Hywood: Arrogance and entitlement drove advertisers away
Old media organisations were arrogant and had a strong sense of entitlement which left advertisers searching for alternatives, outgoing Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood has said.
Reflecting on his time in media, the chief executive, who will step down from his role with Fairfax Media in the next week, said legacy media organisations had enormous resistance to change, but were forced to once the barriers of entry to media had collapsed.
The AANA Christmas event: The AFR’s Paul McIntyre with Kim Williams (left) and Greg Hywood (right)
Best headline ever… never a truer word spoken.
I’d agree if the typo was fixed… that colon shouldn’t be there
Headline is still relevant, new track doesn’t matter if it is the same rider and the same horse
Delusional and typically ignorant. Hywood spent much of his career working patronage. First in the old club of editorial mates. Later as the sock puppet of Corbett, who was clueless about media. Most of all Hywood allowed the one potential lasting value – the content – to become a weakness. Fairfax is gone and Hywood killed it, for the sake a of flash car and a bucket of cash.
Hywood announcing that Fairfax would stop printing newspapers years ago and then having to backflip must have worked wonders for advertiser confidence in Fairfax. Hywood publicly promoting his lack of confidence and setting a date so publicly for the newspapers demise must surely go down as one of the most ridiculous strategies ever. Talking down the product and rarely having much to offer on the advertising side of the business – it was an annoyance rather than an importance. It was widely known amongst advertising staff not to involve Greg in a pitch as his people skills and presentation often had the reverse impact expected from the CEO. Hywood sold literally everything Fairfax owned until it was no more. Besides the cuts, all of his growth ideas tanked. Just look back on all then mumbrella articles over the years of all the new revenue streams and big hires that failed due to poor management.
Agree 100%. But it’s not just ‘old-media’. Their digital counterparts deliver a fair bit of ‘take it or leave it’ attitude (bugger) the clients.