Russell Davies and the death of the media budget

Now here’s an idea – get yourself one of the UK’s premier Account Planners/Communications specialists and invite him round to a major global media planning agency after work. Make sure you all have a beer and a few crisps, and then ask him to talk about the future of media. Sit back and enjoy the fireworks…

Actually, it was a really interesting talk. Russell gave the presentation he recently gave at the APG’s ‘Big Thinking’ conference (for which he won the ‘Biggest Thinker in Media’ award), which had some thought-provoking ideas, as well as a selection of ace Japanese commercials which inspired the Honda ‘Cog’ ad.

Most controversially though, he discussed how brands could still have a huge impact with zero media budget: “Take that budget, put it into production, and if you do something interesting enough, consumers will find you by themselves”. Which is a brave thing to say in the middle of one of London’s biggest media buying arms. Effectively, he was saying “You guys working in planning, you’re going to be ok. In fact, you might even be better than ok. But you guys working in TV Buying… start updating your CV…”

The thing is, he could well be right. Some of the best work of the past year, such as Nike’s Run London and Joga Bonito campaigns had a minimal media budget. And even Sony Bravia’s ‘Balls’ ad wasn’t on TV as much as you’d think - they chose to spend the money making something that was just beautiful to look at, and word-of-mouth and online communities took care of the rest.

The problem comes for the low-interest advertisers – how do you make engrossing, consumer-led content for a mortgage provider or drain unblocker? Can you do it, or do you end up with a secondary tier of brands so dull that they can’t escape the curse of the 30” TV spot?

More to the point, if the era of push advertising is over, and everything is going to be based on transmedia story-telling/Web 2.0 delivery/insert-your-favorite-buzzword-here, what does that mean for the media owners? Their major source of revenue will disappear, forcing them to air crowd-pleasing minimal-budget drivel (see ITV…), and those media owners that broadcast more premium content will need to start charging their audiences subscription fees. Which is bad news for pensioners who enjoy foreign films and students who are trying to save money for their tuition or lager.

Anyway, all good food for thought, and a thoroughly entertaining talk. Have a read of Russell Davies’ blog to find out more.