Numis' Lorna Tilbian offered delegates at Media Week's high-profile annual summit a crumb of comfort with her view that financial markets will rally properly in Q4. While ITV's Rupert Howell and Global Radio's Stephen Miron gave their expected smooth expositions of the enduring strength and "bouncebackability" of commercial TV and radio, bantering with each other and, in Miron's case - slightly surprisingly given the ad budgets they control - an audience that contained dozens of senior client marketers.
But Clift and Klues painted a broad-brush picture and got to the nub of the macro issues facing the media industry. Clift's thought-provoking presentation outlined his belief that the nature of brands has fundamentally changed, with the speed of change outpacing the advertising industry's ability to meet it. He suggested there was inertia in the old ad models.
Unilever spends ¤3bn on advertising - still mostly on TV - to sell ¤40bn of basic products people will always need, such as soup, tea and toiletries. Clift believes Unilever is ahead of its competitors, but lags behind its audiences.
Klues, on the other hand, suggested his new Publicis Groupe VivaKi structure was creating, sorting and distilling the content, technology, tools and people it needed to help its clients provide consumers with what they need in the 21st Century. Contrary to Clift, he reckons his organisation is ahead of the consumer.
But, if media agencies are to provide their clients with what they need in this fundamentally changed environment, that's how it should be. A reliance on outdated models and entrenched views won't cut the mustard in a modern multimedia environment - and the agencies that recognise this and reshape themselves accordingly will help clients reach their consumers more effectively.
- More footage, excerpts from conference speeches, galleries and further analysis of the big issues from the conference will be added over the next week.
Steve Barrett is editor of Media Week, steve.barrett@haymarket.com
www.mediaweek.co.uk/stevebarrettblog