is one thing to get the investment community and financially motivated individuals to pay for access to the business coverage in the online archives of The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, but will they pay for general news, human interest stories, sports, or arts and entertainment?

It remains a leap of faith – and a big gamble – for the newspaper owners that go for the paid online model. A media brand that starts charging for content risks completely eroding a following on the internet that it would have spent years building. But with online ad revenues coming up short while the newspapers shed readers and advertisers on the print side, do the owners really have any choice at this point?

If we keep the analysis of the marketing industry’s health focused on traditional silos, then we will learn nothing.  What does the category of direct marketing now mean?  Is a DM campaign that drives web traffic categorised as direct marketing, or online?  How do we compartmentalise an online campaign that is designed to pull people into an event?

The task is not an easy one.  The various traditional marketing techniques are being combined in many interesting and productive ways.  Few of which fit neatly into Bellwether categories.  Does that mean that Bellwether’s measurement is redundant?  No.  But the barometer of our industry needs to morph with the times, at least with some covering notes about these imaginative media combinations.

In truth, marketing and sales are the recognisable big categories that are coming together.  Indeed, a PR campaign now may be the principal driver of a sales initiative.  Too long have silos of technique determined how we are measured.  And this does not help professional buyers understand how they can really be benefiting from our services.

LONDON – The latest research from London-based working capital solutions provider Demica shows that firms are increasingly seeking to raise finance from traditional asset categories such as trade receivables. The report, which surveyed over 1,500 firms with over 50 employees in the UK, France and Germany, revealed that Europe is turning back to trade receivables, considered to be one of the most liquid and creditworthy asset categories on the balance sheet. The current scarcity of credit was listed as a major setback, encouraging firms to raise a greater proportion of finance in this way. A significant number of firms also reported having no other choice but to offer asset categories such as trade receivables if they were to convince banks to extend lines of credit.

Some 36% of European companies (UK 31%, France 43% and Germany 34%) reported that they had already raised finance against the security of their trade receivables. Furthermore, finance raised on this asset category is set to grow substantially over the next 12-18 months. Just under half of respondents (44%) said they planned to increase their levels of finance raised against the security of trade receivables. Germany and the UK (48% and 44% accordingly) showed the most interest in developing this technique, suggesting that they will soon match already elevated levels of uptake in France..

The European Securitisation Forum forecast overall securitisation issuance to fall to €272 billion in 2008, the lowest level since 2004.[1] However, the decline in overall securitisation activity is thought to be a direct result of problems caused by low quality assets – with solid assets such as trade receivables not experiencing the same negative impact. Securitisation of more robust, stable assets such as trade receivables is expected to rise. Demica’s research sought to quantify this, and found that 56% (UK 54%, France 53% and Germany 61%)  of European firms believe the scarcity of standard bank credit will see large firms choosing to raise a greater proportion of their finance on the basis of trade receivables securitisations.

Banks seem equally keen for firms to offer this asset category, as the solution lifts the lid on lending without taking on unacceptable risk. Over the last year, commentators have witnessed a rising demand for greater levels of security from banks’ clients to avoid facing caps on their credit limits. Demica’s research showed that 61% (UK 57%,  France 64% and Germany 63%) of European firms had experienced this, recognising that certain banks are unwilling to extend credit unless businesses can offer stable assets such as trade receivables as security.

Demica CEO Phillip Kerle comments: “Scarcity of traditional credit has become a real problem over the last two years. If European firms are to raise finance successfully in the future, the focus will have to be taken off liquid assets. Trade receivables are leading the way as invoice debt is seen to be a high quality security and therefore has the ability to improve access to credit significantly.

“Astute firms are finding ways around the current liquidity crisis by expanding the level of finance raised on the security of their trade receivables. These lines of finance have the additional benefit of being less complex than other transactions and although, to a certain extent, they remain complicated, they are relatively easy to monitor and therefore incur less risk. Specialist technology-based services are available that automate these processes and provide regular monitoring and reporting of the asset base. We can expect take-up of such services to soar over the next year. “

For further press information, please contact:

Marc Gossage – marc@lindsellmarketing.com – +44 (0)207 402 0510

Paul Lindsell – paul@lindsellmarketing.com – +44 (0)207 402 0510

About Demica
Demica Limited is a market leading provider of specialised working capital solutions providing consulting, advisory and technology services to a diverse range of multi-national clients. Demica works with the world’s leading banks, private equity sponsors and global corporations to implement innovative solutions to their securitisation and supply chain finance requirements. Demica’s technology is used around the globe running invoice-based transactions on its Citadel® platform. Based in London, Demica is a wholly owned subsidiary of the J.M. Huber Corporation, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.

