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Cannes 2016 Shingerview: Deirdre McGlashan, MediaCom

“When we stop being called digital people, we are actually going to have digital empowered marketing. It is the same thing about women and minorities – it is all about diverse marketing.

During Cannes Lions this past June, I spent some time with Deirdre McGlashan, Global Chief Digital Officer at MediaCom. Deirdre is the first Chief Digital Officer at MediaCom and has tremendous experience on worldwide assignments and in key markets, helping clients to navigate a world that is increasingly more global and digital.

Watch as we discuss diversity in marketing, the infancy of programmatic, and the best piece of career advice she’s been given.

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What Andy Murray Teaches Agencies About Client Partnerships

The dream team is back. With coach Ivan Lendl once again by his side, Andy Murray was crowned Wimbledon champion for the second time this Sunday.

Despite parting from Murray in 2014, Lendl had been drafted in to turbocharge the tournament alongside Murray’s permanent coach Jamie Delgado. It’s anticipated Lendl will then assume his previous part-time arrangement of working with the tennis star for 20 to 25 weeks a year.

Agencies, which are themselves expert support teams for brands, have much to learn from Murray’s exceptionally high standards and lively approach to maintaining his own coaching squad.

With agencies under pressure to perform with greater speed, agility and commercial acumen, while achieving award-winning levels of creativity and innovation, traditional client-agency relationships no longer work. Instead of being left to it for weeks on end until they crack the brief, agencies need to become challengers and evolve their offerings at breakneck speed to ensure clients receive agile creativity.

This is because clients are struggling to keep pace with what consumers want. Brand lifespans have contracted from 61 years in 1959 to just 18 years today, according to Yale University’s Richard Foster. Dot-coms are planning their tenure around 10 years at most.

A recent study from creative agency Southpaw also found some of the biggest grocery brands of recent times, including Cadbury’s, Birds Eye and Heinz, have become on average 10% less relevant to consumers in the past five years. This figure might seem small, but its impact on global revenue will be colossal.

This is something that can be seen in every sector. We only need look at BHS and Austin Reed to understand what can happen to even the most monolithic retailers if they don’t keep up with the times.

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The Creative Staff of the Future

The New Way Will Require New Skills
The rules of marketing were etched in stone long ago.

Rule 1: “Mass communications – ads – are the way to define a brand’s character and create an emotional connection with consumers.”

Rule 2: “Promotions and shopper messaging are used only to compel consumers to act in a way that brings that brand into their lives.”

But it’s 2016, and people have more control over when and how they receive brand messages. This makes consumer interaction with brands rare and precious. Consumers also have higher expectations of brands. They want transparency, convenience and relevant engagement – not a sales pitch.

Things have changed a lot, but there are big opportunities for the brands that get the next step right. It starts with smashing those stone tablets and bringing down the walls that have separated marketing disciplines. And then it’s time to rebuild, in a new way.