Willcock is no stranger to the South African media marketspace, having had extensive experience in print media sales and managing the migration of business from print media to digital. Most recently, he served as Trader Media group MD, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Guardian Media Group and publisher of Auto Trader, Auto Freeway, Commercial Trader and autotrader.co.za.
Says Willcock in answer to the obvious question of how he is going to translate his mainly print sales and marketing experience, into RadMark's predominantly radio environment, “Media confluence, means that traditional media - while remaining dominant in commercial terms - will not grow at the same pace as multimedia, big media and pervasive media, and that requires a skills-set that is more focused on managing change and developing people than a specific media type. My immediate plans are to do a whole lot more listening than talking except in the area of fostering human talent, which is what I do best.”
Some of Willcock's most interesting ideas stem from the massive changes taking place in media consumption, and the need for RadMark to keep pace with these changes.
“My parents consumed 20 hours of media per week. The Net generation consumes 20 hours per day - in seven hours! We haven't even started to understand what that means to media ownership; nor do we know whether that will translate into the Net generation's media consumption habits as adults.”
To add weight to his argument, Willcock asks “What am I doing if I live in Durban and use audio streaming to listen to Jacaranda 94.2 and Kaya FM on my laptop? Am I listening to the radio, watching TV or surfing the web? Am I a listener or a viewer and do I fall into a geographic segment that includes Gauteng or KZN or both?”
In light of this, Willcock feels that the ‘open media company' of the future will focus on collaboration between various stakeholders, where moral and emotional intelligence will be the differentiating factors, in an increasingly fragmented media market space.
He points out that regardless, certain fundamentals will remain - business will be about sustainability across the triple bottom line (people, planet and profit).
“There is no more robust medium than radio. It's the original social networking medium and it will attract increasing attention as various stakeholders seek innovative and cost effective ways to have a meaningful conversation with their customers across a variety of media platforms,” he concludes.
