Cirrus CEO Jeremy Knibbs and COO Peter Smal to depart

I thought B&T was dead. ie shut down? Their site went down about 3 weeks ago.

Jeremy has had a good ride, from Journalist, and coming through the B2B ranks, to Interim CEO in 2001, which was a heady time for him, then he was finally given the role of CEO ( we like to call it Country Manager) in mid 2002, whilst a predominately print “cost cutting” man, and a Journo by trade, I helped him with some key UK hires, learn the ropes in the digital space.

The company had an amazing chance in the 2009 period to become a game changer in the online sphere in Australia, with it’s lead generation capability for advertisers, and of course the cash cow Hotfrog ….

Alas, as in many businesses – without the right leadership, thought processes, and respecting key staff, …the online assets, degenerated into the current mess.

I wish King well, with decisive action, good things may come to this business, though the market sentiment is that the core has been gutted, and Catalyst has a pup.

Pup’s are hard work for the first 3 months, with love, attention, and a new regime, it maybe possible for Catalyst to recoup and flourish…..

Not sure Peter Smal was axed!, I believe he was bought onboard as a senior management consultant to help with a huge growing business (circa 2007) and sort out the multiplying online growth projects, Whist never a Reed print employee in the heady years, and just a paid business professional, maybe Australian rules and regulation , made “JK” suggest he went on the payroll… we digress, and worry about the “axe” headlines, the truth in the story, is that JK is out, (moderated by Mumbrella) in all growth periods, including the numpty print part and the complete annihilation of the online engine, no need to name names, but as a historian – every person that every reported into Jeremy and in turn that online person (dykes ?, or Dent) was systematically replaced,…. (Moderated by Mumbrella) Catalyst have taken control – 18 months is a little late, but hat’s off, they are on a mission…I hear (moderated by Mumbrella) for a while….hopefully, they take heed, from the last decade….

They stumbled into the lead gen business, it wasn’t sustainable (eagle eyed hindsight, at the time it looked great, but a thousand ships wasn’t that great an approach) but agree they dropped the ball internally.

I liked Jeremy and I think he did good work in the top role. Management wasn’t so bad at my time there… often it was on the way down that the vision was blocked or distorted.

@Andrew.. think you have a bit of a big head mate. Talk is cheap

JK takes credit for keeping that company going when many other trade publishers fell over… Look at the exit of Haymarket.

He was a complicated character but overall a decent guy I thought.

B&T will be dead fairly soon, I predict. Jeremy protected it because he liked it. But it’s a long time since it made a profit. Any new boss will close it.

But you can feel them getting desperate – big claims about circulation and readership not backed up in their latest audit number (claiming to the market 80,000 readers!… Audit number came in at something like 6 or 7 thousand). Advertisers should be asking for their money back.
They’ve been offering print pages for (I heard) 5 or 600 bucks. That can’t even cover their costs.
The new website strategy is insane – steal/ aggregate content from elsewhere. There’ll be no Google or organic traffic. How can you sell ads on that?
Their event at the end of the month isn’t looking too hot. I hear they’re quietly trying to sell 2-for-1 tickets which is never a good sign.
This will be the last straw.

I worked close with Jeremy for nearly a decade, he loved B&T, it was his passion, and for that he did indeed go beyond the call of duty, B&T is also a passionate publishing team, it was quite separate to the rest of the Reed culture, as in Oz Doc.

On a financial level, not sure if I can make public claim, however, on a financial level is was not what I could in any way shape of form be profitable, and certainly never grew its revenues “much” organically in the decade I was in attendance, and I would guess that a certain Mumbrella has now ripped it’s commercial engine out ;-). Is B&T weekly, fortnightly, monthly ect?, I remember endless snoring boring meetings on that, and trimming the size, number of pages, and a whole load of stuff, I did declare once maybe kill the mag, and do it all online, I was sent into the naughty corner, by David Rae for that one.

