The Year Ahead – in video, pictures and quotes
The Year Ahead 2015, hosted at The Waldorf Hilton hotel, London
Wednesday saw almost 200 senior professionals from across the media industry gather at London’s Waldorf Hilton hotel to discuss some of the biggest trends for 2015.
Sitting on a panel chaired by MediaTel’s MD Derek Jones, the BBC’s former media correspondent, Torin Douglas, media journalist Raymond Snoddy, and Pippa Glucklich, co-CEO at Starcom MediaVest Group, debated what the coming year has in store for the industry, as well as reviewing 2014’s main media highlights.
The event also heard from a host of top media names, including Karmarama’s Jon Wilkins, ISBA’s Bob Wootton, BBC’s Margo Swadley, Fetch’s Greg Grimmer and Sharp End’s Michael Bayler, amongst many others, as everything from the impact of the general election on the media industry, to the future of media agencies was debated.
The event, in partnership with RadiumOne, was under Chatham House Rule, so Newsline is unable to report directly on the conversations, however we can reveal the panel’s personal choices for media personality of 2014, along with their top media brand and favourite media moment of last year.
We also have three video interviews, below, with Pippa, Torin and Ray as they share their thoughts on the year ahead.
The panel’s 2014 highlights
Pippa Glucklich, co-CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group
Media personality: Malala Yousafzai – the 17 year-old Pakistani activist for female education, who was shot in 2012 by a Taliban gunman in an attempted assassination. She has since gone on to become the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate.
Media brand: Lego – chosen for consistently and inventively using the brand (and bricks) to engage people with content – from a major film, to recreations of global news events.
Media moment: #bringbackourgirls campaign – in response to the abduction of almost 300 female students by Islamist militants, Boko Haram, in Nigeria last April. The hashtag has been used by people across the globe, including hundreds of celebrities, to raise awareness of the missing students. Within months of being tweeted the hashtag had been used more than three million times, demonstrating the power of social media on a global scale.
Torin Douglas, media journalist
Media Brand: Vice Media – the youth brand that started life in 1994 as a Canadian magazine is now a multi-platform giant with a website, film production company (with 20th Century Fox), record label, book publishing business and a serious, grown-up news service. Sir Martin Sorrell’s WWP has even forged an ‘unholy alliance’ with a stake in the multi-million dollar business.
Media personality: Adam Crozier, CEO of ITV – after stints at Saatchi & Saatchi, The Football Association and Royal Mail, the Scot has helped turn ITV from a company with a share price of just 24p into a powerhouse with pre-tax profits hitting £250 million.
Media moment: The Great British Bake Off and the baked Alaska palaver, which saw livid contestant Iain bin his melted pudding in a fit of rage after rival Diana removed it from her freezer. The pudding meltdown caused a social media storm – with #bingate tweeted more than 150,000 times.
Ray Snoddy, media journalist
Media personality: Mike Fries, president and CEO of Liberty Global – a company Snoddy says is guided at all times by opportunism. Now the new owner of Virgin Media (price tag $24bn), under Fries’ leadership Liberty has also acquired 260 million shares in ITV from BSkyB for around £481 million (after already joining up with Discovery to buy top British independent All3Media in a £500 million deal). A shrewd business leader to watch, Snoddy says.
Media moment: Not quite 2014, but the look on the face of the Fox News anchor as she listened to ‘terror expert’ Stephen Emerson say everyone in Birmingham is a Muslim.
Media Brand: Netflix – Over the course of the year, Netflix has grown and grown to become a serious global player that generates headlines without having to lift a finger. We can expect a lot more from the video platform this year, says Snoddy.
Click here to view all the photos from the day.
To find out about future MediaTel events, please visit the dedicated website.