Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade. Today’s episode of the Unmade podcast features the fourth stop on our Compass tour, when we visited Perth. Plus, further down, bad news on the economy tanks the Unmade Index.
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Taxing the platforms, shaking Perth out of creative complacency, and the ‘b******t’ about what it really takes
The fourth stop on Unmade’s end of year Compass tour took the team to Perth, for an entertaining panel featuring five veterans of the WA media and marketing scene.
Clive Bingwa became MD of Nine Perth six years ago after a media agency career including 303 and IPG Mediabrands. Steve Harris is CEO of Perth’s biggest agency, The Brand Agency, as well as being a board director of the Chamber of Commerce & Industry of WA and of Fremantle Football Club. Taryn Hare is Executive Manager, Brand and Customer Strategy at Bankwest and was previously at 303, and part of the Brand Agency team that launched Bunnings Warehouse into the UK. Meg Coffey is the Founder of State of Social and managing director of digital marketing agency Coffey & Tea. And Amber Martin is the cofounder of the Hypnosis creative agency after stints at Wieden + Kennedy in London, and Host in Singapore.
The conversation ranged from the lessons to be learned from the elites sidelining Donald Trump to what it really takes to succeed in the industry, and the barriers that creates for mothers.
The lessons of the US election
On Trump, Harris - who traveled to the US to watch the election unfold - argued that the media failed to capture some of the nuance. “Trump is grossly misrepresented by the Australian media. I think it's a sport to show the 10-second sound bite where he said something and not show the 30 seconds or the 60 seconds around that. And so I think everyone missed it.”
Hare observed: “The fact that someone with that history is leading the free world is because Harris and her team potentially underestimated the needs of common people and campaigned on things that weren't that relevant Listening and truly understanding customers and what they need is the real lesson here.”
Coffey argued that poor media literacy contributed to the result. She said: “I think media literacy has never been more important, and I think that we've lost track of that.”
Whi is Google getting a free pass?
The debate moved to the topic of Australia’s relationship with social media. Harris pointed out that the negative impacts of social media only moved up the news agenda once Meta had decided to stop paying publishers.
He said: “If you look at the big media war on social media, particularly the big major media companies, it wasn't really an issue until Facebook stopped paying under the Media Bargaining Code. When they were taking several hundred million dollars from Facebook, then it was okay. Well, it wasn't okay, but it wasn't an issue.”
Harris suggested that Google is getting preferential treatment in news coverage of the social damage it contributes to because it still gives money to publishers. He said: “I’m not a big fan of Facebook for a range of reasons, but I just think it's worth noting everything you read is about Facebook. Google's getting a free reign because Google maybe still pays the money towards the media bargaining code.”
He added: “Why don't these companies pay their fair share of tax? We wouldn't need a media bargaining code if they paid proper tax and they were structured correctly.”
Raising the bar on creativity
The dual themes of the economic slowdown and the level of advertising creativity in the Perth market came together after Hare nominated raising the bar as a key topic that needs to be discussed. She said: “The issue that I talk about a lot is how we raise the creative quality in a market like Perth, where there are so many forces working against us.
“It's very small. There are lots of businesses here that are the sole business in their vertical. They don't have to try as hard.”
Harris agreed: “I think Perth is very comfortable. It's been easy to make money. It doesn't matter if you're selling coffee, selling cars, building homes, selling real estate, whatever you do in Perth in the last 15 years, it's an easy, easy economy.
“And we've become a bit lazy.”
The painful truth about finding career success
Meanwhile Harris nominated his own unspoken conversation: “I don't think honest conversations are had about what it takes to be really, really successful. Everyone sits around and talks about your doona day, your mental health day, your right to disconnect.
“And it's all b******t. If you want to be really, really successful, you don't see any Olympic gold medal winner saying, ‘I didn't train because I wanted a doona day’.
“If you want to be really, really successful, you're going to have to make sacrifices, you're going to have to work harder than other people, it's going to hurt, it's going to be painful. There are things that aren't going to be nice but you'll get to be really, really successful. And I just don't think those conversations are had in any sense because they're just politically incorrect and everyone shies away from them.”
Bingwa, agreed, saying” It’s a tough industry, it’s very competitive and there are no short cuts.”
Amber Martin took a different tack, arguing that the industry loses women who become mothers. She said: “An important conversation that we need to have is around how hard this industry can be though when you're a woman and you have a baby and you try and come back into this industry, which does expect you to work really, really hard to reap the rewards.”
She went on: “In our industry we're not seeing very many women at the top despite them making up the bulk of this industry that we work in, and I wonder if that's because we have this culture of ‘you have to work really hard to reap the rewards’ which I agree with, but what does that look like? Is that about presenteeism, is that about being in the office all the time? What can we do to make that an easier transition for women once they've had children?
“It's just too hard to have work-life balance and come back and work in a job like this.
“I get a lot of satisfaction out of my baby, but I get a hell of a lot of satisfaction out of working in advertising as well. I don't want to give it up, but gosh, it's hard.”
Slowing economy drags on Unmade Index
The Unmade Index sank by nearly a full percentage point yesterday as the market digested implications of new numbers indicating slumping gross domestic product growth.
Advertising spend is disproportionately affected by economic performance, and the Unmade Index fell more badly than the wider ASX All Ordinaries which lost 0.3%
Nine fell back below a $2bn market capitalisation after losing 0.8%. Southern Cross Austereo had the worst day on the index, losing 3.7%.
ARN Media moved in the other direction, improving by 3.6%
Time to leave you to your Thursday.
Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio. (Special thanks to Team Abe’s for cleaning up what was poor audio recorded at the venue.)
We’ll be back with more tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
[email protected]
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