• by June 23, 2004

HERE'S A PREDICTION YOU'RE NOT LIKELY TO HEAR BOB COEN MAKE - Of the many impertinent questions reporters cast at Bob Coen during his mid-year updates, none have yet asked the industry seer to forecast the most obvious question of all: when he plans to retire? Not that it wasn't on the minds of some journalists, and maybe even some Interpublic executives, when Coen was introduced Tuesday as having done the agency's bi-annual forecasts since 1948. By the Riff's math, that's 56 years, and maybe it is time for some new blood. Then again, we couldn't help noticing Brian Wieser, a respected economist in his own right, milling around behind the scenes during Coen's presentation. And maybe it was just our imagination, but we couldn't tell whether the Magna Global director of industry analysis was just showing support for his Interpublic colleague, or whether he was taking understudy-like notes.

Even Coen seemed to acknowledge that change might be a good thing. Asked by one reporter if he could be specific about the advertising categories that would contribute to his prediction of a healthy 6.5 percent gain in U.S. ad spending in 2005, Coen responded, "If I knew that, I'd get out of here."

Asked by another reporter whether his relatively modest Internet ad spending forecast for 2004 includes ultra hot areas such as paid search a contextual marketing, Coen simply raised his hands in the air denoting an "I have no idea what you're talking about way," even though those are exactly the same areas that seem to be transforming the Internet as an ad medium, and potentially, other media forms of advertising as well.

Asked by yet another reporter what the impact of other new media, including "cell phones" and "viral marketing" might be, Coen shrugged again and said, "40 to 50 years from now, who knows?" Oddly enough, we could almost see Coen standing there in InterOmniPublicis' new Beijing-based conference room answering that same question 40 or 50 years from now.

In terms of the here and now, Coen did provide some interesting insights into the spending patterns of some key categories during 2004, revealing some strong first quarter impetus for most of the biggest spenders. The one exception was food, the No. 2 ad category after automotive. "They are up against the problem that they can't raise their prices," Coen said of U.S. food marketers, who've been experiencing low consumer products price inflation in the face of high advertising cost inflation. The result, not surprisingly, was a 4 percent decrease in spending in the Big 3 consumer media - network TV, spot TV and consumer magazines - during the first quarter of 2004.

The good news is that the other majors made up the difference. Automotive was up 8 percent. Movies gained 5 percent, while toiletries/cosmetics jumped 12 percent. The big driver among the so-called "top product categories," however, continues to be drugs/remedies, which boosted spending 21 percent, driving the average of the top categories to a 9 percent gain during the quarter.