Nova Entertainment announces new media partner following pitch
Nova Entertainment has appointed GroupM’s Mindshare as its media agency partner, Mumbrella can exclusively reveal.
The agency will work across Nova’s entire portfolio, including Nova Network, SmoothFM, FIVEAA, Star 104.5 and the Nova Podcast Network.
The incumbent, dentsu’s Carat, held the account since 2017. Mumbrella understands the account is worth $9 million.
Adam Johnson, chief growth officer at the audio business, told Mumbrella that the quality of Mindshare’s response, and the agency’s people, led to the partnership.
“We were with dentsu for the best part of eight years, and it was a fantastic eight years with them, but like any relationship it was time to review and see what other partners were in the market,” he said.
“The process involved three agency partners, and it was a tough decision because they all did really well. It certainly highlighted to me the depth and breadth of talent in the media industry.
“Mindshare was ultimately selected for their strategic response [to the brief], their understanding about business objectives and how that relates to our media strategy going forward, and also, being part of GroupM, they will be a scale partner for us, which is pertinent,” Johnson told Mumbrella.
Maria Grivas, CEO of Mindshare ANZ, said: “Audio plays a unique role in Australians’ lives and Nova Entertainment has incredible talent on, and off, the air.
“Throughout the process we were excited by Nova Entertainment’s appetite for transformation and growth. Our teams are thrilled to bring Mindshare’s approach towards this to Nova Entertainment, delivering strategic thinking and innovation across their portfolio of leading radio, podcast and live music brands.”
As a media owner, Johnson said the relationships with media agencies are one of the best, as “they have an intense understanding of the products, because that’s their job”.
“My experience has always been that media agencies like working with media owners…They kind of attract the same profile of people, and we end up working with some really smart people in media. There’s a cultural empathy between agency and client from that point of view,” he told Mumbrella.
He said to suggest that the relationships would be underpinned by revenue over the work is unfair.
“They will obviously do the best work for their clients… there is no commercial lead to that relationship,” he explained. “It is built purely on the value that they can bring to our business to help us grow our audiences, and that will generate returns for us.”
The partnership will commence on June 1.
Mindshare’s debut campaign can be expected to launch in Q3, 2024.
The agency recently won Unilever’s $40 million media pitch, and was reappointed by Foxtel Media to handle its $65 million media account. It also re-signed its partnership with National Australia Bank (NAB), retaining the business for a further three years.
GroupM recently topped the RECMA Qualitative Domestic Report, based on agency vitality and structure.
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Lauren McNamara is a journalist at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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