POP to Expand in 2014

It’s hard to believe that NNI’s POP (Power of Press) initiative is less than one year old. Since it launched in January 2013, POP has put newspapers on the agenda of ambitious media planners and had a great time doing it.

POP events have included parties and “meet the press” evenings, but undoubtedly, the highlight of the past year was a media planning competition held in August. This day-long event saw teams from top media agencies plan newspaper advertising campaigns and pitch their strategies to industry leaders Paul Farrell (Initiative Media), John Gildea (Owens DDB) and Kathleen Moore (Tesco Ireland).

Although the competition was close, Team Starcom went home with the prize, a specially commissioned trophy and tickets to Electric Picnic.

POP Grows Up

Next year, we hope to expand our invite lists and the scale of our events. Part of this expansion is a change in focus for POP.

During the past year, POP asked planners to think print. Our New Year’s resolution will be to challenge media planners to think creatively about how best they can use news media brands on all platforms. As a result, in addition to print planners, we’ll be inviting digital planners to bring their skills and knowledge to the initiative.

We’re looking forward to seeing lots of new faces at POP events throughout 2014. We have a full schedule planned and we’ll reveal more about those plans in the New Year.