Ian Priest, founding partner of VCCP and international managing director of Chime, whose companies includes the Open Health group, delivered his inaugural address as president of UK advertising trade body the IPA yesterday.
He pledged to move the advertising industry towards a new era of commercial creativity by joining forces with clients and adapting together to meet the challenges and opportunities of operating in times of dynamic change, austerity, and the ‘always on’ world. His drive for the bottom line comes shortly after the announcement on March 6 that 2012 operating profits for Chime Communications rose by 64 per cent to £25.7m.
“We all recognise that clients want us for our creativity,” said Priest. “But more than that, they want us for our commercial creativity. Creativity that demonstrably adds value to their businesses. Which in return, adds value to ours.”
To achieve this, Priest has created a client council made up of a number of very influential, forward-thinking contacts from a cross-section of industry sectors to work with the IPA and its member agencies.
Added Priest: “We intend to create a lot of debate and then follow up with clear and actionable thought leadership and best practice content about how we as an industry should adapt, for everyone at large to share, comment and act upon.” Priest has defined five strands to his initiative, which form the acronym ADAPT:
Alliances – the most important is with clients; moving towards a model client-agency relationship.
Deliverables – must evolve to meet the new opportunities that multiplatform presents, using expertise and experience to understand how to reach consumers, engage with them and involve them in conversations.
Actions – to make the industry more agile across pitching, client briefing, production, media placement and evaluation, to create a culture of effectiveness throughout the evaluation process, to develop real time models fit for the social world we now live in.
Profit/Procurement – to drive growth and profitable returns for both clients and agencies, by engaging everyone in improving existing agency business and remuneration models.
Talent – ensuring attraction and retention of best and most diverse talent, creating more digital training, introducing joint training and qualifications with clients to foster greater mutual understanding.
By being action-orientated and practical Priest believes his ‘ADAPT’ Presidential agenda will embrace the opportunities of modern advertising.