Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade. Today’s edition features a fascinating exploration of how Four Pillars Gin became such a huie brand success, with an in-depth conversation with co-founder Matt Jones. Also today, we share details of the Sydney panel for Unmade’s Compass roadshow.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:

* A complimentary ticket to all of Unmade’s events, including Unlock (October 31), Compass (across November); HumAIn (2025), and REmade (September 2025).

* Member-only content and our paywalled archives;

* Your own copy of Media Unmade. 

Smart, Barrett, Horgan and Bedir revealed for Unmade’s Compass Sydney panel next month

Cat McGinn writes:

We can today reveal our Sydney panel for our annual industry meet-up Compass, which will travel to six states for the first time.

The Sydney edition, taking place on November 13, will feature Brent Smart, CMO of Telstra; Lou Barrett, managing director of client partnerships at News Corp; Jasmin Bedir, CEO of creative agency Innocean; and Peter Horgan, outgoing CEO of Omnicom Media Group, for a lively discussion of the year just gone and outlook on 2025.

The pub conversation will also be featured as an Unmade podcast.

Unmade’s paying members are entitled to a complimentary place while tickets are also on sale here.

Unmade’s Compass will for the first time take place across six states. We’ll be announcing each state’s speaker lineup across the next few days

* Wed 6 November - Hobart;

* Tues 12 Nov - Brisbane: The Prince Consort;

* Wed 13 Nov - Sydney: The Sporting Globe;

* Mon 18 Nov - Perth: The Globe;

* Tues 19 Nov - Adelaide: Elephant British Pub;

* Wed 20 Nov - Melbourne: The Garden State Hotel.

Love and craft and marketing - how Matt Jones helped create the legend of Four Pillars Gin

A year on from a $100m exit, Four Pillars Gin co-founder Matt Jones has written a book about the business discipline behind the creation of one of the great Australian brand success stories.

Unusually for the author of a business book, Jones is not just a strategist, but one who put his money where his mouth was. Along with partners Stuart Gregor and Cameron Mackenzie, he made the decision to create a luxury gin brand, and then executed it brilliantly.

Lessons From Gin: Business the Four Pillars Way tells the story of how they did it, and offers a series of insights that anybody building a brand could borrow from. The book breaks the story into four stages - thinking, crafting, sharing and growing.

In today’s Unmade podcast, Jones shares with Unmade’s Tim Burrowes some of the lessons applied, and learned, along the way.

He makes the case that many business are underpowered in having marketing brains at the top. Like Jones, Gregor came from the communications world as owner of the PR agency Liquid Ideas. Mackenzie was the only working directly in the production of alcohol.

Says Jones: “We were far heavier in terms of creative industries, creative mindset, brand mindset, marketing mindset than 99% of leadership groups out there in the world.

“My perspective on the whole is that businesses are underweight when it comes to those voices around the leadership table. And I think that is something that we absolutely benefited from, that we valued these things that we might call brand leadership. We valued them at the heart of the business, not just the marketing strategy.”

Lessons from Gin will be published by Wiley on October 30 and is available on presale. On October 31 Jones will deliver the keynote at Unmade’s Unlock conference in Sydney where he will discuss the role of telling stories in building brands. Tickets are on sale now, or complimentary to Unmade’s paying members.

SCA moves back past Vinyl

Tim Burrowes writes:

The old order reasserted itself on the Unmade index yesterday with Southern Cross Austereo moving back past Vinyl Group.

SCA lost 1.1% to land on a market capitalisation of $111.5m, But Vinyl Group lost 4.4% to land on $111.1m.

Most acitvity on the Unmade Index was negative yesterday with Domain losing 1.3% and parent company Nine dropping 0.8%.

Seven West Media bucked the trend, growing by 3%

The Unmade Index fell 0.67% to land on 454.1 points.

Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio.

I’m about to hop onto a flight to Sydney to cover tonight’s Foxtel Upfront event. I’ll let you know how it went in tomorrow’s newsletter.

Have a great day.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Publisher - Unmade

[email protected]

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit unmade.substack.com