Why are so few board chairs actual experts on the media businesses they lead?
Welcome to Tuesday’s update from Unmade. In today’s members-only post, we ask why so few of our ASX-listed media and marketing companies are chaired by people with direct domain expertise. Further down, the Unmade Index slips close to its low point once again.
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Domain expertise optional
The thing about the business of media and marketing is that to the outside world, it looks easy.
Everyone watches TV (or they used to, anyway), listens to the radio and experiences advertising. So how hard can it be?
I suspect there are far more people out there who think that (in an emergency) they could write a great ad or commission a hit TV show, than believe they could land a plane or take out an appendix. Happily, nobody dies when somebody commissions a reboot of Live From Planet Earth.
Nonetheless, in hard times, domain expertise counts. Yet, when it comes to the boards of Australia’s listed media and marketing companies, almost none are chaired by somebody who has lived and breathed the product.
It’s an industry for the most part led by lawyers and accountants. In size order: