ARN steps up with ‘intimacy at scale’
Throughout the upfronts season, TrinityP3’s Stephen Wright has been applying a marketer lens to the plethora of announcements from media owners. As the season wraps, he looks at how ARN has defined itself against a new competitive set.
Christian O'Connell deliverying his own version of intimacy at scale
Well dear reader, we’ve made it to the tailend of the 2026 upfronts season (phew!) Yesterday ARN took a different tack from many of its media competitors (think Nine or Seven) and went big with a million-dollar upfront at The Star in Sydney.
You could see the fingerprints of incoming ARN CEO Michael Stephenson all over last night’s event — he has taken quite a few pages out of the Nine playbook — bringing the showbiz and razzle dazzle of a TV upfront to what many expected to be a radio upfront.
What was interesting though, was that ARN used the event to define itself against a much broader competitive set. It laid clear to marketers that it is focusing on events, video, social and data. In doing so, Stephenson and team are seeking to lay claim to a much bigger slice of the $16 billion advertising pie.
