Pressing Ahead With Print
Media Group, Carat, recently appointed Dominic Williams to the newly-created position of press director, building on the agency boss’s eight-year career with the firm. He explains the significance of the new role, and his plan to put press at the top of the table in the coming months…
Since being promoted to become Carat’s Head of Press a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been talking to clients, people here at Carat and media owners across the industry. While everyone wants to make real progress in a new role as quickly as possible, it’s just as important to clearly outline your aims to key stakeholders and get dialogue started straight away.
My first action has been to talk to all of our clients about the new role, and describe just what my new responsibilities will be. I’ve been explaining that I will still be involved in their business, but will concentrate more on print issues, the future of print and developing their business needs in an ever evolving market.
My next task as Head of Press is to outline to all the media owners how we want to work with them in the future. As a central point of contact for the agency’s print presence, its my aim to develop close relationships that will yield new opportunities for our clients. Instead of the standard pages, DPS’s and 25×4 formats, I want to explore other avenues that will make each individual title work harder to achieve our client’s business objectives.
This might mean sourcing more data from a media owner on their reader’s attitudes, behaviour and lifestyle. By getting closer to the reader we can involve them more with our clients’ brands. I will be looking across all kinds of media owner research as well as across other channels such as online and so on.
As well as developing new opportunities and understanding readers better, I will also be encouraging media owners to have much more contact with our communications planners. The more interaction media owners have on our clients’ business models, the more we can get out of them. Conversely, if communication planners understand the media owner, their issues and pressure points better, the relationship will prove much more effective.
The press market is constantly changing, and it is essential that everyone at Carat is fully aware of contemporary issues and working at full speed to make the most of the opportunities they present. We have a huge amount of talent here at Carat, and I’ll be trying to harness it and take the team onto the next level. I want to work with everyone to tap into Carat’s huge reserves of knowledge and experience so we can offer clients innovative and creative communications ideas.
Finally, I will be looking to make sure Carat can always provide informed opinion on all print issues. This ranges far further than trading matters into the factors impacting on our clients’ business and just how the print market will and should develop in the future. Whether it is the future of freesheets, the rise of compact formats or new launches in the lifestyle sector, I’m going to make sure that we are keeping our clients in the picture and lobbying for their interests across all aspects of the print industry.