Adam Penberthy
Head Honcho/Creative Director, Fresh Advertising Communications
Written by Daniel Young on 2009-10-09
Adam Penberthy formed Fresh approximately 3 years ago, armed with only a dream, a Marketing degree and his bedroom as the office. Since then Adam has led Fresh to become one of the most sought after advertising agencies in Brisbane, recognised for exceptional skill in targeting a Gen Y audience. Adam is a well-recognised speaker on Gen Y communications and has gained considerable experience consulting for numerous high-profile organisations in and around Australia, Asia and the USA.
What are the most important/valuable skills that graduates can bring to your industry?
For our business, because we’re a youth agency we rely on young people being involved in what we do and say, in nearly every situation, as it’s critical to really give it that youth flavour. Aside from that, as the market is moving towards more digital forms, it’s being led by early adopters who are nearly always younger people so I feel new graduates can offer immense opportunities for ad agencies.
You still need a sound knowledge of doing the ‘doing’, if that makes sense, as in doing and creating basic blogs or banner ads whatever that may be, that’s one element of it, but more so the ability to understand and analyze why we’re being circulated to media which is coming through. We’re finding that more and more of the work we’re doing relies on strategy and strategic thinking as opposed to physically implementing.
What are the biggest challenges you and your organization face as a member of the Brisbane media community?
I think the Brisbane media community is still quite small, I mean it’s a growing and changing space, but I remember when Brisbane wasn’t even a dot in terms of advertising and marketing and everything came in from Sydney and Melbourne. I think that landscape is changing a heap and now I strongly believe you don’t need to be based in the city as such, or work from an office, to be a leader in a specific area.
So we’re seeing lots and lots of really good digital strategists come out of Brisbane that have worked from their home office for the last couple years.
There’s a lot of creative and design companies in Brisbane at the moment and I think there may be an over-supply in some regards, which makes it more difficult for sure.
In your opinion what is the most prominent trend in the advertising industry at the moment?
Definitely the progression towards digital is the primary movement at the moment. Three years ago when I kicked off Fresh and digital wasn’t really anywhere near what it is right now, digital was probably only ten to twenty percent of budgets at that point now it’s pushing towards forty to fifty percent.
There’s a strong uptake in new and digital media in this category, I think that’s probably the biggest trend which is going on right now. I guess we also always try to talk about mobile. Mobile space is growing at a ridiculous rate at the moment, mobile will be a big mover, but I guess that falls under the digital banner too.
What do you think about the relationship between traditional and new media?
Wherever possible I guess it’s a handhold type of approach, digital and new media seem to give us better opportunities to get in front of people and have more direct and connected conversations with them, but traditional media still has the mass-market effect.
But in many instances they go hand in hand, and traditional media supports new media sometimes and sometimes new media supports traditional media. They both have different forms of impact, I mean even if they say they don’t, young people still watch TV so traditional TV advertising still works, but I think what we can do with new media now means we can have much better and much more succinct conversations with people.
The smart strategies would work hand in hand.
What changes to you see happening over the next 5 years in the advertising industry?
Well who knows realistically, but digital for sure is going to be something which will explode more and the direction in which mobile is taking at the moment, specifically locality based mobile marketing and communications is pretty fascinating.
Lots of Bluetooth stuff, but mainly using the GPS capability in phones, so for a phone to be able to know where you are in relation to a Coke machine and promote Coke to you and so forth, that kind of experiential marketing is happening now and it’s reasonably easy to do.
So I would forsee that as being something which would signal an evolution as to where we’re going, more about media and advertising messages which will add value to our lives and be relevant to our exact time and place.
How have social networking sites impacted the advertising industry as a whole?
Social networking sites have really highlighted one key thing, which is online social collaboration. We are close to the people that we know, and social communities on social networking sites have really brought people together, allowing for much more succinct and direct connectivity with people that they like, know and trust.
So, that can either make or break advertising based on the communities that have been developed. So I think in some regards it’s the reason why young people in particular have moved back towards peer-to-peer communications and word-of-mouth messages. It’s mainly about giving them tools which add value to their experience and letting them talk about it amongst themselves and that’s really what we strive to do as a company.
Are traditional advertising mediums still relevant and effective when targeting a younger audience?
They still are in some capacity. Young people seek advertising which adds value to their experience. So it’s humorous, different, unusual and they get to experience something with it, that’s what they’re really seeking so as long as traditional advertising ticks those boxes it might point them to somewhere where they can get access to more information.
All the studies we’ve seen show that younger audiences like advertising which ticks those boxes and traditional advertising is still by far the best way of getting those messages in front of those people.
There’s certainly been an increase towards novel communications and humorous style messages, so one day there might be too many which would necessitate a further step.