advertising matters 1.12.17

Parleying with the Parliamentarians

Tuesday evening, we turned the Churchill Room at the House of Commons into a world-class advertising hub for our annual Parliamentary Reception, giving our UK industry a resounding pat on the back for just how damn good we are at advertising. Our theme was the ‘Power of British Creativity’ and over 120 Parliamentarians including Minister for Digital Matt Hancock and Culture, Media & Sport Committee Chair Damian Collins, plus industry guests, enjoyed a real celebration of just what we have to offer.

Our guest speakers included national hero, five-times Olympic Gold medal winning Paralympian and all-round nice person, Hannah Cockroft MBE. Hannah spoke brilliantly to the audience about how Channel4/4creative’s ‘Meet the Superhumans’/’We are the superhumans’ campaign has helped change perceptions of the Paralympics and more widely of people with disabilities in society. WCRS showed off their hugely successful ‘Missing Type’ blood donation campaign, and adam&eveDDB brought along ‘Buster the Boxer’ for John Lewis. Read more and see some pics over at our website.

Who’s a growing ad then?

Creative industries in the UK expanded at twice the rate of the economy as a whole during 2015-16 according to figures from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport released this week.

DCMS noted the creative sector contributes £91.8bn to UK GVA and this expanded by 7.6% over the year. This was ahead of the 3.5% figure that the wider UK economy grew in the same period. The ad sector had the fastest growth of all creative industries sub-sector with 98.1%. This is almost a doubling of the GVA in six years. So, well done all!

Simply the best

Dan Wilks, Deputy Director of Credos – advertising’s think tank, spoke at eurobest this week about the people behind the UK ad industry’s world-beating creativity. The three days of learning and networking, celebrated the best of European creativity.

Dan spoke on the findings of the recent Advertising Pays 6 report from the Advertising Association and Credos, which looked at how the UK, and especially London, is a hub for world talent in the ad industry. It was timely reminder of how important continued access to the global creative community is for our future success.

Deal or no deal?

There is no sector deal as yet for the creative industries in the Government’s eagerly awaited Industrial Strategy. Discussions on the deal are at an advanced stage, with the Paper making clear that the creative industries are crucial to the UK economy. There was however still plenty of good news for ad land.

More Tier 1 visas for exceptional talent; £33m to support investment in immersive technologies; a new Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and eight new research partnerships between creative businesses and universities to develop creative clusters were the key takeaways for industry. The AA’s resident policy wonks will be keeping us up to speed as work towards a creative industries sector deal continues in the New Year.