The following is the speech that Guy Gadney gave to the 15th Annual AIMIA Awards on 13th March  in his role as President of AIMIA.

“When our digital industry crashed in the late nineties, major businesses and media companies that had been exploring digital media reverted to their core business models with an element of schadenfreude. 

The old order had prevailed. 

How things have changed.

During this decade, audiences have shifted into digital media.  For many companies, the digital audience IS NOW the core audience.

 Of course we are in exceptional times. 

Just as we in the digital industry were really starting to hit our stride, we’ve been tripped up by the current Great Recession.

Recessions force businesses to address issues and inefficiencies that they might have otherwise ducked. 

They force businesses to rethink their established revenue streams in a more confronting way than the rise of digital has to date.

As painful as this recession is, it is the opportunity to forge businesses for the future, and it is an opportunity for digital to deliver these new businesses.

It is our role as AIMIA and as members of AIMIA to present these opportunities to our clients and our audiences.

I can tell you that no-one will do this for us.  There is no government support for the digital media industry as there is for digital TV switchover.  There are no tax incentives as there are for the film and television industries.  We are a new industry that must find its own way and create its own foundations.

Traditional businesses that revert to core as they did ten years ago will find, that this time round, the audience has moved.  The room that once was buzzing is now growing silent.

It is our role collectively to highlight these new audiences and help these businesses see that they need to change to survive.  The safe option is no longer the safe option.

These are strange days indeed. 

With the stellar growth in social media and high net-work individuals, in cross-platform productions, in audience engagement, in games, it astonishes me that there is still a hierarchy in big business that just will not move.

Sometimes I talk to businesses about their future, and I feel like I’m Mr T. in the Snickers ad. 

The marketing director for one of the top three Australian retailers recently told a colleague, that he thought the internet was a fad, and he would wait until it all died down.  The other day, a major book publisher mentioned that over 60% of their online book sales in Australia come from Amazon.com in the US.

I want to tell these sorts of companies to quit their crazy jibba-jabba and Grow Some Nuts.

Now, surely, is the time for us as digital companies to help the traditional companies we work with to pull back the Wizard of Oz curtains that are in front of their business models.

It is the time for us to show them where the new customers and audiences are, and how to make these people their core audience, not a campaign periphery.

We have the tools and the knowledge that traditional businesses need to structure themselves for a digital future. 

It is up to us to show them how our digital industry can help them respond to this confluence of exceptional circumstances.

Thank you.”