Ex-Britvic director attacks new media

Andrew Marsden (pictured), the former Britvic marketing director, has delivered a stinging attack on “so-called new media”, urging marketers to question its commercial relevance. He also said that brands were still using the same “new” tricks, such as branded websites, 15 years on.

Speaking at the Marketing Forum, Marsden added that it was time for marketers to “get real” about new media and its actual benefits for marketing. He made the comments in a speech entitled, Things I’ll Need to Know Five Years from Now.

Marsden, who is also president of the Marketing Society, said there was “a lot of talk about new media and the new economy”, and questioned whether new-media companies were “over valued and under delivering” as many were during the dot.com boom and bust of the late Nineties.

He told delegates: “We need to stop, as a profession, getting carried away by new media. It is powerful but most powerful in the dream world environment where everything is free.”

He also questioned the online advertising model and predicted that, in 2013, most advertising would remain above the line through traditional media.

However, Marsden also attacked the traditional agency model suggesting that too much money went on overheads and not enough on creating the ideas. He said: “Many clients believe that the current model is broken and we need to find new ways.”

He added that agencies took an industrial, factory approach to advertising and spent up to 75% of the budget on overheads, including buildings and account management.

He touted a “virtual” network that would draw in resources when needed, which he said would lead to overheads of just 30%.