Promising trends at Berlin MAPP meeting

The first biannual MAPP meeting of 2003 was hosted in Berlin on Friday 16th May by German partner Vaporisateur.

Despite many agencies still suffering from reductions in advertising budgets across Europe, most reported seeing the first signs of recovery. Many agencies had reviewed and modified their business models in response to changed conditions and are now looking forward to reaping the benefits.

Italian agency AIGO was welcomed into full membership of MAPP, and showed some excellent examples of their work particularly in the tourism sector, one of their major strengths. The agency has seen robust growth since 2002, against the market trend and has benefited from concentrating on current client business.

Other countries also seemed to be performing against the trend, notably Sweden, who reported media spend going up for the first time in 2.5 years, and the UK.

Each agency presented a synopsis of recent work and account wins, and as usual the creative standard was extremely high. There was some notable TV work from Spanish agency Lineas for consumer healthcare products and public service ads for alcohol and society.

The meeting concluded with the network agreeing to look for growth, but only by recruiting new partners who shared both the standards and values of the group.