Mumbrellacast

Havas Media Group chair and founding CEO Mike Wilson will stand down at the end of the month. The team discusses what his departure means for the agency group, and whether it will impact future integration for Havas with its parent company, French entertainment giant, Vivendi.

Weber Shandwick and Jack Morton Australia confirmed to Mumbrella this week that group managing director Helen Graney bought a majority stake in both agencies earlier this year. So why did the deal go under the radar, and what conclusions can we draw from this and other agency sell-offs by IPG both in Australia and across the Asia Pacific region?

Google and Facebook have each unveiled new initiatives to support Australian news journalism. Google will team up with News Corp to create the Digital News Academy, which they say will provide digital skills training and new opportunities for young journalists. Meanwhile, Facebook launched its $15 million news fund and the expansion of its Facebook News product to Australia. The team wonders whether Google and Facebook are really the savours of news journalism, amid smaller publishers still struggling to strike deals under the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

Plus, Nine Radio managing director Tom Malone joins Zanda Wilson to reflect back on 18 months or so since Nine took over control of Macquarie Media. Malone speaks about recent radio ratings and why Ben Fordham's commercial appeal is more important than his ratings.

Ryan Jon is a jack of all trades when it comes to content. While his day job is hosting mornings on KIIS 101.1 Melbourne, he's also a podcast host and producer, digital content creator, social media marketer, influencer and more.

Joining the Mumbrellacast, Jon speaks about his current gig at KIIS in Melbourne and new brekky host Lauren Phillips, as well as his time on breakfast radio in Perth and the journey from regional radio to finally hitting the big time in a metro market.

Since departing full-time radio, and before he got his current job, Ryan leaned hard into content creation and growing his sizable social following, and he chats about the benefits and burdens of leaving behind a full-time salary to become a freelancer.

Join explains what brands do wrong when looking for an influencer to work with, and on the other side, why influencers shouldn't say 'yes' to every brand who gets in contact.

WPP has confirmed that OMD Australia CEO, Aimee Buchanan, will be taking on the role of GroupM CEO, after the role was vacated by Mark Lollback. The team dives into what the move means for both Omnicom Group and WPP AUNZ, as well as what OMG’s options are to replace Buchanan after her successful run as chief executive.

The supermarket wars are heating up again, as Woolworths and Coles take their tussle to more environmentally friendly battlegrounds. Both companies released new brand campaigns over the past week, each with a strong sustainability focus. So which one is winning the battle, and have shoppers noticed the quick transition from plastic toys to long-term sustainability?

Week one of the Seven Network’s Tokyo 2020 Olympics coverage has come to an end, and so far the event has been a huge ratings success. There have been teething issues and complaints on social media about the coverage and the 7Plus app, but are these born out of simply being spoilt for choice at these games?

Plus, Calum Jaspan chats with BWM general manager for marketing, Tony Sesto, about the car manufacturer’s strategy and how they managed a sales boost throughout 2020.

New Zealand-hailing Hamish McKenzie co-founded Substack with the goal of helping journalists get paid for writing newsletters. McKenzie worked as a journalist in New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US, and is now based in LA. McKenzie - who has also worked for Tesla, and is the author of ‘Insane Mode’ about the arrival of the battery revolution - joins Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes to chat about his departure from journalism and eventually creating Substack.

Substack is only 4 years old, but is already being talked about in the same way that journalists were talking about WordPress 15 years ago. Its valuation is already close to a billion Aussie dollars. McKenzie goes deeper on the Substack model, and why the platform doesn’t support advertising, something its founders have “no intention” of bringing in.

He also speaks about Substack Pro, the company’s international ambitions, and what happens if the founders sell out.

Australian television legend David John Leckie died this week at aged 70, with his family revealing the former Seven West Media (SWM) passed away after suffering a long illness. Leckie is widely credited with turning around Seven’s fortunes in the 2000s. Before joining Seven, Leckie led rival network Nine from 1990 to 2001. So what will his legacy be for television, and the media industry more widely?

PwC has released the 20th edition latest Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook, looking back on how internet advertising, the gaming industry, as well as print and television, among others, fared in 2020. The team go behind the numbers, looking at the winners and losers, and asking whether the report is as impactful and effective as it was in the past.

In the week coinciding with the Tokyo Olympics kicking off, Seven certainly didn't need the bad publicity that came from one of its reported Big Brother VIP housemates, far-right commentator Katie Hopkins, being deported from the country for failing to adhere to hotel quarantine rules. But will anything stop the Olympics from being a TV ratings bonanza? Zanda Wilson chats with Seven's director of sales Natalie Harvey as the Tokyo Olympics finally begin.

South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) executive director of marketing, Brent Hill, was recently announced chief executive officer of Tourism Fiji.

