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What pisses us off? Undisclosed media rebates and jargon, say marketers

L-r: Batistich, Burgess, Reinke, Sykes, Alarcon

L-r: Batistich, Burgess, Reinke, Sykes, Alarcon

Marketers do the industry no favours by using “fad words”, a senior APAC marketer said today at the Mumbrella360 conference in Sydney.

In answer to a question about what frustrates him most about marketing, James Sykes, Asia Pacific marketing director at Beam Suntory, said the use of fad words and industry jargon.

“We’re continually marginalising ourselves, because we talk shit most of the time. Most of what we say is meaningless, because fad words get in the way,” Sykes said.

“Advocacy” and “engagement” were fad words mentioned by the panel, which included Michael Burgess, GM of marketing at Weight Watchers Australia, Mark Reinke, group executive of marketing at Suncorp, and John Batistich, director of marketing at Westfield Group.

In answer to the same question, Batistich said that undisclosed rebates from media agencies frustrated him the most.

“It shows a complete breach of trust. Marketers should be asking their media agency for greater transparency on rebates,” he said.

However, Burgess of Weight Watchers added: “It’s the client’s responsibility to be sceptical. Even with digital reports, you need be sceptical about the data. You need to dig in and understand it.

“We need to make sure we have a remuneration system that rewards effort and outcome. We need the model to be outcome-based,” he said.

Beam Suntory’s Sykes, who used to work at ad agency Y&R, said: “Clients have to train their agencies to behave they way they want them to behave.”

The panel was moderated by Camille Alarcon, publisher of business prospecting tool, The Source.

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