MediaCat Weekly #42 — Barb insights, humorous ads, and brand purpose

Welcome to MediaCat Weekly, our short and sweet newsletter featuring some top stories from the past week, recent conversations, and a round-up of industry news.

This week, we continue with our October theme 'Out of Touch', looking at how brands found 'purpose' and lost their way. Outside of this theme, we also have pieces on how technology is transforming the back-to-school experience and how brands can put the product back on top.

We hope you enjoy the issue, and make sure you don't miss our October playlist, curated by Editor Mike Piggott.

5 steps to shake off that ‘heaviest of buyers’ mindset

By Jenni Romaniuk

When you work on a brand, you live and breathe it every day. Its existence pays your bills and puts food on your table, and you learn so much about it that, in memory terms, you look like the heaviest of buyers — with dense networks of brand memories that are easily retrievable anytime, anywhere.?It’s also then easy to assume everyone else thinks the same way and lose touch with the thoughts and feelings of typical buyers, without even really knowing it.

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Unpacking the unknown: breaking out silence on a TV set

By Doug Whelpdale

There are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Donald Rumsfeld famously discussed known unknowns when talking about US national security, but the same can be said about TV viewing. Some things are known — a peak of 2m watched the closing ceremony of the Paralympics on Channel 4 capping a wonderful Games from Paris. Then there are known unknowns — YouTube achieved a peak TV set audience of 1.8m on the same day. So, we know how many people were watching YouTube, but the content is unknown.

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In with the kids but out of touch: brands using humour

By Paddy Gilmore

Accusing marketers of being out of touch is, sadly, not a new thing. The long-running embrace of brand purpose is increasingly seen as an example of marketers living on another planet. Amid all this overblown self-regard, the fact that marketing is about the identification and communication of value seems to have been forgotten. What’s the best way out of this? Some commentators have noticed an increase in humorous ads over the past few years, suggesting that marketers are getting back in touch with their audiences.

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Influencer is not a dirty word

By Renee Picciani

The term influencer is so tainted that even influencers avoid using it, opting to refer to themselves as ‘content creators’ instead. The role of influencers goes beyond just creating content — they shape trends, opinions, and purchasing decisions.?Yet the negative stigma attached to the title often overlooks the real impact influencers have on shaping modern consumer behaviour. Given that one in four young Americans aspire to become influencers, the contested discourse around this title warrants deeper exploration.

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Conversations

Future of Media: Key takeaways

MediaCat’s Head of Content and Partnerships, Selin Ozkan, and Content and Social Media Editor, Svilena Keane, take over the MediaCat Magazine Podcast to discuss Future of Media, Adwanted’s annual conference looking into the future of commercial media

What could a Black British Exodus mean for the UK’s creative industry?

Twin City is a UK-based start-up, offering members opportunities to home-swap, connect with fellow creatives and participate in local experiences. Our Editor-at-large, Natasha Randhawa, sits down with Twin City’s co-founder Jamiel Thompson, to chat about the launch of their ‘Mentally I’m Here’ collection, the pros and cons of remote work and what all of this could spell for the UK’s creative workforce

News

• QMS, the Australian digital outdoor media company, presented the findings of what is reportedly the ‘global-first’ research into the role of human attention in OOH environments. Conducted in partnership with the audience measurement company, Amplified Intelligence, the study found that OOH ads score an average of 12 seconds of attention. read
• The global leader in specialist media Future has launched its Future Content Hub, storing half a million articles, expert editorial features, and photographs. The available content can be searched, browsed and purchased for editorial and commercial use. read
• Wunderkind, the AI-driven performance marketing solution, has shared the findings of its 2024 CMO State of the Union Report. According to this study, 97% of UK retail marketing teams have adopted AI but many are not leveraging its full potential. read

Seen elsewhere

• Media: The Sun has begun rolling out a registration wall asking users to sign up for free to read certain stories. One of the UK’s biggest news websites has over the past few weeks begun restricting access to some articles to users who have registered with their email address. Registered readers can be targeted with content based on their browsing interests and can also be shown advertising which is sold for more money. (Press Gazette)
• Tech: X is updating its privacy policy with new language that allows it to provide users’ data to third-party “collaborators” in order to train AI models. The new policy, which takes effect November 15, 2024, would seem to open the door to Reddit-like arrangements in which outside companies can pay to license data from X. (Engadget)
• Media: Social media companies will face punishments for failing to keep children safe on their platforms, communications watchdog Ofcom has warned. Services like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp could face fines from the regulator if they do not comply with the new Online Safety Act - which comes into force early next year - Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes, told the BBC. (BBC)
• Media: Marketing budgets have stagnated after 13 consecutive quarters of growth, with uncertainty surrounding the new Labour government’s upcoming budget leading to caution among advertisers. According to the IPA’s latest Bellwether Report, 21.6% of UK companies opted to revise their budgets downwards – while exactly the same number of firms chose to revise their budgets upwards, leading to an improbable 0% net balance. (Marketing Beat)
• Media: The Evening Standard has reported its highest losses since going free in 2009, for the year before it decided to drop its daily print edition. Evening Standard Ltd has now reported seven straight years of pre-tax losses, deepening in the year ending 1 October 2023 to ￡20.6m. (Press Gazette)

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