Gaining global, multiplatform reach will prove to be essential if companies hope to navigate their way through the current economic difficulties intact, WWP Group chief executive Martin Sorrell warned delegates in his keynote address at MipTV yesterday.
"This recession changes our industry forever. If I was a media owner, and in particular if I was in one medium in one country, such as ITV in the U.K., I would be very nervous," he said. Media owners with operations across a range of mediums in many countries, will be the ones best placed to survive, he added.
Sorrell said that the combined effect of global economic turmoil and the digital evolution would shake up the way content producers, media owners and distributors operate. "Production models are too expensive and will have to change. This is actually a big opportunity for content producers, particularly those who control talent and for the agencies," he said. "These groups have to work together to try and develop content that is attractive for the new platforms, particularly the growth platforms of mobile and the internet,” he added.
Sorrell reiterated predictions that the downturn would continue through 2009 with an anticipated “aneamic” recovery in 2010. Developing countries were however the ones to watch , Sorrell noted "Latin America, particularly Brazil, is defying gravity at the moment. China and India have been touched by the downturn and growth has slowed but there are signs that China is speeding up again. The decline in Russia is quite significant but even there, there remains some vibrancy," he said. He added that China Mobile with 450 million subscribers, is in WPP’s eyes the 5th most valuable brand in the world.
Sorell predicted that the current status quo would overall improve efficiency of production; shift the power of TV away from dominance forever; and that newspapers and magazines are in deep trouble. Sorrell noted that we will see the rise to prominence of subscription models across all modes of content. “Monetisation is a bad word in new media it should be all about commercialisation,” he said.
“This is what Mip TV is all about. What we are trying to do is find new ways if distributing content geographically, or I unique ways that can take into account the fact that the traditional distribution model is under attack,” he said. “You see this in the music industry, the film industry, the TV industry. Whether you want to call it disintermediation or not, the traditional notion of profitability is being challenged.”
