Before Adland: Anathea Ruys’ Journalist Backstory

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Tom Fogden
By Tom Fogden



In a new series on B&T, we will be taking a look at the unusual backstories of leading industry figures. First up, it’s UM Australia CEO Anathea Ruys.

“Prior to adland I worked in magazines on the editorial side. I started as a sub-editor and then became editor of New Idea, New Zealand, then editor of New Idea Australia and finally publisher of all the Pacific titles in New Zealand”, she said.

Ruys became the group publisher in 1993, working across publications That’s Life, B, New Zealand Weddings, TV Hits and Girlfriend as well as launching KZone and Total Girl.

“Working in editorial, there are SO many stories – celebrity shoots, celebrity managers, trying to have the most standout cover at the supermarket checkout made for some fascinating anecdotes. But I want to share one that is less likely to get me into trouble so I go back to my days as a sub-editor”, she told B&T, sagely nodding along given our own subbing troubles.

“One of my jobs was to ensure the pages of horoscopes written by Milton Black would fit into whatever space was left on the page after all the ads were placed. Generally, this meant cutting around half the content. There were a number of ways you could do this and still keep the integrity of the content. However, I had recently broken up with a Virgo boyfriend so my solution was to just cut out anything positive in the Virgo copy”, said Ruys.

Her solution?

“‘The first part of the week will bring dramas with a loved one but from Thursday you can expect a financial windfall’ became ‘The week will bring dramas with a loved one’. Apologies for all those Virgoans who had a six-month stint of very bad luck according to New Idea!” she said.

In May 2000, Ruys made the jump to agency land becoming the managing director of Spark Activate, a content division of PHD. Stints at Clemenger, Mindshare an APAC Omnicom role and then four years in the US with Carat and Dentsu followed before she returned to Australia to head up UM in April 2021.




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