Really? Do I have to? Another trade body conference?

18 months ago Greg Grimmer caused some distress with his column, poking fun at a certain – newly re-branded – media trade body. Has he changed his mind since then? After an awkward lunch with the CEO and some interesting conferences, things may have turned a corner…

Cilla Snowball stood up at the Advertising Association’s LEAD conference last year and showed a chart stuffed with logos of advertising trade bodies. She then called for them to be rolled into a single body.

There was much nervous laughter.

However, many voices, myself included, concurred; advertising needs a single strong voice.

I even wrote a column on it. But life isn’t that simple.

Since the golden days of the RAB under Douglas MacArthur, through to a revitalised IAB under Guy Phillipson and on to the powerhouse of Tess Alps and Lindsey Clay’s Thinkbox – not forgetting the OMC, MMA and PPA – and you have a plethora of powerful organisations fighting for their own specific corner.

The single media trade bodies have all grown in influence and prospered but media fragmentation has meant that individual media brands have to act together in order to be heard.

I still think there needs to be less infighting, but broadly each of these bodies do their job well despite, in some cases, non-participating or warring shareholders.

Now the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed an exclusion from the list above. Newsworks (née the NMA) was a latecomer to the party and also the recipient of one of my most contentious Newsline columns.

I used this organ about 18 months ago to poke fun at the ANNA’s – the Awards for National Newspaper Advertising – as an event; out of touch with its audience from an organisation floundering around like a drunken media buyer at a media owner Christmas party.

This column caused much distress, not least of which with the new CEO of the Newspaper Marketing Agency, Rufus Olins, with whom I subsequently agreed to have lunch…which despite him paying for, taught me once and for all that Milton Friedman was right.

Of course like all of my real journalist friends tell me, if you get a reaction you must be close to the truth.

Well back then, I probably was.

Fast forward just 14 months and I find myself at a Newsworks event talking about how the UK’s (global) newsbrands are succeeding in the Digital Age against not only their international competitors but also the global digital pure plays like the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed.

As the luminous editor of the Daily Telegraph Tony Gallagher ran through what a 21st century news centre produced and how it now works 24/7, I was reminded of the Jerry Seinfeld joke about newspapers, and how relieved editors must be when exactly the right amount of news happens everyday to fit into the paper.

Sorry Jerry, another gag consigned to history, and no rest or relief for Tony.

But back to Newsworks.

How come the transformation?

Well let’s start with Rufus. The reason that lunch was slightly tortuous was because he was two minutes into a tough job and I had reminded him and everyone who read my column of this fact. But to give credit where credit is due, he has moved things on at a pace.

The rebrand was the start of this.

From the staid NMA to the functional Newsworks – with the additional nomenclature of ‘newsbrands’, not ‘newspapers’ – I like to claim part credit for ‘newsbrands’ as a modernist term for the shareholders and take great delight in the fact that these companies are taking the fight to the world and aren’t just sitting back waiting for print Armageddon.

Rufus has also recruited well. The charming and respected Vanessa Clifford and the energetic and talented Liz Jaques – ex editor of this parish – who have both brought something new to the rejuvenated organisation. David Pattison, as their first external Chairman, is also an inspired hire to keep the perennially warring shareholders in a pacificatory state.

The “Shift 2013” event covered by Newsline and elsewhere, shows how far perceptions of the sector and its trade body have come. I always think you can tell more about a conference by looking at the audience and not just the speakers, and you can tell even more about the quality if the speakers stay beyond their speaking slot.

In the case of Shift 2013, this meant an audience of senior (high spending) clients, editors and proprietors of national newspapers staying to watch, listen and even tweet from the audience.

One small criticism of the attendee list… As now I can no longer count myself as a Creative Agency leader, this influential group of companies was virtually unrepresented at such a star-studded event. The only representatives I saw were two paid hands from Dare who were there to live blog the event.

However, perhaps this says more about the state of the creative agency sector than the newsbrand sector.

A new trade body for creative agencies anybody?

Anybody?

Greg Grimmer is a consultant at Enter