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Last Wednesday (8 January) Mediatel hosted its annual January kick start panel, focusing on a review of the past 12 months and hopes for the coming year.
DCM’s CEO, Karen Stacey, joined the panel chaired by Mediatel’s CEO, Greg Grimmer, and also featuring Mediatel’s Editor, Dominic Mills; CEO of IPG Mediabrands, Caroline Foster Kenny, and Chair of PAMco and Chair of Stonewall, Jan Gooding.
A key focus of the panel was reinstating fun into the industry, with Foster Kenny remarking "We want more fun in publishing, more fun in outdoor, and audio and in every media. That is the clear message and theme. We should try and entertain people more."
Transparency & trust has been a hot topic in the industry in the past few years and it continued to be a theme on the morning. Foster Kenny maintained a positive outlook, stating "huge amount of progress" had been made since 2016. DCM’s Stacey argued “it’s the media owner’s responsibility to act as the gatekeeper to the consumers” in the face of consumer advertisement bombardment.
Analyst and consultant Alex DeGroote delivered an economic outlook for 2020, stating all the indicators suggested the global economy will show signs of modest recovery in 2020/1 to around 3% year-on-year, with advertising receiving uninterrupted growth in recent years alongside continuous tech innovation. "A decade of continuous growth may not feel real, but it's being largely fuelled by social and to a lesser extent emerging market growth," DeGroote said.
On a lighter side, the panel were asked to name their Media Personality of the Year, with Karen Stacey choosing Phoebe Waller-Bridge: "With Fleabag and Killing Eve, she brought to our screens entertainment we haven't seen probably since Gavin & Stacey." For her Media Moment of the Year, Karen chose 14 July 2019 – “the most remarkable day for tennis and cricket fans - and for linear TV too. Sports fans had more than a double helping with Wimbledon's historic match between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer live on the BBC... while England was busy winning the 12th Cricket World Cup on either Sky or Channel 4, who shared the rights to the game.”
Lastly, Karen chose Twitter as her Media Company of the Year: "They are taking responsibility for being a media owner as a social media company more seriously than I've seen others do. I think their position of not taking political advertising [and] their position in the UK of paying their corporation tax is all a move in the right direction. Sometimes it's a tough place when you're working for an overseas company, and I applaud the team in the UK for trying to make a stand."
For more information on the panel, visit Mediatel’s website here.