To lead generation, this idea came from Phil Robinson (who is also the co-founder of Hotfrog – the cash cow, and without HF – this would have been all over years ago), the lead generation concept is “spot on”, and CPA is currency is many other marketing channels, ask any of the many that worked within Catch, did they have a product that they could sell, worked for their client, and a fun place to be….Catch demise was simple, Google wants to go straight to the customers web site, and not through a middle man, and it would have meant a huge investment (commercial risk) for Reed to shift the dynamics from a middle man (directory) scenario to really helping the client. It would have been hugely profitable, though a different business.

A FEN client is not a full service digital agency specialist covering SEO/Ad words, Analytics, Web master tools, “real” Google friendly indexable content, UI, and so much more, Reed had all that capability and then some, though would have had to make some hard commercial decisions, and hard decisions is not something that can be done within a budget managed in a huge corporation, so I would “guess” and I am allowed to do that publicly, that the Owners “milked the online division” and then sold it to Catalyst, who have after 18 months, and I would guess after about 9 months realised that “OMG”, we better get some people in that have done this type of stuff before, and No it was not going to be Jermey Knibbs, as he is a print man.

As for me having a big head, I have a fcuking huge head, and nowadays quite a large tummy, however, I did work alongside some amazing talent that started with an online idea and in turn they grew into a profitable, robust and sustainable online business called Catch (incl HF) making millions and million of dollars in real profit , Alex McIntyre, Simone Davis, Chris McDonald, Andy Reeves, Simon Morton, Alastair Simpson, Doug Laird, Karl Brown, John Madden, Peter Smal, Cam Elliot and Ben Sole.

Without talent, and I would guess none of the above talent works there anymore and most had gone before the Catalyst acquisition, well, without talent, and leadership, you will fairly quickly dismantle a business, and Catalyst are going to be ruthless in saving their faces, and investments….

On a personal level, Jeremy was a reluctance boss, at that level it is all about the bottom line, and hiding dollars here and there, and making small sized bets, it’s hard being a boss as everyone plays to your ego, and Jeremy has never had a management team in place that could scale and execute, the only time I saw him really excited, was when we were reviewing the B&T masthead, and that was about it, in just over a decade, and the odd trip to London made him smile. The rest of the time, he was a worried soul, always thinking the worse, and well into office conspiracy theories….

I’m looking forward to catching up with him over a coffee in Manly, he always wanted to write a book….

I am amazed that nobody at Cirrus has created a business on the back of Dom’s Fruuuunges. (It’s an in joke, however they were exceptional and there has to be a business model there somewhere, what talent!)

Good luck to JK. What a great innings!

With the fondlest of memories regarding “Dom’s Fruuuuungs” I totally agree that there has to be a market, but it’s girth is too narrow.

To the topic at hand, I don’t believe that the Cirrus Media vision is served by the suggested demise of B&T. There are many indirect revenue gains that B&T can provide to a business that is, as mumbrella puts it “a full service content marketing agency”. E.G production revenue gains made on the back of B&T being a part of the portfolio.

@ Sales Guy. Seems you are confused between circulation and readership. Circulation is the number of copies (at any price) sold. Readership is the number of people who read those copies. So if they had 80,000 readers from 6 or 7000 copies sold that means around 12 readers per copy. Given that agencies buy a few copies and circulate them that hardly seems an issue. Mind you if they were giving away free copies (what? … an Australian publisher giving copies away !) that would not change the circulation but could spike the readership. Sadly these are fundamentals of sales.

Two brief comments.

First, this was left far too late in the piece and should have been sorted years ago. Bankruptcy, as Hemingway observed, happens gradually then suddenly. It would not have been long before the investors in this business began to realise that the pieces amounted to far less than the whole, something any publishing professional would have recognised. FWIW, I imply nothing about Mr. Knibb’s administration– the current state of this publishing company speaks for itself. There are plenty of other publishers weathering the storm and evolving. There’s a big reason this one has not.

