2015 Annual: The year that was – February
This year was another year of major change and transformation in the media and marketing world. Over the next 12 days, Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen and Miranda Ward provide a month-by-month recap of the most read and biggest stories that affected the industry. Here are the highlights from February.
The month started with the eyes of the industry on Channel Ten’s much promoted reality show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
Among the ten contestants that went into the jungle in Africa were former Mix FM radio host Chrissie Swan, Olympic gold medal winning swimmer Leisel Jones, former test cricketer Merv Hughes and Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia Brady in the 70s TV show The Brady Bunch.
The program drew 1.2m metro viewers on its debut and was viewed as a success with Ten renewing it for a second season in 2016.
Supermarket chain Woolworths has had a pretty torrid year, which really started in February when it unveiled a new ‘Cheap, Cheap’ ad with X Factor winner Samantha Jade singing an extended version of the tune complete with animated green bird back-up singers.
The campaign idea around ‘Cheap, Cheap’, was created by Leo Burnett Sydney and was heavily criticised as a poor imitation of Coles’s highly successful ‘down, down’ campaign.
Ride sharing app Uber has also been in the headlines this year but February saw it launch a highly successful PR campaign when it launched a service to take rescue cats to people’s homes and offices as part of a drive to raise funds and awareness for animal shelters.
The initiative launches today between 12pm and 4pm in six locations around Australia, with people able to order 15 minutes of cuddles for $40 and generated a significant amount of media and social media attention.
Rinehart quit Fairfax in February.
Billionaire Gina Rinehart also wasn’t far from the headlines in February. The mining magnate first made waves when she sold out of Fairfax Media selling her 14.99 per cent stake in the publisher after two and half years accusing its management of having ‘no plan’ to revitalise the publisher.
Fairfax sources fired back at Rinehart noting her sizeable loses in the Ten Network, saying: “We expect Mrs Rinehart’s investment in Fairfax has been one of her better media investments.”
A week later Rinehart would again make when she took Nine and production house CJZ to court seeking access to the second episode of the House of Hancock miniseries which depicted the life of her father Lang Hancock and herself.
In the days that followed Rinehart managed to secure a number of edits to the show with the two sides reaching a confidential settlement following a rare weekend hearing in the Supreme Court.
One of the most read stories on Mumbrella in February was a report on Fairfax Media board director Todd Sampson coming under attack in the Australian Financial Review by Rear Window columnist Joe Aston.
In a column that month Aston questioned whether the environmental credentials of the CEO of Leo Burnett sat awkwardly with the agency having tobacco company Philip Morris as one of its clients. The column drew much debate in the industry and sparked a large comment thread.
Baxter said UM did not see media agencies as their competitors.
One of media agency land’s biggest names Mat Baxter also sparked industry wide debate when he revealed to Mumbrella UM would drop its Big Boutique brand position, declaring, controversially that ‘media agencies are not our competitors’.
The new positioning saw the agency move its major clients off a commission structure and onto either a retainer or a paid for performance model — and saw a broad discussion of the evolution of the agency business model.
February also saw Coca-Cola forced to unexpectedly pull a major PR activation with giant Sprite Showers stunt set to be held at Bondi Beach having to be pulled down despite having already been built.
At the time Coca Cola would not comment on the reasons for the embarrassing decision to remove the activation but it would later emerge that the reason was that the timing had coincided with the NSW State Government’s announcement about introducing a cash for containers scheme, something Coke had opposed.
The month also saw Nine forced to “burn” one of its biggest TV productions of the year Gallipoli.
Despite a big marketing budget and strong cast the show failed to standup against Seven’s “spectacular” My Kitchen Rules, pulling an audience of 1.104m on debut before plunging to 580,000 metro viewers on its second outing.
The third outing of the show saw only 527,000 metro viewers with Nine Entertainment Co CEO David Gyngell quickly admitting the ratings performance of Nine’s drama series Gallipoli has been his “biggest disappointment” for the year and announcing it would moved to air double episodes of the show from Monday, a practice often referred to as ‘burning off’ a show.
