Many media buyers left Sydney’s iconic Luna Park with a massive grin on their faces, and it wasn’t because of the free booze and canapés.
The newly rebadged Seven Media Group left a strong impression about a media company that is heading in the right direction after a turbulent period in a challenging media market.
It was only in January when TV and publishing group Seven West Media and radio and podcasting stalwart Southern Cross Austero merged, bringing together two vastly different media operations with different systems, talent, sales operations and tech stacks.
What followed—or at least the perception from outside—was a power struggle and series of redundancies, with SCA’s top brass initially holding sway, before TV veteran Rohan Lund was brought in to become chief executive and Natalie Harvey returned to Seven to take the chief revenue officer role.
Rebranding Southern Cross Media Group to Seven Media Group is a signal that the larger TV business is now steering the ship, but audio is very much a vital part of the operation and the two will work in unison to supercharge the offering to brands.
Last night’s entertaining upfront presentation proved clarity into how Seven West Media and SCA were coming together.
“Seven incredible brands have come together, and it’s working. An audience lead that’s never been bigger. Everything we’re doing right now across the group is growing. Trusted brands, powerful platforms, people that really care. We’re taking the best of all of them to build something even better,” Lund told hundreds of media buyers and marketers in Luna Park’s Big Top.
Harvey added: “Our ambition is not to simply reach more Australians; it’s to matter to them, to earn more of their time and their trust, to bring them together. And for our partners, there’s more ways to connect and more value from every connection.
“Just pushing the businesses together won’t get the results that you need. We have to make some significant changes to enhance our offering, from strategy, our data capability, how you execute, and how you prove that when you invest with Seven Media Group, you get a strong return, and then you keep coming back and bringing those stacks of cash.”
Major announcements
The major announcements included the launches of Seven iD, Studio Seven and Development of Phoenix Exchange.
In essence, this should allow brands to better understand and connect with the 20.4 million Australians that engage with the Seven Media Group ecosystem (Seven, 7plus, Hit Network, TripleM, LiSTNER, West Australia, The Nightly) each month.
The trading platform Phoenix will continue rising over the next year with more inventory and capability to Phoenix Video in December, the launch of Phoenix Audio in February, and converging all digital inventory across the Seven Media Group in October 2027 — Phoenix Exchange.
Highlights on the content slate include the launch of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me out of Here, to be hosted by Ricki-Lee Coulter and Jim Jeffries; and a new gameshow called Stacks of Cash to be hosted by Matt Shirvington.
On radio, Lu & Jarch will launch a new national drive show on Hit Network, while former Aussie test captain Michael Clarke is joining Nath & Emma on 2DayFM. There will be new podcasts on LiSTNER and Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum is Seven’s Summer of Cricket commentary team, which shall be known as ‘BazBox’ and call the game at a healthy run rate.
Sports commentary doyen Bruce McAvaney will also be calling horse racing on TripleM and was a charming presence on stage during the sports presentation.
Industry reaction
So what did media buyers make of all this?
“What they presented really makes them a much stronger competitor than they have been in the past,” Zenith chief investment officer Elizabeth Baker said.
“Their media assets are already so strong on their own and they have great momentum. Stitching them together provides great strength to their offering and a lot of opportunities to our clients. I’m already seeing responses to briefs that are incredibly innovative using their full suite and where we are seeing the best results.”
Dentsu Media chief investment officer Georgia Payne said she looks forward to the roll-out and evolution of Phoenix and described their data play with Seven iD as “very powerful”
She added: “They’ve obviously had a lot of change in the past year or two. Nat Harvey is going to bring a lot of stability and experience to Seven. We look forward to a strengthened Seven.”
Accenture Song principal director of commercial investment and operations Nick Thomas agree with Payne on the Harvey point.
He told B&T that Harvey and digital commercial lead Oliver Newton “are the right people to wrestle this thing into a successful 2027”.
The ‘super partner’ approach
Thomas also praised what he described as “the super partner approach”.
“Southern Cross and their TV assets and the content they produce complement each other really nicely versus when we’ve seen audio and TV come together before (for example at Nine),” he said.
“I love the idea that you can go to one network and reach over half of Australia. You can really double down and go deeper in the partnership with better integration, better understanding of the clients, better understanding of their audience, and, hopefully, get better results.”
Thomas also was impressed by the audience growth across Seven’s tent poles with almost all registering solid double digit growth year-on-year.
He would have liked to see more case studies about how Seven can connect brands across all of its audiences; the one example Seven did showcase was a powerful demonstration about how it covered Dolly Parton’s death across TV, radio, podcasts and print.
Thomas described the actual show as “a walk down memory lane”, while Yango managing partner Nick Murdoch said it was “entertaining” and “no frills”.
Other media executives B&T spoke to on the sidelines said it was a little bit on the long side (B&T clocked it at 1 hour and 40 minutes) but overall left a favourable impression.
“I think they’re doing a good job,” Murdoch added. “They’re delivering audiences they’ve had a pretty big year with integrating the businesses, so it feels like they’re steadying the ship.
“The idea of television and radio coming together so you watch a sporting event or reality TV show, those passion points, and then radio follow up on that all week is pretty cool. I can see a lot of integration opportunities for clients.”
Show me Stacks of Cash
When asked about the content slate, all media buyers speaking to B&T were impressed by how much formats like Farmer Wants A Wife, My Kitchen Rule, Australian Idol and the 1% Club are growing (although The Voice wasn’t mentioned, read into that what you may).
“I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here is a great format and I can see a really great opportunity for the Seven Media Group to capitalise on that particularly utilising the Southern Cross talent. Also Stack of Cash is massive show globally, so I think they’re on a winner,” said Jimmy Paton, director at Parallax.
“It was a great spectacle and the merging of brands has been delivered really well compared to previous mergers.”
It’s perhaps a bit too soon to judge how successful the Seven and SCA merger will be. But after a tumultuous start, it finally feels that Seven Media Group has found stability, good leadership and the right strategy going forward.
Now the industry will wait to see if they can deliver.
