Mumbrellacast

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.

Stan Sport has added a third sport to its content slate, announcing a multi-year partnership with football’s Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to broadcast the Champions League and associated competitions. The news follows several recent rights deals for different football competitions snapped up by streaming services, as the sport fragments further. So what does it mean for Stan Sport, and what are the implications for the wider sports broadcasting landscape in Australia?2021 has seen many brands jump on the LGBTQI+ bandwagon, with 'rainbow washing' of logos and branding becoming more and more popular. In a preview of his feature on the topic, Calum Jaspan brings perspectives from Opr and Ogilvy Health CEO Richard Brett, and Getty Images and Istock head of creative insights Asia Pacific, Kate Rouke, about the mistakes brands make when it comes to rainbow washing, and why brands need to go beyond the rainbow and actually do something meaningful.As a new financial year begins, the team looked back at how ASX-listed media and marketing companies dealt with the first full year of COVID-impacted trading. The Australian sharemarket went up 24% the past 12 months, so how did the likes of News Corp, Nine Entertainment Co, Ooh Media, Seven West Media and Southern Cross Austereo and more, fare over the past year?Plus, Mumbrella's Olivia Kruimel chats with Foxtel group general manager, lifestyle, Wendy Moore, about the strength of lifestyle as a brand, COVID-19 driving audiences to the small screen, and how expectations around advertising timeframes have changed.

Paul Cowan, former leading ad-man in the UK, now turned client-agency consultant, joins the Mumbrellacast to talk about some of the mistakes still being made in the account relationship, and how to fix them.Over the course of the interview, Cowan touches on several chapters covered in his new book, 'Connecting with Clients', such as the optimism bias with which 'problem accounts' are viewed, as well as 'the forced relationship' which can be the cause of tension in the client-agency relationship.Cowan's time within agencies, and then working externally to pinpoint and solve some of the internal issues that crop up within these volatile relationships, gives him a unique perspective on how the industry has changed over the past few decades.The conversation also covers Cowan's views on how Covid has changed the momentum of the industry, whether creativity can be sparked from remote working, and what he would tell himself, were he starting out now.

It’s been a big week of movements in the media and marketing industry, with some key departures across the board. Leo Burnett CEO Melinda Geertz has announced her departure, and she'll be replaced by recently installed Sydney CEO Emma Montgomery. Meanwhile, Nikki Warburton has left the CMO role at Audi. The team dissects these key moves and what they mean for the wider industry.With the Olympics now less than a month away, the Australian Olympic Committee launched a new campaign with M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment encouraging kids to ‘Have A Go’. Meanwhile, Seven revealed the details of its ‘Favourite Ad Of The Games Campaign’, a contest aimed at creatives with a $1 million prize pool worth of spend across major Seven sporting events up for grabs.Trust and transparency are the traditional factors when choosing to go with an independent agency over larger, holding company-owned agencies. But with the establishment of the IMAA (Independent Media Association of Australia), and more direct digital media buying, is it still inevitable that brands will move to the big end of town once they reach a certain size to get value and scale when it comes to buying? The team looks at both sides of the topic, explored this week in this feature on Mumbrella.Finally, as part of Mumbrella's ongoing coverage of the development of a new measurement by the outdoor industry for digital out-of-home, Ooh Media CEO Cathy O'Connor tells Zanda Wilson how and why the industry is united with the OMA in its purpose moving towards MOVE 2.0.

VaynerMedia recently opened its doors in Australia under the watchful eye of business director Amy Bradshaw, who has been charged with getting Gary Vaynerchuk's marketing agency off the ground locally.Bradshaw has worked for VaynerMedia since 2017, in New York and London, and so her move to Australia presented a perfect opportunity to fulfill Vaynerchuk's previous assertions that it would only be a matter of time before the business was in operation here.In this chat with Mumbrella's Damian Francis, Bradshaw speaks about the disconnect between media and creative in many marketing agencies, and suggests that while some holding companies today are merging companies that offer media and creative, it's not the same as a truly integrated offering. She says that's why VaynerMedia's seamless integration of the two sides of its business will make it an effective agency in today's marketing landscape.Bradshaw admits there is pressure and expectation on entering a market that is crowded, hyper-competitive and quick-moving, but plans to make VaynerMedia's latest outpost a success by staying true to the company's global values.

