Dr Mumbo

All the news-entertainment-pop-culture content that’s fit to deliver on multiple platforms

The problem with working in digital media is that one can get sucked deeply into the jargon whirlpool without even realising it.

One day you wake up and it turns out that you can no longer speak in everyday English.

Unfortunately for Nova Entertainment’s digital boss Chris Rann, it happened on the day he was due to record an interview for Alan Kohler’s much-listened-to Talking Business in-air Qantas show.

The show, which is available on Qantas flights until the end of the month (or online via this link), is worth a listen just for Kohler’s heroic and repeated attempts to get Rann to speak in plain English.

Even if the end result was still mostly incomprehensible to the casual listener.

Things began to go awry as Rann explained his lessons for the future as “You need to get your brand out to as many platforms and channels as possible, being able to be agile with your technical solutions and product solutions… it’s about ensuring your content has a unique selling proposition.”

Kohler began to struggle further as he tried to make sense of what Nova, owned by Lachlan Murdoch, actually, you know, puts on its websites.

Rann tried to explain again: “We’ve traditionally focused on  entertainment pop culture aspect in our digital assets, but we are looking at broadening that to a news and popular culture focused strategy.”

At this point Kohler was rather more blunt: “I don’t really know what any of that means – I’m sorry. What does it mean?”

He politely tried one more time: “If we go to the website what do you get?”

There was a brief moment of clarity: “Up to the minute celebrity entertainment news.”

The breakthrough was sadly shortlived.

“So you employ journalists?” asked Kohler.

“That’s absolutely a shift we’re looking at, at the moment… looking at the history of digital, a lot of teams have evolved from a lot of skill sets – you could have a marketer, a comms specialist a tech person…”

Dr Mumbo suspects that the employment of journalists may help clarify matters.

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