The Australian experiment

Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade. Today: Why the Australian media and marketing industry is just the right size for global experiments.

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How Australia has become a Goldilocks market for communications industry experimentation

Tim Burrowes writes:

I’m in danger of succumbing to one of the trade press’s most annoying afflictions: Visiting Fireman Syndrome.

It’s experienced when the global boss of a big media, technology or agency group makes a two-day stop in Australia, metaphorically pats us on the head and tells us we’re up there with the rest of the world.

It’s the equivalent of a rockstar leaving the stage with “Thank you San Diego, this was our best night of the tour!” Deep down, we know it wasn’t, but we cheer anyway.

Sometimes though, they have a point.

I’ve been thinking about it after last week’s observation from Colin Lewis that Australia has taken a lead in retail media.

It’s easy to assume that just because something is developing in your own market, it’s happening elsewhere too.

In the case of retail media networks, the rapid progress in Australia is largely organisational. Two of the biggest players, Woolworths and Coles, didn’t simply promote from within, but brought across media expertise to head up their networks. It sounds an obvious approach, but it’s not necessary been taken up elsewhere. Domain expertise, innit? As Lewis puts it: “Australia is punching above its weight and probably second in the world in terms of its forward thinking and its approach.”

That’s one example where Australia is a Goldilocks market.

The bigger example is the local communications industry as a whole. In Australia, we’re much more closely unified as one market than in larger markets like the UK or US. Those seperate disciplines of public relations, marketing, advertising creativity and media stayed broadly siloed much longer than they did in Australia. Here, they started to come closer about 15 years ago, while in the UK that movement only gained momentum about five years ago, and I’m not sure it’s yet happened in the biggest market of the US.

Another example, albeit ruined slightly by recent events, was the rise of marketing and creative offerings within the consultancies.

Australia was the perfect market for that experiment. 2017 saw Accenture Interactive’s $63m purchase The Monkeys. Russel Howcroft set up the CMO advisory arm of PWC and Deloitte hired most of the top team at McCann to launch its brand offering. KPMG got serious in 2018 with the appointment of Sudeep Gohil to lead brand strategy.

The Australian market was big enough to justify the effort, and small enough to limit the risk. It didn’t happen as fast anywhere else in the world.

It proved to be a whole new revenue stream for the consultancies, which then replicated the model in other markets.

The PWC tax scandal doesn’t negate the experiment. One of the great losses of the debacle was the end of the local version of the Entertainment & Media Outlook Report, which had been authoritatively edited by Megan Brownlow and then Dan Robins.

Another project not properly recognised for its uniqueness is Southern Cross Austereo’s Listnr. While rival ARN Media licences the iHeart technology from the US, Listnr has been built locally. It’s only two-and-a-half years old, but Listnr has become the future of the company. No radio company has leaned as hard as SCA into its digital future.

It’s too early to say for sure whether the Listnr experiment will secure the future of the company, but that’s the point of experiments.

I’m sure I’ve also left out other good examples. Please do use the comment button to remind us.

Unmade Index remarkably unremarkable

The most remarkable thing about the movement of yesterday’s Unmade Index was its unremarkability.

The index finished almost entirely flat, blipping downwards from 633.2 points to 632.6, a movement of just 0.09%

There was no clear movement on the index, with five of Australia’s listed media and marketing stocks rising, and four falling.

Seven West Media and IVE Group both lifted 1.61% apiece. Enero Group rose 0.62%, while Ooh Media and Domain lifted 0.35% and 0.25% respectively.

The radio players both fell – Southern Cross Austereo dropped 1.99% and ARN Media 0.62%.

Pureprofile lost 3.57%, while Nine saw a 0.72% drop in its share price.

Time to leave you to your Wednesday.

We’ll be back with more tomorrow. Ironically, given my comments above about visiting firemen, we’ll have an audio-led edition in which we talk to Brian O’Kelley, one of the original architects of programmatic advertising. He’s now trying to clean up that mess via his new business Scope3.

Have a great day.

Toodlepip

Tim Burrowes

Publisher – Unmade