Media Unmade – Chapter six: Follow the Money
Welcome to the latest edition of the the Unmade podcast. Today’s edition features another free extract from the audio edition of my book, Media Unmade, which is published by Hardie Grant and available online and in book stores.
This chapter focuses on the bubbles and the booms of Australian media in the last decade. I explore the rise and fall of group buying; the inflating content marketing bubble; and how the outdoor advertising industry reinvented itself with the help of the MOVE measurement system and digital billboards,
The chapter opens just over ten years ago, on stage at Mumbrella360 in June 2011, where we gathered the bosses of the big group buying sites – Colin Fabig, Hezi Leibovich, Dean McEvoy and Billy Tucker.
On stage, Tucker insisted that group buying was no bubble. Within a few months, most of the group buying brands were going out of business.
There was also a boom going on in content marketing, with Craig Hodges’s King Content selling to the John Croll-led Isentia at the top of the market, and the boss of CPA Alex Malley deciding that he should be the face of the accountancy profession.
And then there was the decade-long rise of the outdoor advertising industry, fuelled by digital, data and private equity. If there was a single moment that set up the outdoor industry up for success, it was a gathering of the clans at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. Brendon Cook, Richard Herring, Steve McCarthy, Gerry Thorley and Brian Tyquin – the godfathers of today’s outdoor adveretising industry signed off on the MOVE project, led by Ian Muir and John Grono.
Today’s chapter is free to all subscribers. Some future chapters will only be available to paying subscribers to Unmade. For the next two weeks, I’m offering a major discount on a year’s subscription, which is available via the button below. That price will not be repeated.
Audio production on Media Unmade comes courtesy of Abe’s Audio, the people to talk to about voiceovers, corporate videos and commercials.
As ever, I welcome your thoughts to letters@unmade.media, or via the ugly brown comment button below.
Enjoy the weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Proprietor – Unmade
