M&C Saatchi Australia group CEO Justin Graham: Consumer confidence is going to remain strong. Inflation is going to continue to rise on the back of what’s going on with the house price equity effect in particular. So, we’re feeling pretty buoyant about next year,
As I look at it from a media point of view, there are going to be
some major events next year – Commonwealth Games, Winter Olympics, a federal election – that will ensure demand and growth in the advertising sector remains high. With that demand, I think we’ll continue to see growth in consumption and discretionary spending as well. So from our point of view, we’re heading in a very positive direction.
As it relates to the agencies in general, we’re seeing the role of the chief marketing officer has emerged from the pandemic with much more power, which is probably the opposite to what we thought could happen, closer to the C-suite and with broader remits around that.
Many organisations are now looking at the marketing function to lead that digital transformation with the customer, lead the growth agenda, their social agenda, how they respond to the social issues going on out there and reputational governance. With a broader remit for the CMOs, I think that bodes very well for ad spend, advertising won’t be the sole solution to that broader remit. But I do think that with increased scope, people that are in those roles will think how they can drive influence internally and externally.
dentsu group CEO Angela Tangas: All indications are that the Australian economy is going to rebound better than most after the pandemic. But it will likely be a slow and steady recovery. Business confidence is growing and we’ve seen a 42 per cent rise in ad spend just in the past quarter. The same is true of our business. Our dentsu global results for Q3 (released just two weeks ago), once again saw Australia outperforming most regional and global markets, with organic growth + 20 per cent on the last quarter.
The spend will be even better in 2022, but just spent differently.
Unsurprisingly, post multiple lockdowns, our recent dentsu CMO survey suggests that there is a shifting of the marketing spend towards e-commerce with 31 per cent already doing this, and we are expecting 28 per cent further next year.
Customers have much higher expectations of brands. We see this in their expectations around ethics, data, diversity and sustainability.
At dentsu, we are staying close to both our clients and what …….