Nadaleen Singh

The ad­ver­tis­ing me­dia mar­ket is a com­pet­i­tive one which at­tracts rev­enue of more than $0.5 bil­lion a year, said James Smith, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ad­ver­tis­ing firm Mc­Cann Port-of-Spain.

The chang­ing dy­nam­ics of the ad­ver­tis­ing mar­ket in the last five years -- which in­clud­ed the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn -- have seen rev­enue dou­ble in dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing.

Smith re­called in an in­ter­view at his of­fice on Rapsey Street, St Clair, on Mon­day that dur­ing 2008-2013, the ad­ver­tis­ing sec­tor did not ex­pe­ri­ence deep de­clines as the tele­com mar­ket had start­ed to heat up. The cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty chose not to sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut­back on ad­ver­tis­ing.

"Trinidad is a very com­pet­i­tive place, so there­fore brands out there com­pete a lot. I don't think the fi­nan­cial 2008/2009, I don't re­call there be­ing any huge down­turn with­in our busi­ness, but ob­vi­ous­ly that was a key time when the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions bat­tle was go­ing on."

Ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies come and go. Two that came to mind for Smith were OGM Trinidad and Her­nan­dez FCB.

Mc­Cann Port-of-Spain, which has a staff of 60, four of whom fo­cus en­tire­ly on dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing, has won 12 Gold Ad­dy Ad­ver­tis­ing awards and 18 sil­ver awards at the 2014 Caribbean Ad­dy Awards.

Elec­tion cam­paigns have been known to at­tract mil­lions of dol­lars in ad­ver­tis­ing, Mc­Cann stays far away from pol­i­tics.

"As part of our way of op­er­at­ing, we stay apo­lit­i­cal. We want to be im­par­tial, our busi­ness is work­ing with our clients and we have not been in­volved in any po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing.

"The type of po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing is very po­lar­is­ing and one wins and one los­es. It is just a choice that Mc­Cann makes. I think it's not just here, but else­where. We do not get in­volved in po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing; that's ob­vi­ous­ly to re­main neu­tral."

Ad­ver­tis­ing at­tract­ed through po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns is tracked sep­a­rate­ly by the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion to de­ter­mine whether the mar­ket has grown or not.

" A lot of mon­ey comes in­to the mar­ket (dur­ing cam­paign­ing). Some peo­ple (busi­ness lead­ers) dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high clut­ter or po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing will pull back their ad­ver­tis­ing, so it does not get lost in all the clut­ter. In the last three years, our econ­o­my has been fair­ly stag­nant, so you haven't seen much growth over­all in the ad­ver­tis­ing fra­ter­ni­ty."

How does Mc­Cann gen­er­ate rev­enue dur­ing elec­tions? It does more "trade pro­mo­tion" by work­ing in the var­i­ous gro­ceries or stores. A trade pro­mo­tion is a mar­ket­ing tech­nique aimed at in­creas­ing de­mand for a prod­uct, such as hav­ing a cus­tomer buy four items and get one free.