Welcome to an interview-led edition of Unmade. Today’s primary focus is Melbourne media veteran Ben Willee
Below, there’s also the latest from The Unmade Index. This week has seen Ooh Media leave Seven West Media’s valuation in the dust.
Unmade’s paying members get access to our full archive, which goes behind a paywall after a two months. They also receive a preferential price on tickets to our events including RE:Made - Retail Media Unmade which is two weeks from today. The full program is now live.
The man from Spinach
For a second week in a row, Unmade’s podcast features a Melbourne based media expert called Ben. This week’s guest is Ben Willee, GM and media director of the WPP-aligned Spinach Advertising. Willee has been with Spinach for the last 11 years. Earlier in his career he spent a decade with IPG’s Initiative, in London and Melbourne.
The interview, with Unmade’s Tim Burrowes, focuses on the short term and long term media outlook (Without predicting a recession, Willee is considering for the eventuality); he offers his interpretation of the first results from reporting season; and he assesses the importance of The Olympics in Nine’s strategy.
Willee also suggests that some of those who’ve got used to flitting between jobs in a tight talent market might be about to get a painful surprise. And like all of us, he wishes there were more LinkedIn thought pieces on what ChatGPT means for marketing.
Unmade Index: Ooh leads the push
It was another relatively flat day on The Unmade Index, with five of the ASX listed media and marketing stocks rising, and three falling.
At the big(ish) end of town, Ooh Media rose by 4.11%. Until recent days, Seven West Media and Ooh had been growing and falling in lockstep with very similar valuations. But Ooh appears to have broken out of that pattern, with its $880m market capitalisation now well ahead of SWM’s sinking $670m.
Today is a big one for new data, with Southern Cross Austereo, Domain and Enero all due to release financial updates to the market.
Time to let you go about your Thursday. If you haven’t already, please do check out the full program for RE:Made. We’re pretty stoked with it.
There’s a lot going on in the industry today. We’ll tell you about some of it tomorrow.
Audio production was courtesy of Abe’s Audio, the people to talk to about voiceovers and sound design for corporate videos, digital content, commercials and podcasts.
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Spinach's Ben Willee on the meaning of Nine's Olympics win, why it's okay to say the R-word, and loyalty in a fickle industry