For ads, TV might work as well as your iPad: Martin Sorrell

In an exciting new episode of Storyboard, CNBC-TV18’s Anuradha SenGupta has a tête-à-tête with Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP post the gala at Cannes Lions 2011. Sorrell says that he observes a general spurt in the TV business. “While consumers might be adapting fast to the new media, be it e-mailing or SMSing, Facebooking, Tweeting, he is also very much engaged in watching the television,” he says. Therefore, advertising in the traditional media is still as relevant in the digital world, he says. After all, if one gets television programmes on the iPad, it is predominantly TV, right?

Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What is the key take away you have for us from the Cannes experience in 2011?

A: We saw resurgence in the television business, even the new media companies which are basically not technology companies. They have been telling us and even agencies have been telling us that advertising is not finished, and probably, one of the things that are really interesting is that there are sort of twin peaks of the new media. If you watch somebody watching old media, the television, they are tweeting or they are on their Facebook page or they are using SMS or Email or whatever. So they are multi tasking and they are watching TV. There is no doubt that higher levels of unemployment have changed the patterns of behavior. People are watching more television, both in its old form, in its High Definition form, in its 3D form and everything else. If I get a television program in my iPad, is that TV or not?

Basically, even old television seems to have a bit of resurgence. There was a dead cat bounce in 2009 that was appalling. It was also to do with the fact that people saw better value in traditional media and advertising, versus new media. We have seen categories come back like Auto and financial services and travel and tourism. The most important phenomenon is in the west - this doesn’t apply to India because the growth is so strong - but in the west where growth is under pressure, people are investing in brand rather than capacity. They are risk averse, frightened by what Lehman and what happened in 2009. So instead of investing in capacity in the traditional markets, they invest in the brand.

Also read: Where creativity roared: The Cannes Lions 2011

Q: So that’s good news for the marketing function, isn’t it?

A: Its good news for the marketing function, but the balance between marketing and finance and procurement is still not good in my view. In the west, we still have too cautious a view about what’s happening.

Q: We heard Unilever’s Paul Polman talking about the fact that they are launching brands even as they speak, across the world, not just in the emerging markets, but even in the developed markets. I spoke to P&G, everybody is talking about continued investment in marketing. That’s essentially good news for your business, or is there something beyond that?

A: Clients generally abstract things from Unilever or P&G and put them on one side. Clients want efficiency and effectiveness. Effectiveness means better work and efficiency means lower cost. This time last year, liquidity post the Lehman weekend when the financial lights almost went out as Warren Buffet will tell you or Jeff Immelt of GE Capital, I think they were very focused on liquidity as well, that’s probably still there. However, the balance between creativity and art is a difficult one to maintain. Sometimes, it gets out of kilter and on the clients side, probably naturally, since we went through these one of the worst recession. While I look at the top 100 companies in the UK, more than 50 of them are run by CFOs like me, so maybe we are to blame.