Opinion
Mumbrella, under new management
In this guest post, Mumbrella’s founder Tim Burrowes reveals that next week we will be changing ownership.
Hello again.
This is my first post for Mumbrella in a little over three years, and I return with a piece of exciting news. As of next week, Mumbrella will have a new owner.
Back at the end of last year, Diversified Communications, owner of Mumbrella since the end of 2017, agreed to sell. The next owner will be a new company called Mumbrella Media. The deal completes next Tuesday January 28.
The owners of Mumbrella Media are B2B publishing house The Intermedia Group, and myself. I’ll be publisher, and we will work from Intermedia’s offices in Glebe.
There will initially be two mastheads in the Mumbrella Media stable – alongside Mumbrella, Unmade. The two are of different vintages. I published Mumbrella’s first post on WordPress on December 9, 2008. Unmade’s first post, on Substack, followed nearly 13 years later on August 23, 2021.
We sold Mumbrella at the end of 2017 and Diversified took management control at the beginning of 2020.
Some of the greatest cognitive dissonance I’ve experienced since leaving was attending a couple of editions of Mumbrella’s Publish Awards as a paying customer, where Unmade was a finalist. There’s a lot less stress in being a guest at an awards event than there is being on duty, but it’s still strange being in the room. Particularly with MC Merrick Watts making my presence his running gag of the night. I was happy to see how well run the event was. The Mumbrella events team still operate a critical path document like Mark Knopfler plays a Fender Stratocaster.
I’m lucky enough to inherit the Mumbrella hot seat at a time when it is already on an upwards trajectory. Outgoing publisher Adam Lang has been a positive force who stabilised the title when he joined just over a year ago. That was despite only having half his time available to work on Mumbrella, with the excellent Fear & Greed podcast as his main gig.
And I’ll miss listening to Adam on the Mumbrellacast. I hope he’ll do me the honour of a handover episode or two.
On the detail of how the deal came about, David Longman, CEO of Diversified Communications Australia adds: “The Intermedia Group approached Diversified with a vision for Mumbrella’s future, and after thoughtful consideration, Diversified recognized this as the ideal time to transition ownership. This move ensures Mumbrella will continue to thrive and grow under new leadership, further cementing its place as a cornerstone of Australia’s marketing and media landscape.
“The Intermedia Group’s proven track record in publishing and events makes them the perfect custodian for the Mumbrella brand. We are confident that this transition will bring exciting opportunities for Mumbrella’s community, clients and staff, ensuring the brand continues to innovate and grow.”
One of the challenges of returning to Mumbrella is the changed landscape. In its first decade, Mumbrella was the exciting new thing. B&T and AdNews were fading weekly print titles that had back then come only recently and reluctantly to the web. Mumbrella had all the momentum, and there was more clear air.
This is an industry that likes the shiny and new. These days, under the management of Misfits Media, B&T is the title that has arguably made the most progress, including with Cannes in Cairns. We’ve also seen the arrival of SXSW Sydney, and the arrival and exit of Advertising Week. Much of our task will be to give you reasons to reconsider Mumbrella, and that includes identifying the conversations the industry wants to have next.
The trouble-making, agenda-setting, news-breaking editorial output that took us ten years to develop first time round, will build gradually. But the intent is there.
On a number of occasions I felt trepidation in the minutes before we hit publish on Mumbrella – when we broke news of the Mediacom reporting scandal; when we revealed how then Atomic 212 boss Jason Dooris had been misleading awards juries; when we called out M&C Saatchi for having a woman jump out of a birthday cake; our revelations of the men-only Gentlemen’s Gin Club; and when we took on the scam ads of the Cannes Lions.
They were all articles that annoyed the establishment at the time, and cost us advertising in the short term. But in the long term, we were on the right side of the debate. Mumbrella has never been about knocking the industry, but it is, and will be, about championing a better industry for everyone.
I’ll know Mumbrella is where I’d like it to be when I feel a similar moment of pre-publication nerves.
In the years after I left, it was not uncommon to still be introduced to people as “Tim from Mumbrella” before the person would awkwardly apologise and acknowledge in an afterthought that these days I was doing Unmade. I never minded – even after I was gone, I was always proud of my part in creating Mumbrella; I suspect it will be the thing that will define my career.
The publishing landscape has changed; the trade press is more cluttered (admittedly that’s at least partly my fault); some publishers demand pay-to-play (and some potential advertisers expect it); more and more of the companies we write about are run from overseas; walled gardens are overtaking the open web; generative AI is already shrinking the number of people working in our industry.
Despite those headwinds, many of the seeds sewn by Adam Lang have been sprouting.
Features editor Nathan Jolly’s crafted Weekend Mumbo has been a great point of difference for Mumbrella, which I always enjoy reading, even when experiencing the annoyance of him tackling the same topic as Unmade’s Best of the Week, but a couple of hours ahead of me.
Deputy editor Lauren McNamara has challenged people who deserve it on a couple of occasions, including on her leading the reporting on Campaign Brief misogyny.
There is an immediate vacancy. Mumbrella’s managing editor Neil Griffiths left late last year for Rolling Stone. Hiring an excellent editorial lead is an urgent number one on my to-do list. Please email me on my old address of tim@mumbrella.com.au when I start again next week (it’s not live yet), or via tim@unmade.media from now.