Second, recent acquisitions notwithstanding, this business, as it is currently constituted, is probably beyond repair. Mr. King should resist making any local real estate purchases. I suspect he’s not likely to be here in 12 months. I sincerely hope I am wrong– there are still a handful of good people who work there and for their sakes’ I hope he’s successful (just unfortunately, not optimistic about this prospect).

As for Mr. Knibbs, let’s wish him the best and hope he finds a Second Act that suits him. Like any of us, he’s had his moments but he’s not a bad fellow.

’ve something of an interest to declare.

>>I am passionate

I worked closely with Jeremy for two years when I edited B&T. He deserves massive credit for backing the projects and people he believes in.

>> I am passionate – Jeremy spotted it

During that time it was Jeremy that agreed to us going outside of the company for the excellent redesign and move from news front covers to image front covers led by Frost Design. For a small title, it was a significant investment. The B&T masthead logo that survives to this day was created by Vince Frost.

>> Hmm, we have a pretty picture, looks fat and dated, but we have picture

When I wanted to launch the B&T Awards as a full event, Jeremy backed me over the explicit advice of the person leading the events team at the time who insisted there was no business case. The financial risk was not insignificant, but happily it succeeded.

>> Jeremy pitched to the “board”, we need to keep this guy on side, he’s done proper work with Campaign….the small print, was Campaign Du Bye

Jeremy was always good to me, and classy when I decided to leave to start Mumbrella.

>>> Jeremy was caught out, and heard that a few blown in’s from the mother country , wanted to try stuff on their own, a win win situation, let the Pom’s run riot, and if it works we buy them up, and if it fails “told you so”, a boring though effective strategy, albeit it the game…backfired Mumbrealla is now the goto place for the Industry goss

For those that do value having two print trade titles, I suspect you have Jeremy to thank
. Another CEO might not have seen the economic case of keeping it going.

>>>FMD, Mumbrealla single handily with Jeremy’s “OK”, created a new channel for the media advertising trade market, let’s hope that the staff at Mumbrealla do not take on Oz doc, and MO….with a succinct offering that tired GP’s find funny, informative, and without pushing all those nasty S4, S3, and S2 remedies ….

Andrew Dent. You were the biggest Wayne Kerr I every had the pleasure to work with. At least Jeremy was a decent man.

Get over it and move on!

If only all of JK’s ramblings /memos to staff had been edited like this final one. We may have actually understood what the hell was going on and not ended up leaving in a state of confusion.

I agree. Andrew, it was all about you. You made that clear. We were under no delusion that anything outside your wealth and personal gain mattered, including staff.

(Edited under Mumbrella’s content moderation policy)

Damn, these were the two that were always a problem in my eyes.

I’m sad I didn’t outlast them and got the Axe because the company has a bright future if they could just wake up and realise the position they were in and stop holding on to outdated concepts of the media and what it is.

Peter was an excellent project manager but had no clue about the digital media business. They milked Hotfrog dry till it had nothing left when they could have made it into something special.

Too bad together they gutted all of the innovative people over the last year and a half and kept the yes men/women around to play to their egos.

If I went all the way to the UK for a replacement, Dom Weatherhead would have been top of the list. In fact, he and his froongs would have been the list. That kid is the future, bring back the froong

Like in traditional bricks and mortar architecture, form and function obviously plays a critical part in web build’s. The new bandt site appears to have had an immense amount of form go into it. Has anyone tried browsing it from a desktop? Seems a little slow and hard to understand where I am? I will give it a chance, however I am a b2b professional who bandt would want to engage and rarely frequent ‘work’ sites out of hours, from my smart phone / tablet.

Be interesting to understand the reason for the massive change? I am actually writing this, out of hours, on a notebook…

p.s. When the homepage renders for me there are two giant images? Hardly any nav? Pretty confusing?

