Digital spend’s doubters are dinosaurs no longer, says Howcroft

Sceptics about digital advertising are now regarded as professional and not laggards, says PwC partner Russel Howcroft.

Sceptics about digital advertising are now regarded as professional and not laggards, says PwC partner Russel Howcroft.

Sceptics about digital advertising are now regarded as professional and not laggards in new technology, says PwC partner Russel Howcroft.

An industry veteran who this year celebrates a decade on the hit ABC advertising panel show The Gruen Transfer, Howcroft says the dynamic has shifted among business clients coming to consultancy firm PwC to seek insights from its CMO advisory consultancy, of which he is a key part.

Howcroft, who is also PwC chief creative officer, tells The Australian’s Behind the Media podcast that the digital media business is maturing and so are clients’ attitudes to it.

“It’s probably moved from adolescence. As it moves into young adult it will behave more accordingly, but then by the same token the clients have become more mature and sceptical in their approach. Around the management table I also think that conversation has changed,” says Howcroft.

“There was a point in time that if you’re sceptical around digital spend you were seen as a laggard. Now I suspect that that scepticism now is seen as being professional. So that’s a good thing.”

Digital and a fractured landscape make marketing spending decisions harder, he says.

“If you’re in the business of spending your marketing money, where to put that money is tough. It’s very hard to know whom to believe. Everyone is in sales, so if you’re in digital, you think digital is the solution. If you’re in PR, you think PR is the solution. If you do design, you think design is a solution. If you’re like me and you’re an old ad guy, you think making an ad is the solution. The answer is of course you’ve probably got to do all of it, but then that becomes a mixed question.”

And Howcroft says digital publishers desperate to compensate for plunging online traffic due to Facebook cutting posts from news sites in its newsfeed should “take their own life into their own hands”.

“It’s very hard for media owners to spend money on marketing. They find it really difficult because they are media themselves so they therefore believe that the use of their own media is enough, and it’s just not enough.

“You have to do more than that. It’s a really tough thing. These are the problems that we are trying to solve at PwC.”

“Andrew Denton sent me a text and my response was, ‘so no other bastard would do it (Gruen)?’ ”

Consultancies such as PwC, Deloitte and Accenture, which bought advertising agency The Monkey, are investing in advertising and marketing firms, leading to speculation that global consultancy firms will eventually buy out the global marketing servicing conglomerates such as WPP and Publicis.

But Howcroft says at PwC in Australia he sees his role as being “advice and not the execution” to clients on advertising matters, although last year PwC invested in creative agency Thinkerbell.

Appearing on The Gruen Transfer changed Howcroft’s life and career. “If you’re fortunate enough to be on a TV show that has success, it does change everything,” he says.

Ten years ago, Howcroft was very uncertain about appearing on the ABC show, and worried about undermining the industry. But two chaperones he took along to the filming of the pilot, Advertising Federation of Australia head Lesley Brydon and Y&R communications director Lynda Gray both emphatically urged him to do the program.

“Andrew Denton sent me a text — yes, you sent me a text asking me why I’d said yes — and my response was, ‘so no other bastard would do it’,” Howcroft recalls.

“His response back was ‘nothing will be the same again’, which is pretty interesting isn’t it? And that is actually the reality.”

Howcroft has good relations with series host Wil Anderson and fellow panellist Todd Sampson, whom he once sent “a lovely Christmas card and you opened it up and it said ‘get f**ked’ on the inside, which at the time was quite fun. So we do get along well.”