For more information, visit www.demica.com

Volgens een nieuw rapport van GOAL Group, de leidende wereldwijde specialist in collectieve schadevorderingen, zgn. class actions, hebben Nederlandse pensioenfondsen in de periode van 2006 tot 2008 naar schatting €107 miljard aan beleggingen verloren. Volgens de projecties van GOAL Group wordt ca. €1,8 miljard van deze verliezen terugbetaald aan Nederlandse pensioenfondsen die deelnemen aan (voornamelijk Amerikaanse) class action claims uit deze periode. Het rapport zegt echter ook dat als er niet meer pensioenfondsen aan de class actions deelnemen, enkele pensioenfondsen hun rechten zullen verliezen om ca. €450 miljoen aan verhaalbare fondsen terug te krijgen, die vervolgens verdeeld zullen worden over de deelnemers aan de betreffende claim. Dit is een alarmsignaal voor de Nederlandse pensioenfondsen die momenteel geen gebruik maken van het recht om schadevergoeding te claimen via de Amerikaanse rechtbanken – ondanks de aandacht die is uitgegaan naar de rechtszaken van de Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (PfZW) en MN Services als eisende en mede-eisende partij tegen respectievelijk BoA en RBS. Als gevolg van de financiële crisis door de ineenstorting van de zgn. subprime hypotheekmarkt en de Ponzi-zwendel, zijn de Nederlandse pensioenfondsen zich veel meer bewust van class actions. Maar sommige pensioenfondsen hebben nog steeds geen claim ingediend.

Sommige commentatoren wijzen op het feit dat er nu waarschijnlijk veel meer houdbare rechtszaken zullen volgen, ook al zijn de toegewezen bedragen als gevolg van de financiële crisis veel lager, waarbij steeds vaker auditors als medegedaagden zullen worden genoemd[1]. De Wet collectieve afwikkeling massaschade, WCAM, heeft ook het geografische potentieel van class action claims uitgebreid en heeft een weg gebaand voor Europese rechtszaken. In juni 2009 werd Shell door het Gerechtshof in Amsterdam veroordeeld tot betaling van $450 miljoen als compensatie voor foute financiële verklaringen in de periode van 1997 tot 2003 over de olie- en gasreserves en de grote financiële gevolgen daarvan. Dit is de eerste class action die in Europa werd afgerond.

Als beleggers en fondsmanagers hun steeds groter wordende verliezen willen terugvorderen en deel willen uitmaken van het steeds grotere aantal class action claimprocedures, zowel in Amerika als in Europa, dan moet het indienings- en deelnameproces nu beginnen. Het is echter een feit dat het opsporen van kansen om een class action te starten en de succesvolle afronding van het benodigde proces, een gecompliceerde en intimiderende taak is, waarbij veel beleggers ten onrechte geloven dat de kosten en tijd die voor een claim nodig zijn, groter zijn dan de voordelen. Ze kunnen echter gebruikmaken van gespecialiseerde dienstverleners die de afhandeling van het deelnameproces voor een class action claimprocedure verzorgen, vaak op basis van no win, no fee.

Stephen Everard, Managing Director, GOAL Group zegt: “Volgens de juridische sector hebben institutionele beleggers de zorgplicht om claimprocedures te starten namens hun cliënten. Ons onderzoek heeft aangetoond dat naast de normale bedrijfsbesturing, Nederlandse pensioenfondsen veel meer moeten doen aan het steeds groter wordende pensioentekort. Nederlandse pensioenfondsen nemen volgens de sector een speerpuntpositie in bij verantwoordelijke beleggingsinitiatieven en lopen voor bij hun Europese collega’s. Desondanks wordt een alarmerend groot percentage van class action uitbetalingen niet opgevraagd, ondanks alle aandacht voor enkele recente high profile rechtszaken.

“Ook al zullen dankzij de Sarbanes-Oxley-wet en de Europese equivalenten daarvan gevallen als Enron en Parmalat nooit meer voorkomen, toch heeft de internationale kredietcrisis gezorgd voor een stijging van het aantal class action claimprocedures met betrekking tot pensioenfondsbeleggingen van plaatselijke overheden. Het zal vijf tot zeven jaar duren voordat deze zaken tot een einde worden gebracht. De recente RBS class action kan mogelijk leiden tot de grootste uitbetaling aller tijden in de geschiedenis van Amerikaanse effectenclaims, zelfs groter dan die van de Enron-zaak.

“De crisis in de financiële markten zal voor een gestage stroom kleinere claimprocedures zorgen en het is duidelijk dat Nederlandse pensioenfondsen onmiddellijk actie moeten ondernemen om hun escalerende verliezen op permanente basis te herkrijgen, zodat de belangen van hun cliënten in de toekomst op juiste wijze worden behartigd. Het is inderdaad een feit dat voor deelname aan een class action tijdige en nauwkeurige informatie over de relatieve baten en procedures moet worden ingediend en dat er tijd en hulpmiddelen moeten worden ingezet om de relevante uitbetalingen te onderzoeken en evalueren. De beleggers moeten deze baten afwegen tegen de zeer gedetailleerde gegevens over handelsactiviteiten en de vaak zeer ingewikkelde documentatie die samengesteld en ingediend moeten worden voor een geldige class action claimprocedure.

