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Daily Mail Australia makes first commercial hires following split from Nine Entertainment

Lawrie joins Daily Mail Australia from Bauer Media

Lawrie joins Daily Mail Australia from Bauer Media

Daily Mail Australia has made its first commercial hires since the company split from its joint-venture partner Nine Entertainment in January, Mumbrella can reveal.

The publisher has hired Rebecca Lawrie to lead its sales approach in Queensland, Lauren King to head up its mobile offering, and Luke Jones who joins as account director.

Speaking to Mumbrella, Peter Holder, managing director of Daily Mail Australia, said: “From the moment the termination was announced and agreed upon we got cracking, we advertised as we had to suddenly make up for the lack of coverage we had.

“That has been our priority – to sort out Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

“We still have more appointments to come but I’m over the moon, as is our commercial director Mason Rook with the four appointments we’ve got so far.”

Lawrie joins Daily Mail Australia after just over two years as a sales director for Bauer Media, where she was also based in Brisbane. Previous to Bauer, Lawrie spent eight years with the Nine Network as group business manager and before that was with Network Ten for six years as an account executive.

King takes on the role of mobile specialist with Daily Mail Australia after two and a half years as a senior mobile specialist with Fairfax Media. Prior to that role she was a product and systems administrator for Fairfax for almost two years.

King will head up Daily Mail's mobile team

King will head up Daily Mail’s mobile team

Jones joins the publisher after five years with Ninemsn; most recently in a sales executive role.

“We advertised and we were really rapt with the people who applied,” said Holder.

The company has also revealed it will shift programmatic to the MailOnline’s UK programmatic commercial manager, Michael Simpkins, who will add Australia to his remit and who will split his time between the UK and Australia.

He is tasked with leading the programmatic commercialisation and innovation in the Australian market.

Holder rejected the idea that it would be a challenge for Simpkins to handle the UK role and Australian duties.

“There’s one thing I’ve learnt about this company and that is people are prepared to hop on a plane and work around the clock for this company. Michael understands this market. It makes sense, it’s a level of expertise we need and it’s great for him that his remit has expanded to this territory,” Holder said.

Jones joins the publisher from Mi9

Jones joins the publisher from Mi9

“It shows how serious the MailOnline business is about Australia – that they would allow one of their UK staff to cover Australia.”

Holder reaffirmed the Daily Mail Australia’s goal to climb the Nielsen rankings, saying: “The main goal for us is to get further up in the Nielsen rankings, that’s my biggest priority, and with that other things flow on.

“From a commercial point of view, we’re just getting out to market and letting people know we’re open for business.”

In January, Daily Mail Australia claimed fourth place on the Nielsen news and current affairs rankings with a unique audience of 2.391m but has struggled to reach its stated goal of first place on the news rankings.

Miranda Ward

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