Best of the Week: Mumbrella is Ten and Tim is hungover

[View web version]( BEST OF THE WEEK And another thing... Welcome to Best of the Week. Many years ago, when I edited Media Week in the UK, I invited its founding editor Tim Brooks to write a piece for us to mark our 30th anniversary. He began his piece with a good natured complaint: “Despite having 30 years’ notice, Media Week gave me two days to write this. Some things never change…” I seem to have slipped into a pattern. This weekend marks Mumbrella’s tenth anniversary. Yet I somehow find myself writing this at 6am on Saturday morning, with this email due to go out at 10.10am Despite having ten years’ notice, I’ve got four hours left to finish this. Some things never change… I think I know how it happened. We ran the Mumbrella Next Awards at the Four Seasons in Sydney on Thursday night, and it doubled up as our birthday celebration. As a result, I was not at my best yesterday. Certainly not when it came to writing. It is, however, amazing what a good night’s sleep can do. So here I am at 6.30 AM now, feeling much restored. As regular readers may remember, on December 9 each year, I've been in the habit of posting a piece reflecting on Mumbrella milestones and millstones for the year. Last December was no exception. In the early days, the focus of the piece was often about traffic, as we began to find an audience, then in subsequent years about our adventures in building a business model, launching events and creating a presence beyond Sydney. This time last year though, I had a problem when I wrote “[Mumbrella is Nine](”. I couldn't write about the thing that was occupying most of my waking thoughts, and affecting my sleep at the time. We were in the final stages of selling Mumbrella to Diversified Communications. The original plan was to time the announcement around this annual piece. But these things take longer than you'd think, so it ended being the last working day before Christmas before we finally got to share news of the sale. As a result of that sale, the most common question I was asked during 2018 was a variation of "So, how's life changed?" And ironically, the single thing most noticeable change in my life in 2018 has been how often I’ve had to answer that question. I’ve lost count. It was always flattering to be asked, because it meant that people had noticed our announcement, and always seemed happy for us. But it also became a bit of a script. So to answer your question: Every year at Mumbrella is different, but not much as you might think has changed for me as a result of the sale. To begin with, I was hesitant in how I answered the question. I've come across plenty of acquisitions that don't work, or where the founders turn out to be miserable. So I was a bit nervous of sounding naive with my initial answer. They seemed like nice people. They seemed to be letting us get on with it in the way we saw fit. But I didn’t want to go too far with that in case life changed once the honeymoon was over. As weeks became months, it began to shift slightly. I stopped telling people that the team at our new owner Diversified Communications seemed nice. A year in, the evidence is mounting that they actually are. One of the conditions of the sale was that there'd be no interference in editorial decisions. And they haven't tried, not once. We've found ourselves working with people who ask questions about investment, not cost cutting. And about long term growth, not the next quarter. And we've found ourselves within a company that is serious about what it takes to build a successful culture. We've invested in workshops to bring Mumbrella's management team closer together. They’ve been pretty draining, but good for us as a team. Indeed, at some point in that process, we stopped calling it the management team and started calling it the leadership team. And myself and our CEO Martin Lane are receiving some one-on-one leadership coaching too. My first session of that is Monday, as it happens. So it’s been a year of learning new things. I've also spent an increasing amount of time thinking about how to scale Mumbrella, and keep it true to its essence, and how to define that. It’s harder than you’d think. How do we make sure that a Singapore-based reader of Mumbrella Asia has the same expectations as the Melbournian reading Mumbrella Australia? Or in the future, the Londoner, or New Yorker, for example. I don't think the answer can be for me to simply spend more and more time on planes, although admittedly I have done that this year. (I can report that Qantas sends what seems to be a very nice bottle of Christmas champagne to its Platinum Ones.) Much of my mantra about how to replicate Mumbrella was informed by a chat to PHD Media's APAC head of strategy Chris Stephenson a few months ago. How do you create a consistent product when you can't be everywhere at once? I wrote it down when he said it: Productise, systematise, commercialize. Which is the approach