Before he joins Fiji’s National Tourism Office, where he will replace former CEO Matt Stoeckel, he joins Mumbrella’s head of content Damian Francis to reflect on his time at the SATC, dealing with being in a tourism role in the age of coronavirus, as well as what he’s looking forward to in his new role.

One of the campaigns Hill is best known for is the ‘Old Mate’ campaign, which attracted widespread controversy and criticism over its tone. The spot features a sad old man seemingly regretting not having more fun in Adelaide in his younger years.

Hill says he doesn’t regret the campaign, but admits he would change how the release and the communications were handled at the time.

This week the Australian Government released two COVID-19 vaccine campaigns aimed at increasing the rates of vaccination in Australia. The primary campaign, created by BMF, urged Australians to ‘arm yourself’ against COVID-19. Another featured a young woman in hospital suffering from COVID and was first rolled out in Sydney where cases are high and lockdowns have been extended. The team analyses both campaigns, and asks: does the government need a chief marketing office (CMO)?

Nine announced on Tuesday that Chris Janz, one of the key players in the revitalisation of Fairfax (now part of Nine), is departing the media organisation. So what legacy does Janz leave Nine, and how will the organisation replace him?

This week has seen significant moves and departures in the media and marketing industry. The Mumbrella team runs the rule over some of the key changes, and what they mean for the industry.

Plus, The Brag Media CEO Luke Girgis joins Zanda Wilson for a chat about keeping on-top-of a rapidly expanding business, including the addition of an office in New Zealand. Girgis also goes into the impact of COVID-19 on The Brag's suite of publications, and speaks about launching Rolling Stone Australia magazine, why the magazine has surprised him, and whether Junkee would be a realistic acquisition for The Brag Media.

Siimon Reynolds became an industry personality for being the creative brains behind the 1987 ‘Grim Reaper’ advertising campaign, which warned the public of the growing threat of HIV and AIDS. He later went on to co-found Photon Group, now Enero (which owns BMF, the agency responsible for the Federal Government’s vaccine campaign), and recently returned to Australia after several years in the US.

Reynolds, who is now the director of Accelerator, which has since rebranded as DPR&Co, recently joined e-commerce start-up BuyersCircle as chairman. In this episode of the Mumbrellacast he speaks with Mumbrella co-founder and editor-at-large, Tim Burrowes, about what BuyersCircle is, why he's back in Australia, and what's next on the agenda for the rest of 2021.

During the chat, which took place before the Government released its new COVID-19 messaging, Burrowes also asks Reynolds how he would tackle the communications challenge of overcoming Australians’ confusion and hesitancy about taking COVID vaccines.

This week’s radio ratings saw an historic result in Sydney, with KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O taking the title of the #1 breakfast show, breaking a 17-year streak held by 2GB’s Alan Jones and more recently, Ben Fordham. So what does the result mean for the media and marketing industry? The team dives into the latest GfK ratings survey, bringing perspectives from media buyers on all five metro markets, as we wonder: are the radio ratings really just one big confidence trick?

QMS won Australia’s latest out-of-home advertising account, the City of Sydney, in 2020, but the changeover from JC Decaux’s existing assets to the new QMS street furniture has been delayed again. This time, QMS cited mitigation against potential delays of shipping new assets due to COVID-19, with September now the date for the changeover to begin. So what will the new assets look like, and what will the proposition for advertisers be once QMS’ gets its infrastructure in?

Finally, Optus Sport’s VP of TV, content, and product development, Clive Dickens, joins Zanda Wilson for a chat about the platform’s content strategy. He reflects on the current broadcasts of the Euro 2020 and Copa America football tournaments and speaks about the importance of Optus’ sport content as a means of differentiating itself against competitor telcos.

This week’s long-form Mumbrellacast episode is something of a farewell, as departing founder and editor-at-large Tim Burrowes joins head of content Damian Francis to chat about his book, Media Unmade and spending more than a decade leading Mumbrella.

Burrowes, who will leave the company he began in 2008 at month’s end, dives into the process of research and the extensive amount of interviews he conducted to create a patchwork of interlinked stories about the last decade in the media and marketing industry.

With the full title of the book being ‘Media Unmade: Australian Media’s Most Disruptive Decade’, Burrowes admits that while every decade feels like the most disruptive, the 2010s and years surrounding genuinely saw several of the biggest shifts in Australian media history.

As well as going behind the process of writing the book, and sharing anecdotes from the past decade, Burrowes looks ahead to the next ten years and predicts what is likely to drive change moving forward.

Burrowes also recounts the highs and lows of leading Mumbrella through the disruption of the decade to the position it maintains today as the leading media and marketing publication in Australia.