Mat Baxter – the man behind the Heidi hoax – turns up at Mediacom
Mat Baxter – who abruptly left Naked shortly after its controversial fake video furore – has re-emerged in a new role at the type of agency he used to deride.
Baxter is to be chief strategy officer at media agency MediaCom, reports today’s print edition of AdNews.
Baxter, who was one of the three founding partners at Naked, found himself in the front line after the agency attempted to hoax Australian media with “Heidi”, an actress who pretended to be looking for the man of her dreams who had left his jacket in a cafe.
But shortly after the agency published a list of the journalists it had tricked, Baxter left the Photon-owned company.
According to AdNews, Baxter admitted that he’d previously criticised the big media agency structure. He said: ‘I don’t think that’s a secret and I don’t apologise for it.”
At the time of writing, Baxter wasn’t returning calls.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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why is Matt standing in front of a stuffy library?
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Matt Baxter joins Mediacom.
Me thinks the man from Naked has been exposed.
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Looks like a secret door to me…
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good call, picture reads more like ‘Mat Baxter takes role at University of Wollongong Linguistics Department’
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the emporer exposed as wearing no clothes
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No jacket required?
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Baxo looks like he’s at Hogworts
I can’t remember if he was in Slytherin or Griffindor…
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I don’t think there’s anything wrong with criticizing a system and then becoming a part of it. Mr. Baxter may provoke positive change, he stands by his opinions by refusing to retract them and I respect that.
But I swear the books in the corner shelves on the right are painted on!
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in many ways it’s a bloody good move by toby jenner who is currently making some strong cultural and leadership changes at mediacom….mirroring mediacom melbourne which is a sensational agency.
can say from experience the way that mat baxter treats partners [agencies] is not the best example of what any industry strives for as best practice, or his past treatment of client’s is what the media industry strives for…but he’s a young guy who may have learned some hard lessons from naked. hopefully he has. if you think he got the ass from there over Witchery, you’re dreaming.
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That photo of Mat was taken in his last few weeks at Naked.
It was taken in their board room when he and Adam Ferrier briefed me on their research into the results of their Witchery campaign.
Sadly, I didn’t check whether the books were real.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Good luck Mat. Won’t be long till u have them all drinking from the challis of tabasco.
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Head of Media Planning has never sounded so good…Is the head of media buying going to change their title to Chief Acquisitions Officer??
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Here’s a thought, standing in front of a wall of books makes it appears I’m learned
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