At the recent AdSpeaks presentation at Macleay College, Chris Hamilton the marketing manager from Yaffa Publishing spoke about how regardless of your position in an agency, it is important to bring some understanding to what advertising medium to use to maximise your clients’ results. He also explained that with the world we live in today, there are so many choices of media and that you shouldn’t just choose the “hottest”medium of the moment, but rather choose the one that is will achieve the most effective results for your target audience and client. Chris presented comparative statistics about the perceptions of the consumer vs those of the marketers in terms of how to best communicate to certain target groups. Important to note were the discrepancies between the perceived effectiveness of social media as an advertising vehicle, and TV which is in recovery mode at the moment. He then went on to show us a video of the advertising icon Sean Cummins, where he explained why creatives, account managers and media planners should work together from the very beginning to maximise the success of an ad campaign. Chris used an old TV with two knobs and modern day remote to show us all the extra buttons we need to navigate through in order to find that parts that actually work – which is exactly the way creative problem solving in advertising  works – we need to go through all the possibilities to find the best one.  At the end of the talk Chris told us about a competition AdNews is running for students who want to launch their career in advertising or marketing for the new 3rd generation Audi TT. Everyone saw this as a massive opportunity to kick start our careers with only one trimester left everyone was very eager to enter.

Advertising Student, Nicholas Farasopoulos