ISBA told marketers must overcome a reliance on TV

Marketers and agencies are lacking the skills to move away from television-based advertising campaigns, according to Sainsbury’s assistant managing director Sara Weller.

Weller, who has responsibility for marketing and development at the supermarket chain, says pressure on marketers to create effective campaigns has caused them to stick with traditional media, with TV at the heart of campaigns, leaving new media behind.

Speaking on behalf of a think-tank group at the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) annual conference, which included both marketing industry and advertising agency representatives, Weller added that media buyers should be more involved in the creative process.

She says: “The problem stopping us getting the most out of media is not only agencies lacking the skills to work across different media, but clients lacking those skills as well.”

Weller said both agencies and their clients need to start experimenting more with new media and should learn to approach each medium differently. “We’ve been into TV because it’s measurable, but there is a variety of media out there and we have to think about ideas, not just executions.”

She called for ISBA to assist in the training.

ISBA is planning to re-establish client/agency workshops after think-tank sessions at the conference showed that communication between clients and their agencies is declining. The workshops, which were abandoned five years ago, will attempt to establish why this is happening.