December 11, 2024

Live from Compass Adelaide: Fake CMOs; too many pitches and did Campaign Brief deserve the benefit of the doubt?; Vinyl buys Concrete Playground

52 minutes

Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade. Today’s episode of the Unmade podcast features the fifth stop on our Compass tour, when we visited Adelaide. Plus, further down, the Unmade Index sinks further while Vinyl Group buys Concrete Playground.

You should be at next year’s Compass. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, why not do it today? Your annual membership includes:

* A complimentary ticket to all of Unmade’s events, including HumAIn, REmade, Unlock, and Compass, all returning in 2025

* Member-only content and our paywalled archives;

* Your own copy of Media Unmade.

* PLUS: If you subscribe before the end of next week, you’ll also receive a $50 gift voucher of your choice

“A big disappointment” to cancel Campaign Brief?; Uncredentialled CMOs; and too many client pitches

Unmade’s Compass roadshow rolled into Adelaide last month for a lively discussion on the big industry topics.

Our speakers were:

Taylor Martin, chair of the Adelaide Advertising and Design Club Awards, and GM of Simple integrated marketing. She’s also on the committee of She Creates championing women working in the communications industry here in Adelaide

David Penberthy, co-presenter of 5AA’s Breakfast with David & Will and News Corp columnist .

Erik de Roos, Executive Director of Marketing for South Australian Tourism Commission.

And Jamie Scott, Managing Director, of Showpony and former AADC co-president.

Among the debate points, Taylor Martin flagged the controversy over Campaign Brief - which was slated for only featuring men in its rundown of creative talent - as the industry’s loss of the year.

But Jamie Scott argued that the debate that followed was a lost opportunity for the industry to commit to real change. He added: “When Campaign Brief apologised and said they would commit to change, they were still cancelled by half the industry. So the very behaviours the industry was looking for was then punished. People said ‘Oh we’re going to cancel our subscription anyway’. So that was a big disappointment.”

Meanwhile, Erik de Roos called out the rise of uncredentialled marketers calling themselves ”chief marketing officer”.

“I could start a company tomorrow and hire some kid from the street and call them chief marketing officer, and that’s fine. It’s a conversation we need to be having as an industry.”

Unmade Index takes another hit

The Unmade Index had a second day of triple basis point decline on Wednesday, losing another 1.62% to land on 438.7 points.

Amongst the larger stocks, Ooh Media had the worst of it, losing 3.3% despite the good news that it has won a stay of execution on its Auckland Transport contract, which expires on December 31. Auckland Transport has decided to restart the tender process, meaning the contract, which Ooh Media was likely to either lose or renew on much less profitable terms, will be extended.

Meanwhile Nine is once again trading below a $2bn market capitalisation.

* As Unmade was about to go out of the door, Vinyl Group announced it had agreed to buy Concrete Playground for $3.5m in cash and $1.5m in shares. It said Concrete Playground had made EBITDA profits for the year of $1.5m on $4m turnover. Concrete Playground founder Rich Fogarty will leave the business.

Time to leave you to your Thursday.

Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio. (Special thanks to Team Abe’s for doing an amazing editing job on cleaning up our back-up recording)

We’ll be back with more tomorrow.

Have a great day.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Publisher - Unmade

[email protected]

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By Tim Burrowes