Good Times!: Enterprise Week.

We had a very interesting week this week with talks from some of the best in the business.
The first talk i attended was headed up by 8 experts in the industry of PR, advertising and media:

Ivor Peters
Jamie Matthews
Andrew Canter
Don Cowley
Steve Cox
Allan Rich
Jayne Barr
Rob Laurence

It was a question and answer session and was put together to try and explain whats next for the industry taking into consideration the current climate. The clear feelings expressed by the panel were that the current recession should be seen as an opportunity rather than problem. Alan Rich believes that "a well run business will always come through a recession" the business will survive because the employees will really know and understand their business. He explained that at times like this businesses should focus on brands that willbe most likely to survive and concentrate the budget on these brands, to be sure of success. He thinks all you need is enthusiasm and not just for the job but for each other.
Ivor Peters explained "there is no solution because there is no problem". He went on to say that clients will always be lookking for 3 key things:

Measurement-(very important in current climate)
Accountability-(transparent with brands/clients)
Innovation- (the stand out factor)

He believes there is a huge opportunity with recession and that there should be move into integration. Communication is of the highest importance- the brand and message must be conveyed to the consumer.

There was a lot of focus on the fact that the future is digital. By this i mean that digital marketing, online and internet marketing, is going to come to the foreground in the future. Jamie Matthews believes that there will be a change in balance of power, and that digital, PR and Sales promotion will become shorter term in terms of brand building.

Andrew Carter believes that advertising companies are now looking at where the fit into the digital world, he believes that "brands must keep abreast of whats going on" and that companies such as advertising will have to "evolve and adapt to survive"

Jamie Matthews went on to say that he believes it is about Content in conjunctoin with:

Contact- where the message is being place
and Context- relevance/are the consumer ready

He believes that by following the above structure this will then go on to create a powerful message.

An interesting fact from him was that in the 70's it took just 3 ads to get a message across to the consumer however nowadays that has risen to 117 ads! This is because we become 'immune' to advertising perhaps because we are exposed to so much of it every day.

Steve Cox then added that posters are the fastest growing medium outside of the internet, this is becuase it is a big medium where everyone will see it and it is difficult to stop people seeing it.

Talking and listening to experts in the business it seems that to survive and get into the world of marketing, the following points will stand you in good stead: