Media agencies: Brands before boycotts

Calls for advertisers to boycott the SABC have been questioned by the head of a leading media agency.

Mindshare CEO Thabang Ramogase questions what such a move would achieve. Brands, he says, are not the sole standard bearers for holding the errant public broadcaster to account.

The lobby group Right2Know says given the SABC’s big financial losses, advertising on its platforms encourages "gross mismanagement and unlawfulness".

Ramogase concedes there are management and leadership problems at the SABC, and that as good corporate citizens brands and agencies should help and encourage change. But he says: "I don’t think we have to be the ones to compromise our business on an issue that can be resolved with a phone call, given that only one individual is at the centre of this."

Of more concern to Ramogase is the current state of the media industry in a climate of shrinking margins and reluctance by many brands to spend on marketing.

He bemoans the lack of unity in the media sector to demonstrate what value it can offer.

"In any brand or marketing discussion, media people are the smartest in the room. They are the most quantitative and the most scientific, yet we don’t get our fair share of the pie."

Ramogase warns if current conditions and perceptions prevail, the media industry’s endgame is one of consolidation.

"I go into pitches and the only talk is around savings and not about our value proposition regarding planning better exposure to connect with consumers. It’s always a procurement discussion."

He says if SA is hit by a ratings downgrade, marketing budgets will be the first to go and media fees will be cut. He suggests the upshot will be more consolidation as smaller media agencies will battle to survive; or that the sector will fragment more as agencies focus on single-skill speciality, such as strategy development. "As we begin to pick apart the traditional media service palette, that approach would be even more dire as we start to slice smaller margins into smaller pieces."

The consequence for brands, he adds, is lower-quality work, which is already evident, as media agencies are unable to recruit the right talent. "That means wasted money and wasted exposure where decisions are made emotionally rather than scientifically."

Ramogase is also anxious about the current audience measurement climate ahead of the new Establishment Survey, which is to replace the All Media & Products Survey (Amps). "This is an extinction-level event and we don’t know what it’s going to yield apart from advertisers probably saying ‘let me hold on to my money on radio and TV spend until things become clearer’." He believes platforms like outdoor and digital will benefit from this uncertainty in the short term.