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The sun shone, the sky was blue and the breeze rippled gently through
the palmtrees as delegates arrived at the Hotel Fira Palace in
Barcelona for the Spring ICMA General Meeting. After a particularly
cold spring in northern Europe, it was great to feel the warmth as we
gathered in the sunny 'Jardin' next to the ICMA Member Lounge for the
Meet-and-Greet Lunch. With over 100 member delegates and a further 50
non-members, speakers, exhibitors and guests from 29 countries, this
was one of the best attended GM's in recent years, and people were soon
meeting up with old friends and introducing themselves to new arrivals
as they settled down to fuel up for their afternoon on the beach.
The bus was loaded with budding athletes and off we set for the beach
for the Mini-Olympics.
The organisers, Incentives Barcelona, split everyone up into teams to
play beach volleyball, Frisbee, badminton and petanca (the Spanish
version of the French boules). Everyone threw themselves into the
activities, literally in some cases, with exhibitors Mathieu Laverne of
Calligramme and Phil DuBois of CityXpress colliding in an impromptu
game of football which resulted in a very impressive black eye for
Matthieu! A sizeable delegation relocated to the nearby nudist beach,
and whilst far too much of Felix's underwear was on show, at least he
and Gerald kept most of their clothes on. Prizes were later awarded to
Peter Whitmore as the best all-round participant, Judith Neilly for
being the loudest, Sue Kendall for the best female athlete, Sorin Petcu
for the best footballer and newcomer to petanca, Cal Bosveld for the
best man with a ball and Bobby Ralston for the first injury.
Congratulations to them, and thanks to all participants for being such
good sports!
After dropping off some athletes in the centre of town for some
sightseeing, the bus returned to the hotel and the delegates relaxed
before the Welcome Reception and Dinner. Jill Armer, ICMA Chair,
welcomed delegates to the conference, thanked ICMA Associate Members
iPix AdMission and Joshua, and other exhibitors, and introduced the
three prospective members who were attending - Nathalie and Stephanie
from SPIR Multimedia from France, David Owen-Smith from Trader Media
Group from the UK and Pablo Martin-Frances from Finn.no from Norway -
and urged everyone to make the most of their time together over the
next few days. Delegates tucked into the buffet and talked long into
the evening, mostly in the bar.
At 9am on Friday,
delegates piled into the (just big enough) Salon Vivaldi to hear Jill
opening the formal proceedings with some reflections on the importance
of marketing today. To illustrate her point, she showed a TV ad from
one of the most brand-conscious companies in Ireland, Guinness, which
really sent a tingle down your spine. Then it was onto the two new
member presentations starting with Harry Avgoustiniatos of Ch. X
Tegolopoulos from Greece. Harry presented his main classified product,
Chrissi Efkeria, and its key data, and advised everyone to polywrap
their papers, as he had seen a 20% increase in circulation since taking
this step. Following Harry, we welcomed Oscar
Diele, General Manager of Marktplaats
in The Netherlands, who made the introduction of eBay as a new member.
After firing some cheeky questions at Oscar, delegates welcomed both
new members into the ICMA family.
And it was back to Oscar again for the keynote presentation
of "Classified like it's meant to be?" eBay concluded the purchase of
Marktplaats in November 2004 as one of their several recent purchases
in the classified space, and Oscar took delegates through the
development of the service, its remarkable growth curve, the dominant
position it enjoys in the Dutch market, the deliberately simple and
limited choices that it offers advertisers and users, and the changes
that eBay has brought in, such as incorporating some eBay listings to
balance trade. Oscar also reflected on some cultural and geographical
factors which may have contributed to Marktplaats' success, "the Dutch
are cheap", love a bargain, and the fact that the eBay auction model is
diametrically opposed to the traditional "Dutch auction" model where
the price actually goes down in the process. The Netherlands is also a
small country which allows people to view and trade goods which are not
easily sent through the post, thus favouring the classified model over
the auction.
Mike Waterson, the Chairman of the World Advertising Research Center
in the UK, followed Oscar and took a "helicopter view" of the
classified industry. Mike described an industry that was thriving, with
more prosperity and more competition leading to more advertising being
bought. Classified advertising represents a US$ 1 billion (EUR 810
million) market annually, but media is fragmenting, time spent with
printed products and therefore their circulations, are falling, and
some online sectors, such as recruitment, are seeing 40% growth
annually. "Better-faster-cheaper" is hard to beat, and Mike contrasted
the analogy of theatre having survived the advent of the cinema, and
cinema that of the TV, with the fact that the horse-and-cart did not
survive the arrival of the car. "Browse versus Search" is an aspect of
the classified experience that cannot be fulfilled by online but Mike
concluded that, after death and taxes, there were only two certainties
for classified media - more competition and more organised competition.