We’ll be emphasising the basic principles that served Mumbrella well over the years. First: our editorial mission is to help our audience in their working lives and careers, by doing our best to tell it like it is. Much as we value our advertisers and sponsors, we serve our audience first.
There will be none of the blurred lines you see on some other publications where it’s hard to tell what’s pay-to-play. We love assisting our advertisers in speaking to our audience, and we’ll help them do it in their voice, not ours.
We’ll also be transparent about the progress of the business going forward. The annual December 9 Mumbrella birthday updates will return.
- Our first post: Welcome to Mumbrella
- Year two: Mumbrella is two
- Year three: Mumbrella is three – thanks for supporting us
- Year four: Mumbrella is four (and a bit)
- Year five: Why I’m stepping down as Mumbrella editor to help grow the business
- Year six: Mumbrella is six – now we’ve got a history
- Year eight: Mumbrella is eight: Beating the burnout
- Year nine: Mumbrella is nine: We’ve joined the two commas club
My new business partner, Intermedia owner Simon Grover, raised an eyebrow when I suggested we should go back to publishing news of Mumbrella’s progress, including our financials, but cheerfully agreed. In 10-and-a-half months’ time you’ll find out how far we’ve got.
Simon was also unhesitating regarding my only key condition for bringing Unmade into this project: absolute editorial independence.
Internally, the Mumbrella Media culture will be one where the product, not company bureaucracy, comes first.
It’s too early to share our plans for Mumbrella and Unmade, not least because they are a work in progress; this all came together quite quickly. That said, there are obvious places to start. Unmade’s membership tier, which includes all our content going behind a paywall after six weeks, and complimentary tickets to our conferences, is a natural fit with Mumbrella Pro.
Until this deal happened, I was planning on launching an Unmade conference focusing on publishing strategies. Instead we’ll now most likely revive the Publish conference, probably on the same day as the Publish Awards.
Mumbrella360 returns in May
The jewel in the crown for Mumbrella is Mumbrella360. Plans for this year’s Mumbrella360 at Carriageworks from May 27-29 are already well under way, and I’ll be helping where I can. And we’ll throw the kitchen sink at Mumbrella360 in 2026, the 15th anniversary of the first event.
There are plenty of places where Intermedia, Mumbrella and Unmade should work well together. One plus one plus one should equal a lot more than three.
For Intermedia, Simon Grover says: “I’m delighted that Mumbrella and Unmade are joining the wider Intermedia Group family. There’s a natural fit. We believe in serving business audiences through delivering helpful, informative content across digital, print and events.”
Mumbrella’s Retail Marketing Summit on March 19 and REmade – Retail Media Unmade on September 23 will both tie in nicely with Intermedia’s retail mastheads including National Liquor News, Retailbiz, Appliance Retailer and Convenience and Impulse Retailing.
Similarly, Unlock, Unmade’s night time economy conference, will be turbo charged by collaborating with The Shout, Australian Hotelier, Bars and Clubs and Hospitality Magazine.
At Mumbrella and Unmade I’ve always believed our best events are ones that we curate journalistically, and take the community with us. Most recently Unmade’s curator Cat McGinn has done that in building communities around REmade and our AI event HumAIn. This new start is a homecoming for Cat as well as myself. She was the original launch curator of CommsCon back in 2013, and part of the team for the early years of Mumbrella360. Back when we ran the first Mumbrella Readers Choice Awards in 2009, Cat was even the person pressing the buttons in the elevator ferrying our finalists up and down to the studio we streamed them from.
The next few months will be intense, including lots of internal challenges. Bringing two teams together in an office none of them will have set foot in until tomorrow, is just the beginning.
Another way that the combination will give us added commercial heft is in what have sometimes been unproductive conversations with the platforms. A few days ago, Unmade was accepted onto the ACMA’s register of eligible news businesses, which puts us in a good position to have productive commercial conversations with the likes of Meta, TikTok, Google, LinkedIn et al on how we might assist them in communicating to the industry across Mumbrella and Unmade. Expect that partnership call soon, ahead of the News Bargaining Incentive framework.
And for Mumbrella and Unmade’s existing and future advertisers, I can’t wait to do business, and to help you build your businesses.
I couldn’t be more excited to make a start. It will take a bit of time to get us up to full speed. There is much to do.
See you next week.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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A Mariachi band needs to soundtrack the first day in the new office
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Burrow’s Rises…
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I hope the comment section on Mumbrella articles becomes the hot bed of intrigue like it used to be!
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Great news, Tim. I look forward to becoming a regular reader once again. Congrats.
Brilliant news! Congratulations Tim and welcome back!
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Bravo, Tim!
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Great news
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Good news all round. Congratulations.
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Wow this wonderful and huge news. I well recall Tim the 1st year of Mumbrella back in 2008 in my media recruitment agency. Go well wonderful combined team and smash it.
Congratulations Tim – great news – welcome back – hope it’s a fun ride!
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Huge congrats to Tim and the new owners of Mumbrella. A boomerang is coming to mind.
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Good on ya, Tim. Welcome home. L 🙂
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Congratulations Tim and Mumbrella!
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Well done Tim! Congratulations!
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Congratulations Tim!
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tim – is it fair to say that you’ve now had your own Alan Bond moment?
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