• by Paul Gough , October 15, 2003

When the nation's largest advertisers gather today for the Association of National Advertisers' annual conference in California, near-term issues like the record upfront and TV prices will be one of the key topics of conversation. But agenda's focus will be on the long-term issues of branding, accountability and innovation, well beyond advertisers' concerns of the moment.

The four-day conference begins tonight with an awards ceremony for marketer of the year and other top advertisers. Friday's program is infused by brand building, with presentations by top executives at General Motors, Pepsi and the Walt Disney Co. Saturday the topic will be innovation and creativity in marketing services, with discussions of how advertisers can achieve breakthrough results. And the final day focuses on what has become a top-of- mind concern among advertisers, agencies and media: Accountability. The panel discussion and speakers will focus on how return on investment works and the best practices out there today. The conference is being held at the Ritz- Carlton Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, Calif.

Robert Liodice, president and chief executive officer of the Association of National Advertisers, said Wednesday that the conference's three-pronged focus reflects the concerns of ANA members. The ANA's members are drawn from 300 of the nation's biggest advertisers, representing more than 8,000 brands and $100 billion in spending power annually.

Although agencies and media companies have been doing a lot of hand wringing over the advertiser community's relentless focus on return on investment, Liodice said it's more than just cost-cutting. Liodice, who spent years as a marketer at Kraft before joining the ANA, said that it's an across-the-board look at ways to make everything more efficient and it's not limited to just to marketing.

"It involves every leg, every process step, that the advertising marketer is engaged in," said Liodice. He said that it's not just cost cutting but making the company and the brand more capable and muscular, and that it will help deliver a greater return.

As advertisers have been absorbing the sticker shock of the $9.3 billion broadcast and the $5.3 billion cable upfronts, they've also been learning the lessons being taught by the decline in shares for broadcast TV and the rise of new technologies like the Internet and particularly addressable media that allows one-to-one communications between advertiser and consumer.

"What's happening is that traditional media isn't going to cut it onto itself. What marketers need to do is to examine the full panorama of communications. Vehicles are out there are able to leverage the different media forms to maximize the delivery of returns," he said. "That's why media is becoming more addressable."

Far from being the sky-is-falling scenario that some in the media and advertising industries would portray it as, the fragmentation or de-massing of media has given marketers a golden opportunity to mine the many mediums that are popping up there. The key is that marketers need to be able to leverage it right, he said.

And there's no point saying "if" the shift from cable to broadcast happens, or even "when."

"It has happened. It is happening. It's not like there's another shoe to drop. The diversity of programming available has grown, and marketers are running toward it with a passion," Liodice said.

And while there's been talk about whether the down economy has dealt a blow to branding, Liodice doesn't buy it. He thinks that it's natural for a bad economy to drive consumers toward less-expensive alternatives but as consumer confidence and spending recovers, there's a natural return to the brands.

"I believe that brands are eternal and they will continue to be," he said.

He's also bullish about 2004, with predictions of a healthy economy that he said are starting to play out in positive earnings reports in the third quarter.

"I think 2004 will be a banner economic year and it will flow through the marketing," Liodice said.