PHD has taken. Define your product, build systems behind it, and let that drive the business model. It sounds a bit simplistic, but, wow, it resonated for me. You know how good strategy is supposed to seem obvious once it’s written down? But all this talk of leadership and scaling and business models is a long way from that simple little WordPress blog I was messing around with on December 9 2008. But it's what we need to figure out if we're going to carry on growing as fast. And actually, we've not done a bad job of putting that into practice with the events side of the business. Tony Faure, who among other things is the chairman of Ooh Media these days, used to act as an adviser to Martin and I. His mantra of “repeatable processes” drove us a long way in that direction. But this was the year I realised we were further behind on systematising the editorial side of things. It sounds a but dull thinking like that, but it's one part of the behind-the-scenes hard work that we need to get done. That means trying to put into words what had been instinct. When we first launched in Asia five years ago, our deputy editor Robin Hicks went out, carrying the Mumbrella DNA with him. But that won’t always be the answer. It's the same thing that agencies struggle with when they open a second office, and try to offer a consistent product. I had coffee with an agency owner on Tuesday. He’s travelling well in Melbourne but only just getting going in Sydney - he asked me if I could think of many successful recent agency examples who had done it well in two cities. It was easier to think of the ones that hadn’t. So I've been trying to become more disciplined in understanding what I believe Mumbrella is. I think I know, but I need to be able to spell it out. Poor old Ravi, our new editor of Mumbrella Asia, found himself subject to a two hour PowerPoint presentation when we met for the first time in Singapore back in October. Some of it is about restating our philosophy. Earlier this week, our agencies writer Abby Dawson passed on a bit of feedback. She had been at a meeting with the CEO of a media agency. He felt Mumbrella's view on the industry might be an overly cynical one. Abby made the case to him that we aimed to be critical when necessary, rather than cynical. He made the point that this is worth spelling out. When it comes to reputation, perceptions are reality. So it was useful feedback that we need to be better at explaining how we think about our industry. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that point being made. I tried to articulate it in my welcome speech at Mumbrella Next on Thursday night: We aim to be a critical friend of the industry. I chatted to a creative agency boss a while back, and the advice he gave me resonated: ‘We know what you’re against, how about telling what you’re for?'. Which is good advice. We’re for a better industry for everyone. We like the industry we’re in, and we want it to be as good as it possibly can be. Sometimes that means calling out bad behaviour. We’ll always do our best to tell it as we see it to our readers. You might sometimes disagree with our point of view, but it’s always a point of view sincerely held. And our priority over the coming years will be to do more than ever to celebrate the achievements and positives about this fantastic industry." One experience this year helps sum up our sometimes complex relationship with adland. Our coverage of the Atomic 212 awards saga was published almost exactly a year ago. We spent three months investigating untrue claims made by the agency's then CEO Jason Dooris on the path to winning a string of industry awards. The feedback we got was that this investigation had been in the best interests of the industry. But there was also an unwelcome commercial consequence for us. The Media Federation of Australia - the voice of most of Australia's big media agencies - decided to declare a one year moratorium on entering local awards. Entries for The Mumbrella Awards were among those that took a hit, which felt harsh at the time. But it’s a business, and nobody is entitled to have the market support their model if it doesn’t choose to. Hopefully we’ll successfully make the case that cleanly run awards with strong jury processes are worth supporting. And in the day job, it was a terrific year. The return of the Mumbrellcast, driven by our deputy editor Josie Tutty, brought me great joy. Recording the podcast is my favourite activity of each week. [This week’s is already live](. It’s a matter of some pride that the Mumbrellcast now has well over 4,000 subscribers. But it’s a matter of even more pride when I listen to our (mostly) young editorial team speak with such authority and passion about our industry. You may recall that I usually share our turnover and profit numbers in my annual update, by the way. Now we’re owned by Diversified, that no longer feels like my information to share in quite so much detail. There has