Fear of risk stalks ‘slow-moving’ Irish marketing industry, says Core Media

The marketing industry is "slow-moving", "conservative" and too hesitant to take risks, says Alan Cox, chief executive of Core Media, the largest media-buying group in Ireland.

“ I would include all sectors of the marketing business in that,” he says. “Sometimes people think I mean clients, but I mean everyone. I think it is a very conservative industry – too conservative. The marketing industry is following consumers rather than leading them.”

The blunt-speaking Cox outlines his views in Outlook 15, Core Media's forecasts for the year ahead.

“Given the pace of change we are seeing in media, you would expect agency and marketing professionals to be constantly experimenting and innovating, but this is not the case,” he writes.

“When ideas are proposed, they are often killed because they can’t be measured, or there is too much effort involved, or people are just ‘too busy’.”

While advertising spending is forecast to grow for the second consecutive year in 2015, Cox believes marketers missed an opportunity to innovate when they really should have been innovating – during the recession.

Core Media likes “the 70-20-10” marketing investment principle, or “the Coca-Cola example”, Cox adds. In 2011, the soft drinks giant asked its marketing teams to spend 70 per cent of their budgets on established, low-risk platforms that “pay the rent”, but only half of their time should be spent on developing ideas for this portion of the budget.

According to the Coca-Cola Company, 20 per cent of their budgets should be spent on new or emerging trends that are starting to gain traction with consumers and 10 per cent should be allocated to completely untested ideas. Although these emerging and untested ideas should be given 30 per cent of the budget, marketers should spend half of their time on them.

Although Outlook 15 has something to say about all forms of media, the harshest words this year were reserved for radio. "It is far too safe and repetitious, and as a result of that it has become dull," he says.

“Absolutely rigid” song playlists and an over-reliance on stock phrases in news, weather and traffic reports is just one part of the problem as he sees it. Another is “fake” presenters who fail to connect with listeners.

“A lot of the broadcasters are just laughing at their own jokes. You have these double-headers where they laugh at each other – I don’t think anybody else is laughing. It’s plastic, and it’s two-dimensional.”