“Er bestaan nu echter gespecialiseerde geautomatiseerde diensten op outsourcing-basis die deze class action claims kunnen aanpakken, zonder dat daar hoge kosten mee gepaard gaan, vaak zelfs op basis van no win, no fee. De pensioenfondsen die zich in een goede positie bevinden om de economische teruggang te overleven, zijn de fondsen die volop van deze diensten gebruik zullen maken.”

Methodologie

Openbaar beschikbare informatie over class action uitbetalingen wordt gecombineerd met de eigen datasets van GOAL Group om de verliezen van de Nederlandse pensioenfondsen te kwantificeren en om te voorspellen hoeveel waarschijnlijk uitbetaald zal worden als gevolg van Amerikaanse class actions betreffende effecten van 2006 tot 2008.

Neem contact op met Lindsell Marketing (zie hieronder) voor een exemplaar van “Incomplete Recovery”, het complete GOAL-rapport.

Voor meer informatie kunt u contact opnemen met:

Lindsell Marketing

Marc Gossage of Paul Lindsell

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7087 8050

E-mail: marc@lindsellmarketing.com

Over Goal Group Limited

De Goal-bedrijvengroep werd op 1 november 1989 opgericht en staat in de sector voor financiële diensten bekend om zijn innovatieve en creatieve oplossingen voor zeer gespecialiseerde processen.

Goal Group heeft een ISO 9001:2008 certificering en een wereldwijde blue-chip klantenbasis, waaronder enkele van de grootste wereldwijde bewaarnemers, asset managers, privébanken, pensioenfondsen, gemeentelijke instellingen, hedge fondsen, high net worth individuen, investeringsbanken, hypotheekmakelaars en fondsbeheerders in heel Europa, Azië en de Verenigde Staten.

De class action service van Goal Group wordt geleverd via de dochteronderneming Goal Global Recoveries Limited (GGRL) en ondersteunt beleggers en instellingen die een financieel verlies hebben geleden door het bezit van aandelen van een onderneming die zich schuldig heeft gemaakt aan verkeerd management en/of onwettig gedrag.

Voorbeelden van de bronbelastingoplossingen van Goal Group zijn GTRS, GQI, GOAL TaxBack en GDMS. Onderzoek door Goal heeft aangetoond dat meer dan USD 10 miljard aan bronbelasting elk jaar niet wordt opgevraagd door de rechtmatige eigenaars en begunstigden. De oplossingen van Goal zorgen ervoor dat ongeveer USD 11 miljard per jaar wordt teruggevorderd en helpen klanten om te profiteren van belastingvermindering, telkens wanneer dat praktisch mogelijk is.

Meer informatie over de Goal bedrijvengroep vindt u op www.goalgroup.com

The Brief

Making the complex nature of direct and database marketing accessible to prospects and the media can be a difficult task.  As a specialist direct marketing provider which encompasses the complete spectrum of data, creative and multi-channel messaging services, it was essential that the company get this right for success.

Solution & Results

Lindsell Marketing has developed an annual content rich PR programme that directly links in with the marketing aims of the organisation to support campaigns and sales efforts.  A series of research reports have been released exploring topics such as response rates across marketing channels and trends in direct marketing personalisation that helped establish the company’s expertise and real understanding of the commercial marketplace.  News, articles, letters to the editor, features and blogs are only a few examples of the exposure gained in key vertical industry publications, as well as the marketing media, national papers and even broadcast media such as BBC Radio 5 and BBC 2’s The One Show.

The organisation’s profile has also been regenerated through a campaign to enter industry awards.  Lindsell Marketing has written case studies and award entries that clearly demonstrate the value and benefits of the company’s solutions to clients such as Betfair and Shop Direct Group.  The results speak for themselves – four industry awards under their belt in one year and they have not yet left an awards ceremony with at least one award in hand.

When the company was looking to merge its operations with recently acquired Transactis, it turned to Lindsell Marketing to carry out stakeholder surveys and provide strategic consultancy.  As a trusted provider of marketing and research services familiar with industry terminology, trends and its customers, CDMS Transactis had no hesitation in appointing Lindsell Marketing to the task.  The result was a clear view of how to communicate the relaunch of the merged company under the Transactis banner to customers, prospects, staff and the media.

The Client’s View

“Lindsell Marketing has proved to be more then just a PR agency.  Their content driven approach means that every media communication is enriched with real commercial messages that we can repurpose for marketing and sales collateral.  This also creates an important balance between quality and quantity of coverage that is gained.  This helps foster a range of quality media coverage that then goes to have a multiplier affect.

“The Awards campaign has been a resounding success showing how the Lindsell team can add value to all forms of marketing communication. By using their strategic research and consultancy service at an important transitional time has enabled the smooth and confident communication of a total company rebrand.  Lindsell Marketing really do deliver on their promise of innovative, content rich communications and quality service provision.”

Richard Higginbotham, Head of Marketing, Transactis