Mumbrellacast

This week's Mumbrellacast comes to you straight from Mumbrella360: Reconnected, featuring a chat with WPP AUNZ CEO Jens Monsees. Discussing the progress of his transformation plan for the business, Monsees described where the holding group has gone wrong in the past, how he is now steadying the ship and explained why he moved halfway across the world for this job in the first place. Consolidation...

This week on the Mumbrellacast, Publicis Groupe AUNZ CEO Michael Rebelo stopped by to reflect on how the group navigated COVID-19. Luckily the business introduced flexible working with Publicis Liberté not long before the pandemic hit. Rebelo also chats through the measures the group took to save as many jobs as possible, because "one job made redundant is too many". And, looking forward to 2021 a...

This week it’s everything radio as the team look at the results from GfK radio ratings survey seven. In Melbourne, Nine Radio’s 3AW blew critics away with another massive gain, while Sydney saw Kiis FM legends Kyle and Jackie O retain their FM crown. What should the industry expect from survey eight? Media monitoring business Isentia had a rough week, dealing with fall out of a cyber security atta...

Over the weekend the AFL and NRL grand finals were played in back-to-back ratings hits. On this week's Mumbrellacast the team discusses the controversial change from an afternoon to night grand final for the AFL and Australia's push for a local Superbowl TV event. The networks would be overjoyed with the numbers but as the team points out, restrictions made viewing at home more common and viewing...

This week, Seven rounded out the commercial free-to-air upfronts season, boasting ‘disruption, but in a good way’. After announcing last year it was time to refresh the content slate and being hit the hardest of all the networks in production by COVID-19, Seven is coming out swinging for 2021 with Holey Moley finally hitting screens alongside the revival of Australian Idol, a refreshed The Voice a...

It was the week of Ten's upfronts, giving media buyers an insight into what the network will look like in 2021. Bachelor in Paradise won't be returning next year, but three new shows, including Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman's Making It, have been added to the slate. The Mumbrellacast team gives their impressions on how Ten's virtual performance went, and Brittney Rigby breaks down all the network...

"COVID basically has accelerated the digital transformation at the consumer level, at the media level... and then last but not least at the enterprise level." In this special episode of the Mumbrellacast, Mumbrella founder Tim Burrowes chats with S4 Capital founder and executive chairman, Sir Martin Sorrell. Up for discussion is Sir Martin's outlook on the economic climate, why the 'growth' model...

This week, Ten's The Bachelorette delivered the lowest-rating premiere in the show's history. Despite the shake-up of the format with sister-bachelorettes, the Mumbrellacast team asks, do viewers still care about it? In agency land, the team weighs in on the industry opinion that it's time for independent agencies to shine once more, thanks to COVID-19. Ben Lilley finally put the 'independent' sta...

"What's important to me is taking risks, because if we take the right risks, the rewards make it all the more worthwhile." This week the Mumbrellacast team was joined by Futurebrand Australia's CEO and new owner, Richard Curtis, to discuss the ins and outs of his takeover of the Interpublic agency. Noting his "favourite thing about this is that the media industry now has Ooh and Are", Curtis also...

Kicking off with a bang, Uber Eats and Special Group launched the famous 'Tonight I'll be eating' brand platform into the US this week with help from sci-fi icons Mark Hamill and Sir Patrick Stewart. Hannah Blackiston and Brittney Rigby reflect on the evolution of the brand platform, from getting blasted in the comments, to international success. And, keeping up with agency land, is Thinkerbell's...

In this week's Mumbrellacast, the team gives you everything you need to know about Nine's upfronts for 2021, including a chat with chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson. So, how exactly does it new audience targeting partnership with Adobe work? Is it really going to put Nine in competition with Google and Facebook? And, will we see more media companies developing their own defence against the c...

It was a week of controversy, and the Mumbrellacast kicks off with the king of FM radio, Kyle Sandilands. After last year's comments about the Virgin Mary, he received a slap on the wrist from ACMA. After comparing their own stories about interacting with Sandilands, the team debates how and why he always manages to slip through. Addressing the second big controversy of the week, the team debates...

Kicking off the week, Nova CEO Cathy O'Connor announced her upcoming move to Ooh Media, succeeding Brendon Cook, and seeing chief commercial officer Peter Charlton replace her. This game of thrones had some succession planning involved. Find out just how everything fell into place. The team debates Darrell Lea’s take on Cadbury, swapping its famous gorilla for an orangutan and a declaration about...

