Bizcommunity's media correspondent for Cannes Lions, Ann Nurock, spoke to Emery in an exclusive interview on global trends affecting the media landscape and shares his views on whether African markets are investing enough into technology and whether we're using mobile to its full potential.

Nurock: What stood out for you most in terms of the media entries this year?

Nick Emery

Emery: I think it was the disconnect between the quality of some of the insights and ideas for the NGO work, versus the quality and insights of the work from the big multinationals. Some may think that's an unfair comparison, but I don't see why the big multinationals can't raise their game.

Nurock: What do you think the multinationals are doing wrong as opposed to the NGOs?

Emery: It's not so much that they're doing anything wrong, it just smacks of safety, it's almost like elevator music for media. You could take campaigns from big agencies, change and swap them around, and you would be hard pressed to tell which submissions are different. There's a general trend where people seem to think that millennials are morons, and if we just do a bit of personalisation, with loud music and 'here's some free titbit you poor thing, that you can do with this complicated code', that agencies think they'll flock to you. And it's fine, it's good competent work, but it smacks of assurance, rather than insight. The clients want to be assured that we're doing the right thing and we got some nice sales, but we don't want to do anything too risky.

Nurock: In terms of global trends and the media landscape, what is your perspective on that, and particularly relevant to emerging markets?

Emery: Well you have the mobile market, especially looking at the sub-Saharan market, so mobile continues to be that kind of trend, but people are finding it difficult to monetise and be effective. It's hard to be a mobile-only thing, so everything blurs. Personalisation is a big thing, mass personalisation in terms of data, and how to use that data, technology (but not technology for technology's sake), and that's where I think media is most exciting, because it sits in that industry with content, technology, media and efficiency. And these four things are where everyone kind of orbits around, and when you get it right, you get something great like a Grand Prix.

Nurock: Talking about Africa specifically, in terms of mobile, it's usually just a regular phone and not a smartphone, but I don't think they're using it to its full potential, especially not like they are in China. Listening to Sy Lau from Tencent, where they look at the human behind the technology...

Emery: Well I mean if you look at Indonesia where they have four or five mobile phones, it's about why people are using it. Is it for utility or entertainment? You have to be brand-centric to get your message across. But in emerging markets, I think the same rules apply as they do in London, it's patronising to say it's not. It used to be that you could do more exciting stuff in China, when people weren't paying attention and emerging markets had less rules. Maybe you can be more like an NGO in Africa for a big brand, than you can be in New York.

Nurock: The internet in South Africa, we have penetration of 30%, where I don't think the government is investing any money into it. But if you look at China, the government has invested $6.4bn into something called Internet Plus, so I'm just not sure if the African markets are investing enough into technology...

Emery: Everyone's trying to get into that, just look at Internet.org with the Facebook campaign, Google are trying to do that too with their balloons. So if the governments don't do it, some companies will come along and do it, because everyone is now looking at Africa seeing as they've maxed out growth everywhere else. So you have some senior marketers now being responsible for, or moving to, Africa.

Nurock: What other global business trends do you see?

Emery: Well from our point of view, there's the unfortunate on-going trend of procurement and people treating us like a commodity. And I think this continues because inflation is still low, people need to grow, but they've tapped out other places where they could cut money, so they keep looking at the agencies. The big players are coming together now because that's the next big thing.

But our trends tend to be in two buckets. There's the trend of automation, which is all about programmatic and data and personalisation, how to attract people and new issues dealing with privacy. And then on the back of that there's creation, how do you create more agile and faster turnaround for content than just TV ads.

And then there's the big trend of global and local, is there a need for a regional team anymore. It's now about activating much closer to local markets.

Nurock: What do you have to say about some of the views of convergence of media agencies back into the actual brand agencies?

Emery: I think what clients want is a 21st century version of full service agency, so I don't think they want a new full service agency, but they want a team built around different paths that represent a new style of a full service agency.

Nurock: So it would be almost like the WPP approach?

Emery: Similar, but I think it also has to be open-sourced, you have to be able to sell other services as well, you can't just wrap it all up. I don't see media people going back to that, but I do see a point where you have a quick turnaround of nimble, digital, social content. So maybe it does make sense at some point for a big media shop and big content shop to come together.

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