The Media Leader Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Jack Benjamin hosts a live panel where three media strategists field questions about common challenges in advertising.

Speakers:

Jackie Lyons, chief planning officer, Havas Media Network UK

Raj Mahon, director of client partnerships, MiQ

Amy Caven, head of media and strategy planning, Boots

This was recorded at our Future of Brands event in April. You can watch it on the Adwanted UK YouTube channel here.

Do you like this AMA format? Let the editor know what you think: omar.oakes@uk.adwanted.com

More from Jackie in a previous episode: The Future of Marketing – episode 2

The podcast is about to take a short summer break before returning in September.

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Sue Unerman, global chief strategy officer at Brainlabs, joins Omar Oakes to discuss leaving WPP's EssenceMediacom after 34 years and "reinventing" herself at a very different agency.

Unerman is well-known across the industry and beyond as a progressive thinker and media strategist, thanks to the books she has written as an author about workplace culture and inclusion.

She is a Cannes Lions Creativity for Good winner and 2024 Glass Lions judge, a fellow of the IPA and has co-authored three bestselling books: Belonging, The Glass Wall and Tell the Truth. A fourth book, A Year of Creativity, is due to be released next month.

Highlights

Unerman on… AI: "Businesses that are built on AI, rather than businesses that are kind of importing AI as a last-minute thing, are going to have some advantages."

Unerman on… strategy: "What has changed is the ability to gather signals and understanding and intelligence about the right time, the right place, the right message, the right person, has gone up exponentially, and finding a way to digest and see the signals in all of that data and all of that noise. That's the task of the strategist."

Unerman on… her new book: "There has been a lot more promotion of both people and techniques that fall within the left-brain bucket, the analytical bucket. And the right-brain techniques and ideas around creativity tend to get a bit squashed by left-brain thinkers."

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Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.

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Reporter Ella Sagar and deputy editor Maria Iu look at the stories that mattered most in media and advertising this week.

The pair discuss new culture secretary Lisa Nandy's in-tray, Ofcom’s ruling on BBC spin-off stations, Meta's view that news is "substitutable" and Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media.

Highlights

0:26: What you need to know about the new Labour government

3:54: Ofcom delays early launch of BBC Radio 2's "pop nostalgia" service

8:30: Industry reaction to Meta saying news is "substitutable"

12:15: Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger

14:30: Bundling could be "consolidation lite"

16:57: News round-up: Channel 4's chief revenue officer will depart at the end of the year; Spotify has added a comments feature for podcasts; the UK and Ireland June box office is up 7%; The Independent has been having “more than half a dozen serious conversations” with global publishers about partnerships; and latest IPA TouchPoints data showing 38% of Brits "are not coping" on their current income.

Related links

Big changes ahead in media under a new government

Ofcom delays launch of BBC Radio 2 ‘pop nostalgia’ service

Paramount ends merger saga after reaching ‘definitive’ Skydance agreement

Disney bundling found to lower churn in US

Channel 4 sales chief Veriça Djurdjevic exit: CEO’s letter to staff in full

June box office up 7%

The Independent’s CEO eyes publisher partnerships beyond BuzzFeed

Google's EMEA president Matt Brittin spoke to Omar Oakes at the recent Cannes Lions advertising festival to discuss how the online advertising and media behemoth is approaching AI and how it's being discussed with advertisers, publishers and media agencies.

Plus: ever wondered what it takes to become a senior exec at a massive tech company? Brittin's background and career journey may surprise you.

The Media Leader Podcast's production partner is Trisonic.

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DEI, EDI, D&I – no matter the acronym you use, it is undeniable that conversations around equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion have been increasing across the board in recent years.

But how does talk translate to action within the media industry? Shez Iqbal is a mentor at Media For All and head of publisher partnerships at Criteo. He joins the podcast alongside host Ella Sagar and guest Jack Benjamin to chat through the nitty gritty of diversity, equality, equity and inclusion in leadership in media and advertising.

Iqbal is also a host of his very own podcast, 'Leadership in Colour', which showcases outstanding leaders of colour sharing their personal journeys, offering valuable insights and advice, and highlighting their current projects.

“I think that coaching is something that should be available for everybody," said Iqbal. "We definitely have an issue—and the All In Census definitely showed it—we’ve got an issue within the industry where people might come in at certain levels and hit at maybe the middle-management and then leave. But I do feel like with the support of coaching, actually we can let them or allow them to have a better plan and route to the top.”

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This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic.