This week, a COVID-19 outbreak on the set of Ten's The Masked Singer sparked a discussion about whether the entertainment industry should be exempt from lockdown restrictions. Is entertaining Australians constrained at home an essential service? The team debate if it’s worth the risk to keep Australia’s media and arts industry afloat. Elsewhere in TV, Seven and Nine released their financial result...

This week, Google took a stand against the ACCC's News Media Bargaining Code, saying the proposed agreement which would see it pay publishers for news content is a threat to consumers' free access to Youtube and Google Search. Free TV's CEO Bridget Fair said Google's open letter is an attempt to use its power to frighten people into supporting the tech giant when she stopped by to talk all things...

In this week's Mumbrellacast, was it the right move for Ten to line up back to back Bachelor franchises? Sold to viewers as the biggest week in TV for the network, Bachelor in Paradise bowed out, The Masked Singer returned and The Bachelor kicked off - all to lower audiences than seen before. Behind the scenes, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Natarsha Belling and Tim Bailey were all axed by Ten in a move to...

How do you make a dating show in a pandemic? Osher Günsberg has the answer on this week's Mumbrellacast. Ten is prepping for a double launch of The Masked Singer and The Bachelor, both of which underwent serious changes in production due to COVID-19. Günsberg describes the upcoming Zoom dates on The Bachelor, and why The Masked Singer set is the safest place in Melbourne. Crikey's Peter Fray also...

This week's Mumbrellacast features a chat with ex-ABC boss Michelle Guthrie, in which she discusses her take on the latest round of cuts at Australia's public broadcaster, why she believes the loss of ABC Life is a shame and how a business can balance audience demands with tight budgets. Sticking with the ABC, a COVID-19 scare on the set of News Breakfast this week sent hosts Lisa Millar and Micha...

This week, TV ratings came under attack... from ransomware. It's particularly bad timing for Seven as it has not yet learned how the finale of Big Brother performed. Slipping through before Nielsen's OzTAM was struck were the finales of Nine's The Voice and Ten's Masterchef. Rolling into the next reality TV race, what are the Mumbrellacast team watching and looking forward to? And will the bad new...

This week, Foxtel's new entertainment streaming service Binge opened a competition for TV fans to write reviews of its content with the opportunity for it to be published across News Corp Australia's titles. In light of the thousands of redundancies made in publishing over the last four months, the competition hasn't been received well. The Mumbrellacast team debates whether this is exploitative o...

Adland made a lot of noise this week: Ben Shepherd resigned from CHE Proximity, Kieran Moore left WPP AUNZ, and Ad Standards released its list of the most complained about ads of the year so far. Interpublic sold off another Australian agency to its boss with Richard Curtis taking ownership of Futurebrand five months after Ben Lilley bought McCann. Is this the indicator for something bigger to com...

This week, Junkee Media's co-founder Tim Duggan joined the Mumbrellacast to chat about the week's news and his new book Cult Status. First up, do you see a golden wattle or a golden COVID? That was the question posed to the marketing industry this week when Australia's new brand was revealed. What is it about logos that attracts so much criticism? Why, as Duggan says, are Australians are our own w...

It was a sad week for the ABC. Up to 250 job cuts, the loss of ABC Life and the 7:45 news broadcast. Shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, joined the Mumbrellacast and weighed in on the implications these cuts will have on Australia's media landscape and its access to diverse and regional content. Some big moves took place in media agency-land, including Hearts & Science acquiring...

This week on the Mumbrellacast: the job ad creating waves throughout the industry. What started as Dr Mumbo diagnosing problematic language in an ad for a “senior executive assistant / office manager / professional governess” at Ultimate Edge Communications, became an industry discussion about discrimination and burnout. Mumbrella's Vivienne Kelly goes behind the scenes on her interview with Aleis...

In this week's Mumbrellacast, the team asks has Australia's media industry missed its Me Too moment? The topic comes about after it was announced NOW Australia, the organisation created by Tracey Spicer to assist victims of workplace sexual harassment and indecent assault, is shutting down. The team looks back on 2018, the promises made and allegations revealed, and analyses what went wrong. The A...