BotD: Atomic payday; the Pureprofile bounce; and DDB cuts jobs
Welcome to a new experiment from Unmade, Best of the Day.
Today marked deal completion day for us. Unmade and Mumbrella are now part of the same group, under the banner of Mumbrella Media. If you missed it, you can read last week’s announcement here.
To provide as much of a point of difference as possible while we bring the two mastheads closer, Unmade’s publishing cycle will, for now, shift towards the close of business.
Today, Atomic212 found an owner, and on the Unmade Index the share price of research house Pureprofile soared after it shared good news with the market.
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Pureprofile surges on the Unmade Index as five year turnaround gathers momentum
A stellar trading update from research house Pureprofile blew the doors off the company’s share price today.
The company’s market capitalisation surged by 18.75%. This morning, Pureprofile’s market capitalisation rose above $50m for the first time in more than a year before settling back on $47m.
Pureprofile told the market that it now expects its revenue for the full financial year to be $57-$58m, up on its previous forecast of $55m. It expects profits for the year to be between $5.2m and $5.8m.
In the quarter that ended in December, Pureprofile’s revenue was up by 30% compared to the same time last year, the company told investors, thanks to growth in the US, SE Asia and India.
Pureprofile teetered on insolvency five years ago with boardroom divisions and failed acquisitions. Research veteran Martin Filz steadied the ship after coming on board in July 2020, while Michael Anderson joined as chair last June.
Meanwhile, Seven West Media and Ooh Media had the worst of it in the top half of the Unmade Index, losing 3.1% and 2.9% respectively.
The Unmade Index closed down slightly for the day, losing 0.18% to land on 452 points.
The day in focus: Atomic exit; DDB cuts; Bunnings bandwagon
Atomic bond
The big agency news of the day was the long rumoured sale of Atomic212 - the house that Barry O’Brien, James Dixon and Rory Heffernan rebuilt over the last seven years following the messy exit of Jason Dooris - finally coming to fruition.
Publicis Group (or Groupe if you prefer the French version) is the buyer of what was Australia’s biggest independent media agency.
DDB loses staff
DDB joined Ooh Media in choosing the post-Australia Day week to make cuts. In a note to the trade press, DDB’s CEO Sheryl Marjoram said: “To minimise the stress of an already stressful time, we won’t be commenting on individual names, however we can share that it will affect 15 of our people. These are moments none of us got into this business for, but when they inevitably come, we believe in handling them in the most respectful way possible, with all the care, comfort and privacy we can offer.”
In October DDB said it was going to be parting ways with Westpac after more than a decade. Mi3 reports today that DDB may go on babysitting the account for months yet though after the departure of chief markter Annabel Fribence
Only the beginning for Bunnings retail media play
Weeks after Sam Hegg moves across from the Coles-aligned Redworks Media, Bunnings said it was expanding its retail media offering with extra screens across 150 key stores.
72andSunny kicks on
And global creative hot shop 72andSunny has picked up the brief to launch the 2025 AFL season. The work will be unveiled in March.
Time to leave you to your evening.
Hopefully we’re through the bumpiest day of our fresh start. With Mumbrella’s team coming off their previous tech stack, with laptops wiped and new security configurations added, we were mostly (as anticipated) offline for a few hours. I can report that most glitches are now ironed out and the Mumbrella newsletter should be back to normal tomorrow.
Meanwhile, please do give us your feedback over the timing and format of Unmade. There will still be longer form content too of course, but we do like to experiment.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media