Listen to Shez Iqbal's 'Leadership in Colour' podcast here, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

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Host Jack Benjamin is joined by editor Omar Oakes and reporter Ella Sagar to discuss the latest news around the media industry.

Key headlines covered this week: Twitter is being rebranded as X; 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' both had exceptional opening weekend box office performance thanks in part to impressive marketing campaigns; Hollywood remains on strike with no end in sight; earnings season is upon us; and NME is relaunching its print edition.

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The Media Leader Podcast's production partner is Trisonic.

Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

LinkedIn: The Media Leader

Threads: @TheMediaLeader

Twitter: @TheMediaLeader 

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One of the key questions we are always asking industry experts, be it in our reporting or at our conferences, is what makes for effective media? Is it all about excellent creative? Is it about perfect placement? Or is it, in the words of Succession character Kendall Roy, all simply about harvesting eyeballs?

Mike Follett, managing director at Lumen Research and a regular columnist for The Media Leader, is back on the podcast to discuss the key factors that make media effective, and where attention fits within the conversation. He is joined by The Media Leader editor Omar Oakes and reporter and host Jack Benjamin.

On the broad topic of effectiveness, Follett said the industry needs to admit what it does and doesn't know about the way media and advertising works.

“We assume that we know absolutely how these things work, and we have some numbers to back us up here," he said. "But in all honestly, we don’t. That’s the real truth. We don’t have the complete picture of how this stuff works. And I think admitting that is the smart thing to do, and pretending that we do have a 100% picture of the world, that’s crazy.”

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This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic.

Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

LinkedIn: The Media Leader

Threads: @TheMediaLeader

Twitter: @TheMediaLeader 

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Taboola has built a multibillion-dollar business by making it easy for publishers to recommend content to other parts of the web in exchange for a fee. Now, as thoughts about generative AI dominate conversations in media, the company has just launched Taboola Generative AI which aims to "revolutionise" how publishers create personalised ads.

CEO Adam Singolda spoke to Omar Oakes about the company's beta test of this AI tech, which began in February and has just been rolled out formally to all English-speaking Taboola partners. Singolda and Oakes spoke during Cannes Lions in June, so the pair also chatted about goings-on at the Croisette.

In addition, Singolda has some frank advice for anyone who wants to start their own business.

This is a bonus episode, distinct from our usual Thursday show. We're generous like that.

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Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

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What does the future of digital publishing, and in particular, digital news publishing, look like? Raymond Snoddy, the former presenter of BBC News Channel’s NewsWatch and a longtime columnist for The Media Leader, and Richard Reeves, MD of the Association of Online Publishers, join the podcast to discuss.

Digital publishing has been in a near-constant state of development and transition since it began supplanting traditional press two decades ago. But with the recent dissolution of BuzzFeed News, the bankruptcy and sale of Vice Media, and ever-quickening developments in generative artificial intelligence, today’s digital publishing leaders perhaps have their hands full now more than they ever have.

In a wide-ranging conversation, the pair spoke to Jack Benjamin talked about publishers' progress in defending their intellectual property from "scrupulous" tech vendors and large language AI models, the challenge of making hard news appealing to young people, and the importance of consumers' trust in news.

On the increasing popularity of comedic news content on short-form video platforms, Snoddy said: "The only hope for legitimate news and ultimately the survival of legitimate democracies is to keep focusing on trust, accuracy, meaning, explanation... if the world is totally dominated by the funnies, we’re all in a very serious position indeed.”

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This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic.

Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

LinkedIn: The Media Leader

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“You’ve got to do a different job on pricing.”

That is the core theme of the new book Madison Avenue Makeover, according to its author Michael Farmer.

Farmer, a former consultant, is also the author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter, which the Financial Times called a “damning critique of the modern advertising industry”.

His latest book, a sequel, addresses attempts by Huge CEO Mat Baxter to transform the IPG agency and restore its dynamism. But as reporter Ahmed Elkady writes in his review, the raison d’etre of Madison Avenue Makeover is to serve as the industry’s guide for what another paradigm of agency relationships could look like.

Farmer previously spoke to editor Omar Oakes in a 2022 interview in which he discussed whether the industry had made progress since Manslaughter‘s release in 2015. Now, in a new interview with The Media Leader, the strategy consultant returns to explore the themes and key takeaways of his sequel.

Elkady sat down with Farmer to speak in detail about its development and key lessons for the industry. A partial transcript of the conversation has previously been published, and now you can listen to the audio in full.

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This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic.

Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

LinkedIn: The Media Leader

Twitter: @TheMediaLeader 

YouTube: The Media Leader