After the morning coffee-break, the programme split into two tracks. Track OneSteve Hollingsworth of Northcliffe Newspapers Group
of the UK, explained how the concept of the event auction had enabled
papers in the group to offer local retailers an opportunity to
participate in the auction process. Working with partners CityXpress,
Northcliffe had conducted 3 successful event auctions to date and had
several more in the pipeline plus plans to roll-out continuous
auctions. One of the most significant benefits for Northcliffe was the
chance to recruit new/lost/lapsed advertisers and convert them into
active paying customers, thus increasing their advertising customer
base.
Steve was succeeded by Ralph Werner, MD of mobile.de,
eBay's online autos vertical in Germany. Ralph gave a thoughtful
presentation, focusing on the key drivers of early mover advantage,
business skills, product, marketing and pricing, which gave Mobile.de's
founders their early success. Surprisingly, much of Mobile.de's early
strategy was focused on dealers, unlike the familiar classified
strategy of populating an environment with sufficient C2C advertising
to attract B2C advertisers. Mobile.de concentrated on building the
brand and their relationships with dealers, and charged dealers from
Day 1. Ralph took delegates through the cycles and sub-cycles of
business activity in the vertical market, illustrating this explanation
with examples and advice. Finally, he closed with an overview of
Mobile.de's marketing today and showed the latest TV ad, which was a
real "magic moment"!
The last presentations in this session were a pair from Peter Rees of Trader
Classified Media, and newcomer Judith Neilly of Buy & Sell
Ireland. Peter and Judith took different approaches to the topic of
"Old versus New Marketing" with Peter taking a classic approach
focusing on customers, company and competition, and Judith presenting
three case-studies on circulation and sales marketing, two of which
succeeded and one failed. On the company side, Peter explained that
Trader maintained a clear focus on optimising the functionality of
their sites and making them as easy as possible for advertisers and
users to access. Customers (advertisers and users) are migrating to the
Internet which is developing new business models all the time. On the
competition front, Peter drew attention once again to Google which
combines many of the "hot" features such as aggregation, localisation,
rich media, and mobile access, as well as Craigslist and eBay's future
plans in the classified space. After such a global view, delegates were
taken right back down to earth when Judith described what happened on
the ground on a day-to-day basis at Buy & Sell Ireland. Two
initiatives, one designed to boost circulation of Buy & Sell
Belfast by rewarding high footfall newsagents with GBP 50 to place the
paper near the till in a special display rack, and the other to
kick-start the property category by creating an "exclusive" club of
estate-agents, were both remarkably successful with a relatively low
level of financial or resource investment. However, the "A-Team"
initiative (a sampling exercise with retailers) failed miserably, and
did not achieve any of the stated objectives of raising brand awareness
or increasing the ABC figures.
Following lunch in the ICMA Member Lounge, delegates were plunged back
into the afternoon panel
sessions.
Track One hosted a panel of media-buyers from Spain, Finland and the
UK, chaired by Peter Rees who addressed the question of how classified
media could better market itself to advertising agencies and media
buyers. Juha Herranen of Carat
International
in Helsinki advised delegates to focus on understanding their customers
and providing measurable ROI, and to be conscious of the time pressure
that media-buyers were under. This theme of lack of time resurfaced
again and again and Alex Lawton of Starcom
WorldwideAndrew Jack of Gritti Plc
in London hit a controversial nerve when he said that some agencies
don't want to understand and if you come across such an agency, you
should go direct to the client.
At lunch we were cordially invited by Sidharth Gupta, COO of Free-Ads India
to join him at the next ICMA General Meeting in New Delhi in India on 10-12 November
2005. Back in Track Two, Stuart Wilkinson of the BPA Worldwide
A regular at ICMA meetings, Sally Winfield, spoke on the highs and lows of
marketing at LOOT.
Sally has been MD of LOOT only since December 2004 but her involvement
with Associated Newspapers stretches back over 17 years, and most
recently as Group Classified Director. Sally described the recent
change to white stock and the attendant advertising and promotional
campaign which accompanied it, with the tagline "Your local
markeplace". With one of the most colourful and image-packed
presentations of the programme, everyone loves to hear what LOOT is
doing and Sally was inundated with questions afterwards.