been no request asking me not to (as I say, they haven’t interfered in what I’ve written at all), but that feels like the right thing to do. Suffice to say we grew again. Commercially, that was hard work. As well as the blip with the awards, we saw the launch of a new competitor event in Sydney, Advertising Week. That moved some sponsorship dollars away from Mumbrella360. But again, we’re not entitled to those dollars. The market does what the market chooses. And it’s our job to demonstrate to sponsors that we can give them the best return on their investment. One advantage we’ve always had over competitors, whether in publishing or events, is that everything we do is audited. You can see all our numbers for event attendance and site traffic on the Audited Media Association of Australia website. And we’ve had a record breaking year for traffic. The main way we keep score among the editorial team is page impressions. Based on our internal Google Analytics, on Thursday of this week we overtook the number of page impressions we delivered last year of 11,782,976 And some time over the next few days we should overtake our annual record of 12,045,065 page impressions which we hit in 2016. I’m hoping we reach that number before I head off for a longer-than-usual Christmas holiday in about a week’s time. Last year, it was my turn to be on the newsdesk over Christmas and the New Year. Coming days after our sale, it felt like a good way to keep my feet on the ground and try to demonstrate to the outside world (if anybody was even watching) that I was still hungry. But this time, I’ll take a proper break. Our Mumbrella Bespoke editor [Adam Thorn wrote a terrific piece this week asking whether we are an industry that puts too much emphasis on romanticising the struggle](. Which is more than enough justification for the five weeks I’ll be taking off when I wrap up at the end of next week. (Although not before penning one more Best of the Week along the way). As for next year, I’ll be spending a lot of time thinking about how we grow the membership model we created with The Source. If you’re unfamiliar, [The Source]( is our subscription offering which tracks, among other things, which brands work with which agencies. We gave it a bit of a polish this year, but there’s still a lot more to be done with it. My instinct is that the hard work from many publishers in asking readers to pay for premium content is beginning to work. We saw The Guardian hit its milestone of a million readers. We’ll be investing time and money in developing that side of the business. I suspect I’ll also spend a little less time at the newsdesk coalface. Here in Australia, the editorial team doesn’t really need me for that. They know what they’re doing. And somehow, it’s 9.30am now. I just took a break to read the papers. There’s a cracking column on the property bubble from Alan Kohler in The Australian this morning, by the way. But it looks like I’ve managed to finish this thing in time, although I haven’t got to the most important point yet. That’s to acknowledge that in the year just gone, and indeed the decade, just how many people have been friends to Mumbrella. Let me quote myself from Thursday night’s speech one more time: It all worked out. And in large part, that’s thanks to a lot of the people in this room. So, I need to say a few thank yous. The terrific thing about thinking about the last ten years is realising just how many people in the industry have supported us in getting where we’ve got. That’s been in so many ways - speaking at our events, writing for us, through sponsorship and advertising. A lot of people here have been kind enough to give me advice over the years. It’s always been appreciated. And I’m delighted that so many former members of staff have joined us tonight too. We owe so much to them, along with our current wonderful team. Housekeeping corner We’re done for Mumbrella events this year. But we’ve just put [our annual pass for our marketing summits]( in 2019 on sale. Like many of the best things we do, the Annual Pass was the suggestion of an agency boss. We’re up to nine marketing summits now: Automotive, B2B, Entertainment, Finance, Health, Luxury, Retail, Sports and Travel. The price offers a big saving on individual tickets, and is transferable across teams. So far we have 15 international speakers confirmed across our events for 2019, with a lot more to come. As always, I welcome your emails to tim@mumbrella.com.au (and feel guilt at my tardiness in replying). Our deputy editor Josie Tutty - [josie@mumbrella.com.au](mailto:joise@mumbrella.com.au) - is on the newsdesk across the weekend. For now though it’s time for more coffee and more newspapers. Have a splendid weekend. Toodlepip... Tim Burrowes Content director - Mumbrella Mumbrella | 46-48 Balfour Street Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia [Unsubscribe](| [Manage Subscriptions]( [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter](