News

2014 Annual: the year that was – June

It was another year of continual change in the media and marketing world. Over the next 12 days, Mumbrella’s Miranda Ward provides a month-by-month recap of the major stories and developments that affected the industry.

Family FeudThe month kicked off with Channel Ten’s announcement that it would be reviving 37-year-old quiz format Family Feud as the centrepiece of its early evening schedule.

Following the redundancy proposal in May and the consequent staff strikes, Fairfax Media announced new proposals regarding redundancies which would see the publisher scale back the number by 18 full time staff, to between 50-60 full time positions.

In radio news, for the first time in nearly seven years and 55 radio ratings survey Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson lost their number one FM breakfast show position in Sydney, losing their crown to Australia Radio Network stablemate Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller on WSFM.

BuzzFeed’s Keith Hernandez kicked off Mumbrella360 with a keynote address in which he said that Australians would allow harsher treatment of news subjects, were focussed on local content and that social video was the start of a new “golden age” for online advertising.

Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman of News Corp, followed Hernandez at Mumbrella 360 where he spoke about the problems facing the print sector and called on the industry to promote its strengths.

Amir Kassaei, global creative chief officer of DDB, was the keynote speaker at day two of Mumbrella 360, where he said that is not against “scam” – work created purely to win awards – as long as the majority of an agency’s output is genuine.

ColensoBBDO's Garrett at the Mumbrella Awards

ColensoBBDO’s Garrett at the Mumbrella Awards

Mumbrella held its annual awards at the conclusion of the 360 conference which saw UM named as media agency of the year, Colenso BBDO Auckland named creative agency of the year for the second year running and DDB named APAC creative network of the year.

The month continued with technology and social media news website Mashable announcing plans to launch an Australian operation, appointing News.com.au multimedia editor Jenni Ryall as its editor.

In creative agency news, AJF Partnership won the pitch to handle Target’s creative workBudget Direct put its creative account out for pitchJohn Mescall was named the global ECD of McCannDDB Australia CEO Chris Brown accepted a move to New York to take on the CEO and president role of the agency there, BMW Group Australia put its account for both BMW and Mini out for pitch and Vodafone pitched its creative account.

Saatchi & Saatchi Panasonic Cannes Lion workAs Mumbrella covered the Cannes Lions advertising festival, the issue of scam in advertising rose its head when two creative agencies behind Cannes Lions winning print advertising campaigns were unable to answer questions about where they ran. The winning work in the Press Lions category came from Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney for Panasonic which won silver and from DDB Sydney for McDonald’s which won bronze.

UM, the media agency which normally buys advertising on behalf of Panasonic, said it did not book any space for the ads that won at Cannes.

In campaigns, Jeep promoted the launch of its new Jeep Cherokee with ‘The Worlds’ Most Remote Dealership’ stunt which saw the brand offer the public the opportunity to buy a Cherokee Longitude for $10k if they can make it to the remote dealership.

The month ended with the awful news Australian journalist Peter Greste had been jailed for seven years by an Egyptian court for “defaming” the country.

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