To wind-up the morning sessions, Sidharth Gupta of Free-Ads India and Stefan
Anderson of Eniro Oy
contrasted the different approaches to marketing. Sidharth opened
delegates' eyes to the very different ways in which people in
developing markets respond to marketing. Value, reputation and
stability are key, and who will forget the example of the crab
syndrome? Sidharth was followed by Stefan, who contended that once the
basics were right, it was a question of targeting the marketing message
and vehicle, and the product and service. Concentrating on the 4P's of
marketing - product, price, positioning and promotion - Stefan analysed
how Eniro addressed these in the Finnish high-income market.
Following the afternoon coffee-break, delegates split into six
workshops which were repeated three times. Despite the acoustic
difficulties (and the non-functioning kitchen-timers), delegates packed
out the six tables over the 90 minutes and all complained that they did
not have enough time. Special thanks to all the workshop leaders - Peter Lamb (who
consistently scores 10/10 from delegates for his workshops), Gerald
Coniel, Audrey Cunningham, Peter de Souza, Konstantin Kandler and Craig
McMullin and Peter Norman. We'll
sort out the noise and give you longer next time!
After a quick wash and brush-up, it seemed about two hundred people
turned up for the Catalan Evening
buses outside the hotel. We finally managed to squeeze people onto the
buses and set off for the Can Cortada, a 12th century
fortress/farmhouse. We enjoyed some drinks in the courtyard before
settling down to long low tables where we were served with a range of
tapas starters, a huge shank of lamb and crème catalan. A lovely
traditional evening!
Amazingly, people turned out in time for the Saturday meetings - Publishers'
Meeting chaired by Cal Bosveld, the Sales Managers' Workshop led
by Ramon van den Ende and the Technology & Business Development Forum,
facilitated by Peter Zollman of Classified Intelligence.
Cal opened the Publishers' Meeting and introduced George Brooks of
Trader Publishing,
a new member of ICMA. George made his new member presentation,
introducing his company, its products and business strategies, and
after fielding a few impertinent questions from Jack, was welcomed into
the Association. Cal then shared a few thoughts on where the classified
industry was heading before introducing Bob
Cauthorn, president of CityTools
and former senior executive at the San Francisco Chronicle. Bob
described the experience of the Bay Area newspapers, which had failed
to react to the threat posed by Craigslist, a small home-grown online
operation employing 18 people which is now present in nearly 200 cities
worldwide. Arrogance had led to the loss of control over classified
pricing. Bob contended that classified markets could shift,
classified-only products had done this to newspapers and now free-ads,
free-access online sites were doing it again. After this provocative
presentation, delegates split into smaller groups to discuss their
response to this phenomenon, many concluded that they should do a
"Friday-Ad" and go free themselves. It'll be interesting to see if any
have done this by the time of the next GM in India.
Downstairs in Salon Coral, Ramon was marshalling his sales managers
for a mammoth session of exchanging ideas and experiences. Thanks to a
lot of pre-work, delegates had arrived prepared with presentations and
case-studies to share with their colleagues, so much so that they ran
out of time to consider some of the issues planned for the second
session. Never mind, we'll make sure that we recycle these for the next
GM!
Next door, the first ever Technology & Business Development Forum
was taking place, ably facilitated by Peter Zollman. All the exhibitors
were given the chance to present the latest trends and developments in
their industry, and delegates participated actively in all the sessions
and really stayed true to the concept of the "forum". The anecdotal
feedback was excellent and we will definitely aim to repeat this
meeting in future.
Jill, aided by the Saturday meeting chairs, expertly wrapped up the conference
Onto the Business Meeting,
where the 2004 audit was approved, BERK re-appointed as ICMA auditors
for 2005, presentations on ICMA projects and PHOENIX were made, and
elections for Committee were held. Full minutes are posted in the ICMA
Library.
And after a well-deserved break (more than a few people I know had a
short nap!), it was on with the party-dresses and make-up and onto
those buses again for the ICMA
Gala Party in L'Hivernacle,
a Victorian-style wrought-iron greenhouse-type building originally
constructed for the World Exhibition in 1888. Welcomed with a glass of
sparkling cava, delegates enjoyed the spacious Parc della Ciutadella
before sitting down to a delicious three course meal. Dessert was
followed by a spectacular Spanish danceshow with rather more audience
participation than I had bargained for but everyone threw themselves
into it - literally! The traditional dancing finished, the DJ and open
bar took over, and we had to tear people away onto the last bus at 1am.
Apparently, the party continued until very late at a series of bars
near the harbour, and there were several sore heads the next day…
Many thanks to the Committee, the speakers, the chairpeople, the
exhibitors, but most of all to you the delegates who really make ICMA
General Meetings what they are!
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