iSentia is set to be taken over by Access Intelligence, after 12 months of the falling share prices for the media monitoring company. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions provider Access Intelligence will acquire 100% of the share capital in Isentia it does not already own at a price of A$0.175 a share. The team breaks down what this means for both iSentia and Access Intelligence customers, and what the takeover means for iSentia CEO Ed Harrison.Seven West Media has released a trading update, highlighting positive trading conditions in the fourth quarter of FY21, predicting that its digital earnings will double in FY22. Managing director and CEO James Warburton praised the company for making it through the "risky" part of its early-year slate. So, what should audiences expect from Seven for the rest of the year, and why is the network now expecting more 7Plus users by the time the Olympics rolls around than it originally anticipated? Plus, Zanda Wilson provides a brief rundown of today's virtual upfront for 10ViacomCBS as it looks towards the launch of Paramount+ and embraces younger audiences.News Corp majority-owned ASX-listed real estate offshoot, REA Group, is continuing to diversify, this week announcing a 34% stake in Simpology, a leading provider of mortgage application and e-lodgement solutions for the brokering and lending industries. The team looks at what this means for News Corp in general, and for REA Group ahead of its 100% takeover of Mortgage Choice Limited.Plus, Olivia Kruimel speaks with PureProfile CEO Martin Filz about how the company got back in the black by cutting debt and focusing on core services and how Pureprofile has responded to consumers waking up to the fact that they are really valuable to businesses. Filz also details how moving beyond third-party cookies and embracing first-party data is a challenge not limited to Australia, but one that the whole world is now facing.

Marketers need to stop allowing their brands to pander to purpose, chief marketing and technology officer for Koala, Peter Sloterdyk, has told the Mumbrellacast.Speaking to Mumbrella’s head of content, Damian Francis during Pride Month, Sloterdyk delivered a strong opinion on the growing regularity of brands attaching themselves to causes, particularly when it is without the necessary thought required to do justice to the strategy.Sloterdyk spoke to Francis for the Mumbrellacast over 45 minutes in a wide-ranging interview that touched on running the marketing for one of Australia’s most well-known startups from the other side of the world (Denver, Colorado), taking on the leadership of the technology side of the business as well as marketing, and toning down some of the messaging in order to appeal to a wider market while not losing the Koala authenticity.

Game one of the 2021 State Of Origin series showed a significant recovery in audience when compared with 2020’s first clash, with 1.911 million viewers across metro markets, making it the top-rating program of the year to date. So how did the first clash of the series compare to ratings from previous years, what impact is 9Now having on audience numbers, and what do media buyers think about it all?This week Hearst Magazines International announced that Harper’s Bazaar will relaunch its iconic glossy magazine in Australia. The debut issue of Harper’s Bazaar Australia, a special collector’s edition, will hit newsstands in September 2021. It has since been revealed that Eugenie Kelly will again take the helm as editor-in-chief. The team discusses whether magazines are really viable option in 2021 amid a declining print market.Independent agency Howatson + White has announced a string of appointments across both its Melbourne and Sydney offices. The appointments total 14 and include hires in the creative and strategy teams. The agency now has 40 staff and 10 roles out to market, but Howatson + White has non-compete with CHE Proximity, so where are the new staff coming from, and when will the agency announce new clients?Plus, Zanda Wilson chats with OMD chief executive officer, Aimee Buchanan. The Omnicom agency has started the year with some significant account wins including the Victorian Government master media account and Canva, and Buchanan reveals how will OMD look to continue its momentum in 2021, and explains why she won’t walk away from the CEO role lightly.

Former Dollar Shave Club VP and executive creative, Matt Knapp, is the latest guest on Mumbrella’s new weekly standalone interview series, and joins Damian Francis this week for an extended chat.In it, Knapp chats about pulling the pin on his US adventure when COVID hit hard in April 2020, and how he came to the decision to move back to Australia a year earlier than planned.He speaks about a desire to do new things beyond “worrying about how to sell razors”, and how that drove him to spread his wings beyond Dollar Shave Club, though he continues to freelance for the company and says he still has a lot of love for the brand.

The third GfK radio ratings of 2021 dropped this week, with Sydney providing the most noteworthy movers as 2GB continued its downward trajectory. Breakfast host Ben Fordham lost share too and now sits just above the ABC and KIIS 106.5's Kyle and Jackie O, who set their own personal best record share this book. Can Fordham hold on to #1 or will 2GB lose its grip on the position that Alan Jones held for almost two full decades?Interpublic Group has sold a majority of its stake in Australian creative agency 303 MullenLowe and a minority of its stake in sister media agency Mediahub, as revealed by Mumbrella. The purchaser is the fast-growing New Zealand-based holding company Attivo, which is led by Cam Murchison, a former Ogilvy and DDB executive. The Mumbrella team breaks down the implications of the move for IPG and how Attivo got the deal over the line.Industry stalwart Brent Hill has resigned from his position with the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC), having joined the body in 2015. The SATC has appointed Erik de Roos as executive director of marketing in his place. Hill was widely seen as one of the most effective travel and tourism marketers while at SATC, with its campaigns largely acknowledged as being market-leading. He was even touted for the top job at Tourism Australia at one point, so what legacy does he leave the industry?Plus, Damian Francis chats with Fiftyfive5 director Estelle Goh about why local is wildly important for brands, how consumers have changed since the beginning of the global pandemic, and the big shifts and where society will settle.