IAPI's new president embraces the decade's `creative age' concept

It is ironic that the professional body which represents advertising agencies, should have such a fuzzy, nearly non-existent image. It probably doesn't help that the organisation representing professional image-makers goes by the dull, but worthy sounding name of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI).

"Even the word institute tends to suggest something that is slow moving, fuddyduddy committee-esque," says Mr Chris Cawley, "and IAPI like any institute carries those generic traits with it and that is a challenge."

Mr Cawley is IAPI's newly-elected president and he brings to the voluntary position an enthusiasm and a near missionary zeal in his belief in the power of advertising to influence the bottom line and its role in the economy as a whole. He takes over the position at a time when there are changes at executive level in IAPI with the retirement of Mr Ian Fox and the appointment of Mr Steve Shanahan as chief executive.

Mr Cawley talks of this first decade of the century as the "creative age" where creative ideas and thinking can impact on business as opposed to the "marketing age" of the 1990s. "In the marketing age, advertising slipped from the boardroom table and became the business of the marketing department," he says. "What we as an institute have to do is reinstate advertising at boardroom level which can be done once it's clear how advertising can positively effect business."

It is a good time to work in advertising. Budgets are up, there is more business out there and it is all a far cry from when he started off in the grim, early 1980s in the dispatch department of Arks. He is now partner in Cawley Nea, one of the most successful and dynamic independent agencies.

IAPI represents the interests of advertising agencies and possibly the biggest concern in the industry at the moment is spiralling media inflation.

"We have come from a third-world commercial environment to a first-world commercial environment very quickly," he says, "and a spin-off of that is that we are seriously under-supplied with media."

IAPI lobbies for the loosening of legislative restrictions on the supply of broadcast media and is concerned at the control of "so much of the indigenous print media by a small number of owners". But as an industry Mr Cawley also acknowledges that advertising is part of the culture in which we live so there has to be balance in the desire for more media opportunities. As an example, he cites the serious under-supply of outdoor posters, but says that their prevalence has to be balanced by environmental considerations.

Aside from lobbying the relevant Government departments over legislative issues, commissioning research such as the JNRR (Joint National Readership Research) and organising various advertising awards, according to Mr Cawley, IAPI has some internal housekeeping to do particularly in the area of agency remuneration.

"Where there are commissions and mark-ups there has to be ambiguity which is not good," he says, "and more importantly, commissions and mark-ups mean advertising agencies get paid for what they sell to the client rather than what they do and that puts the onus on agencies to understand more about what they do and the value of what they do." IAPI advocates a fee-based system based on time worked which makes for more transparent billing. Bonuses, he says, are a separate issue.

Just as IAPI was starting to shake off its managing director's club, gin and tonic image, in the early 1990s, its very existence seemed increasingly to be called into question by the number of Irish advertising agencies which were bought over by global agencies. According to Mr Cawley, the trend towards globalisation is now running parallel to an even more powerful trend towards localisation, which gives power back to even the smallest Irish advertising agency.

Ten years ago something like 75 per cent of advertising volume in the US originated in Madison Avenue agencies, now that figure hovers around 30 per cent with more and more important work being done by small agencies in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Miami. He compares that situation with Dublin's relationship with London.

"There is a traditional imperialist view that all great advertising comes out of two square miles in the west end of London," he says, "but that simply isn't true and if you view Dublin as being a regional capital within a European context then the work being done here exists on a world stage."

The next IAPI-funded initiative is the international creative awards in Kinsale in September. It is a major annual event in the industry but even Mr Cawley admits "most people don't know that it's an IAPI event at all but think it's being run by a group of hybrid creatives". The IAPI's new president and its chief executive, Mr Shanahan, face a challenge to change that.