“You guys know more about this than I do,” Ciaran Cunningham

Christopher Cashen & Anton Mc Menamin

Outside the realm of attendance points and personal reflections, there is a world
and once more there is a professional world. We all have to get a job and justify going
back to do a Masters, not just in the financial sense by securing a better position, but in
order to prove that we have given ourselves an edge that top companies want. For
those who attended the Marketing Foresight Seminar on Monday last, Carat/ Aegis
Media are the people we should all be looking to get a position with.
The core of the presentation was change, its inevitability, your response to it and
what the future may entail for our growingly familiar digital era. Mr. Cunningham admits
himself, as the biggest player in media planning in Ireland, that traditional mediums of
advertising are losing relevancy at best and redundant at worst. The change is the
interaction, we are no longer in a position to talk to customers and tell them the
benefits of using our products. Instead, we now have to adjust and talk with customers
in a more dynamic and relevant manner.
Mr. Cunningham, a DCU graduate, highlighted how much our society has evolved
over the past two decades due to technology. He stressed this by informing us that
when he was at college (We’ll be nice and not mention it was 1989) e-mail didn’t even
exist. This highlights how far we have come as a society and the way we must be open
and adapt to the changes that are occurring all around us.
Technology is now an integral part of the majority of 18-34 year olds daily lives,
not that the rest are left in caves eyes wide in bewilderment of the telephone. Social
networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Linkedin have changed how
we act, interact and receive information. Due to this, the way that companies advertise
and connect with us must change accordingly.
To accentuate these changes he used famous quotes from Charles Darwin and
Barack Obama, a man who is a modern day symbol of change. He also incorporated a
quote from Don Daper into his speech, stating “Change isn’t good or bad, it just is.”
This quote resembles exactly what Mr. Cunningham was discussing throughout
his seminar. Change is something that is continuous, that every firm must incorporate if
they are to be successful. With this in mind Mr. Cunningham emphasised how
companies and brands must change in accordance to these technological changes. He
emphasised five key concepts that companies must use in incorporate to remain
successful. These changes included:

1. Do not say…
Mr. Cunningham believes that the way we advertise our products has changed
dramatically over the past decade. Companies now need to create peer-to-peer
relationships, investigating exactly what the customer wants and trying to provide it,
instead of the traditional ‘telling them what they want’ approach.
2. Think differently…
Mr. Cunningham highlighted the need for companies and brands to differentiate
themselves due to the overwhelming variety of options there are for any one good
today. In order to sustain a competitive market share companies must emphasise
their USP to “stand out from the crowd”.
3. Ask yourself…why wouldn’t anyone want to pass that on?
Word of mouth can potentially create unbeatable ‘buzz’. In order to maximise the
potential of this medium companies must ask themselves this question. If they can
answer it adequately, and correct the reason why people wouldn’t pass on the
message, then they are one step closer to their preferred destination of a major
market share.

4. Identify influencers
Influencers in social groups can have a large say on the actions of a group.
To emphasise this point Mr. Cunningham described the revolution of Cadbury Wispa,
where due to the persistence of peers and the use of internet social networks to
voice opinions, Cadbury re-released the product this year.
This point was confirmed by a Cadbury spokesperson who stated
“This is the first time the power of the internet played such an intrinsic role in the
return of a Cadbury brand”

5. Invite Participation
In order for companies to differentiate themselves from the crowd in our modern
society, it is essential to involve the customers in your advertising campaigns and to
ignite their imagination. Companies are now appealing to people with new
advertising techniques, such the Cadbury ‘glass and a half production’ ads. These ads
have installed curiosity in the viewers’ minds and as a result has created ‘buzz’
around the brand and helped to appeal to a mass audience in the process.
This is something that Mr. Cunningham feels is essential in the modern era, as stated
in his first point, we now talk with, not to our customers.

Mr. Cunningham himself is a walking advertisement of how we can embrace

change. As previously stated he didn’t work with email in college, and yet he was
here informing a younger, technology driven demographic, iPhones in pocket and
linked to every social media you can imagine, how we are going to be reaching the
next batch of better informed, more computer literate people.
He has identified the troubles that lie ahead for traditional media, particularly
the turbulent business model that newspapers lie in. The old vision of a family
dressed in their Sundays best, sitting upright while watching the television is now
marred with the traditional family now having the kids watching the exact content
they want online while the parents have the dilemma of choosing one of the
innumerable channels available to them. It’s probably this kind of insight and market
knowledge that escalated Carat Ireland to become the largest media and
communications agency of the modern era. They were the first Advertising Company
to exceed €100 million in billings in 2006 and while Carat/Aegis Media would have
suffered like anyone in the dreaded “R” word, a touch of realism while keeping up
the pace of an ever changing marketplace should steer them to safety.
We believe one of the most interesting observations from the talk was how
innovative the Irish people actually are and how open we are to the new digital
based influences and how much we expose ourselves to these stimuli. Facebook has
a 44% penetration, while the UK has a 22% penetration, that’s despite the fact that
our broadband service is not what it should be, with Irish people screaming for
higher speeds. According to Mr.Cunningham, we won’t have to wait long.
Mr. Cunningham continued to discuss how WiMax, the new quicker and cheaper
version of broadband, is going to change everything, yet again, in the coming years..
As previously stated this is something that Mr. Cunningham sees as inevitable in the
modern era. Change is occurring at an unprecedented rate and will continue to do
so. It is what divides the top Advertising Companies from the rest, the ability to not
only adapt to change, but to integrate the changes to the best of your ability,
differentiating yourself from the competition in the process.
Without a doubt this is something that Carat/ Aegis Media have not only done,
but they have excelled in doing so, ensuring that they have set a new benchmark of
which all other Advertising Companies must base themselves. Mr. Cunningham then
left to have dinner across the road in his mothers, just as he did twenty years ago
during his undergraduate, only to a very different world. Despite how hastily the
world moves and how technology has mutated (for better or for worse) the
landscape, there is something very human about the advertising scenery.