BotW: We've finally hit bottom but will there be a double dip?; How Qantas perks have tainted Albo's brand
Welcome to Best of the Week, written during a week dominated by travel.
After a family celebration in Fiji, I spent Wednesday’s return flight on QF102 reading Joe Aston’s excellent book on the downfall of Alan Joyce. Appropriately, the first alert when I turned my phone on in Sydney was from the SMH, with the news that prime minister Anthony Albanese felt that the media was overreacting to revelations in the book about his upgrade perks. Have you noticed that the only time people complain about the press going too big on a news story is when it’s about them?
And after our Unlock conference on Thursday, this morning I was on the early Jetstar flight home to Tasmania, a day earlier than planned, to say goodbye to one of the cats; today’s edition may be a little more ragged than usual.
Today: The Qantas scandal reheated, and SMI calls bottom on the advertising recession, but how long for?
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:
A complimentary ticket to all of Unmade’s events, including HumAIn, REmade and Unlock (all returning in 2025), and Compass (throughout November);
Member-only content and our paywalled archives;
Your own copy of Media Unmade.
When the roo lost its way
We’ll start with The Chairman’s Lounge, Joe Aston’s post-Rear Window book project.
It blew up like a grenade thanks to new detail about the extensive Qantas perks enjoyed by most politicians, and Anthony Albanese in particular.
For Qantas, I’m not sure the book does any more damage to the brand than its operational meltdowns of 2022, and ACCC ghost flights prosecution of 2023.
For Albo, it does. Being the party of the people is Labor’s point of difference as a campaigning organisation that needs to fight an election in the next few months. The Coalition can’t throw any stones because their pollies are in the club too. But Labor has far more to lose than the Coalition by being seen as among the elites.
In a democracy, no politician (or journalist) should be accepting membership of the Chairman’s Lounge, with its guarantee of free upgrades in the air and delicious meals on the ground. If it was proposed as a new concept it would be laughed out of town.
There was a great piece in The Nightly from Mark Riley about why he turned down a Qantas upgrade that was motivated by PR management.
In the UK, new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been forced to promise to stop accepting gifts of clothing and hospitality, a scandal a magnitude less outrageous.
Regulatory capture occurs when the regulator becomes so close to the regulated they stop doing their job properly. Former transport minister Albo’s friendship with Alan Joyce, and decision to deny Qatar extra landing rights to the benefit of Qantas, resulting in higher prices for his voters - is a classic case.
The patterns of behaviour around Labor’s unwillingness to follow recommendations to outlaw gambling ads, much to the relief of its friends in the TV networks, feels like another.
SMI sees spring
They didn’t use the words, but yesterday Guideline SMI called an end to Australia’s advertising recession. The media agency market appears to have finally hit bottom.
It’s been a long time coming, and for legacy media, there is likely more pain ahead as marketers struggle to break their addiction to short term performance over branding. By the time they regain their appetites for long term brand building, marketers may find that their lack of support for some channels has left them with fewer options. Sadly, ‘You’ll miss us when we’re gone’ still isn’t a good business plan.
Yesterday’s SMI numbers, covering September, were particularly good for outdoor, up by 15.8%.
And the motivation behind Southern Cross Austereo’s decision to put out a quarterly update on Wednesday revealing 4.8% growth in its audio revenue is now more understandable. As a sector, audio was down by 2.6%. That SCA update suggests the pain is likely being experienced by rivals ARN Media, Nova Entertainment and Nine Radio.
SMI is also calling overall growth for 2024. The key quote from MD Jane Ractliffe: “With the momentum now evident in key parts of the Australian ad market, we remain confident that we’ll be reporting advertising market growth for the full 2024 calendar year.’’ At last.
However, some recessions have double dips, and there’s every chance that this is one of them, certainly for legacy media.
TV likely faces the toughest challenge; 2025 will likely be the first year where streamers including Amazon Prime and Netflix extract significant upfront commitments. That will likely come out of broadcast TV budgets.
There are also signs that at a regional level, marketing budgets are being allocated away from Australia to cheaper markets like India.
So let’s not get too carried away by those green shoots. We may well be about to experience a short advertising spring and an even shorter summer.
Unmade Index drops as Seven enjoys a late surge
A downbeat finish to the week saw the Unmade Index lose 0.3% to land on 439.7 points yesterday.
Most of the larger ASX-listed media and marketing stocks were down.
Nine lost 1.3%, while ARN Media lost 3.4%, and Southern Cross Austereo dropped 1%.
Seven saw a surge in the final minutes of trading, gaining 6.25%.
Vinyl Group continued its pinball trajectory as it finds a new valuation following the new investment from major shareholder Richard White. Yesterday, Vinyl Group rose by 11.5%, ending the week exactly where it started.
CotW: The Spot
In each edition of BotW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
Ogilvy, Glue Society, and The Beautiful and Useful Studio partnered with Sculpture By The Sea and La Roche-Posay to create a 20-metre-wide melanoma to highlight the importance of sun safety.
‘The Spot’ started out as a five foot lump on Tamarama beach in Sydney, and continued to ‘grow’ as the Sculptures By the Sea festival progressed.
Its scale, texture, and detail adds to the haunting method, and proves that sometimes the honest truth is the right approach to tough issues such as skin cancer.
Time to leave you to your weekend.
I’ll be back on Monday with Abe Udy and Cat McGinn for our Start the Week podcast. Cat curates our HumAIn strand, focused on the impact of AI on the media and marketing world. With yesterday’s arrival of search on ChatGPT, we have much to discuss.
And if you’re in Tasmania, Abe will also be joining me on stage in Hobart on Wednesday evening, as we kick off this year’s Compass roadshow. Hopefully we’ll see you there.
Meanwhile, about the time this email drops, I’ll be headed to the pet hospital to ensure Loki gets a gentle send off. He was a good cat.
Have a great weekend
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