Just checked out the B&T web site, OMG – bring back Jeremy, this new site is unuable, takes up bandwidth, and has little content worth reading, and as for the user experience, we in the media require a better experience….

On inspection of the new takeover at Cirrius – I stumbled upon their partnership with “we are social”….http://wearesocial.com.au/

They must have been really social recently – as their lastest posted on thier home page is a week old….

Maybe not commenting is the new comment…..

OMG!..

64 years since first launched, the new B&T is shrugging
off its dowdy trade magazine past

This is the new launch of B&T…. How can they “the new owners” be allowed to say this…

Dear Jeremy, has not even left the car park, and in a sentence!… over 50 years of proper trade journalism, killed over night…

(Moderated under Mumbrella’s content moderation policy) B&T, now it’s being printed once every 2 months….Go the B&T brand, can’t access the web site, as the UI is beyond a nightmare, and now my trusted weekly B&T weekly, is not even monthly…FFS!, the new guy has a job on his hands….

Just reading their sales pitch

“Since 1950, B&T has been an integral part of Australia’s marketing, media and advertising landscape ”

and at the same time – denouncing the past 60 odd years!…

I believe that the charging of the guard is way too polite – as in who’s “in & out”…

Bring back Barry Parsons, at least B&T had flair back then….

A few comments if I may – as the guy who picked up Dent’s stuff:

1. Jeremy and I have had our differences. But he was a great publisher – print and online – and did a lot more than save RBI from irrelevance. End of.

2. Dent’s ramblings… well, whadya say?

3. The ramblings of the guy that sounds like Dent… well, whadya say?

Cheers.

DC

Does anyone know what Dent is doing now?

1. Jeremy was instrumental in my time at Reed, he provided insight, direction and was a good communicator and took care of his senior staff.

2. David Catterall contribution to Reed remains unparalleled – he excelled in every aspect of the business – numbers don’t lie

3. Dent rode a wave, a lucky wave, was out of his depth, and I believe he is at the world cup, crying over Englands exit…(Moderated under Mumbrella’s comment guidelines)

Has anyone noticed how poor the comments are post 7pm on this thread….

It was later than 7pm. It was more like 1am. Dent was seated at a table, opposite a pigeon. Heads up, man v feathered bird, a battle ensued. Dent tried, Dent always tried, I have never seen him try so hard, yet slowly but surely, Dent lost. The pigeon was victorious. The crowd went wild.

Moral of the story?

Never feed the pigeon. Never ever feed the pigeon!

Are pigeons intelligent?

Pigeons are considered to be one of the most intelligent birds on the planet and able to undertake tasks previously thought to be the sole preserve of humans and primates. The pigeon has also been found to pass the ‘mirror test’ (being able to recognise its reflection in a mirror) and is one of only 6 species, and the only non-mammal, that has this ability. The pigeon can also recognise all 26 letters of the English language as well as being able to conceptualise. In scientific tests pigeons have been found to be able to differentiate between photographs and even differentiate between two different human beings in a photograph when rewarded with food for doing so.

Don’t get me started…

Jeremy likes Pigeons and ducks

David is a duck and likes Pigeons

Dent looks like a Pigeon

Jeremy likes Pigeons & Ducks

Whether it is thought about or not – Dent hated the thought of being a pigeon or even talking to ducks….

I hear that Dent, David and JK are meeting in 2 weeks, Manly Wharf Bar…and maybe they will kick on to the “old boat shed”…

a lot of poo will be sorted and discussed…

I say bring back the froong

Jeremey Knibbs best of luck and congratulations on an outstanding career–remembering you as an excited young editor launching Life Sciences magazine in Chippendale at Thomsons. I just wanted to say as someone who worked on B&T for 12 years, mostly under the fantastic Barrie Parson there is life after publishing and you will find it but there is nothing else like it.

Why is this thread all about B&T and Barrie Parsons…. Both left the Industry a long time ago….