At the annual Mediaweek 100 lunch last week at Crown Sydney, Lou Barrett was presented with the Mediaweek Icon Award.
The CEO of IPG Mediabrands Australia, Mark Coad, introduced Barrett. The News Corp Australia managing director of sales then spoke about what the Icon award meant to her and her family. Barrett then detailed her move through the ranks of the media industry in TV, radio and publishing.
Mediaweek spoke to Barrett to learn more about her media career and she shared some of her insights.
Building relationships
A good relationship really makes you a trusted advisor. Once people have a relationship with you and they trust you, they will come to you before they go to anyone else.
That’s what I’ve tried to build in my teams over the years, to create these relationships. [Harvey Norman CEO] Katie Page is a perfect example of that, right, because Katie’s very loyal too. Once you’ve got a relationship with someone, you’ve got that relationship forever.
Now that doesn’t mean, when you’ve got a relationship, you can rest on your laurels. You’ve still got to deliver on creativity and an outcome for the client. That relationship also means that you’re going to have to see through what you’ve promised.
In a way, you’ve almost got to work harder delivering because of that relationship.
Lou Barrett, husband Peter and former GroupM chairman John Steadman
Maintaining a friendship
One day during a recent trip to the UK, I went into News UK. On the second day, I got in the car and drove for three hours out to the West Midlands, to Birmingham, to go and have a look at Katie Page’s first store on the UK mainland. She’s been in Ireland for 20-odd years. But she just opened her store in the West Midlands, in a place called Merry Hill. I drove out there and met with her country manager, a guy called Lachlan. He’s an Aussie. Met with Lachlan, and walked through the store. They’ve done a brilliant job, but I also went and had a look at her competitor.
I came back and I was telling the News UK team about what I’d done, and they said they had better get out there.
You’ve got to be prepared to go the extra mile. You’ve got to be prepared to think of that business like it’s your business.
I’ve tried to instil that in every business I’ve ever been in. We’ve got to have a client and customer-first mentality. It’s not rocket science. [Laughs]
We’ve got to have a customer-first mentality, not a News Corp-first mentality, or a publisher-first mentality. You’ve got to have a client-first mentality.
Keep on learning
I love to keep up with what’s going on. That’s critical to longevity in this business.
You’ve got to keep abreast of what’s going on. Probably one of the biggest learning curves for me, was eight years ago, stepping into a very digital business at News Corp.
News.com.au is the biggest digital news business in the country. That was a very steep learning curve for me. I still wouldn’t say I’m a digital native, but jeez, I’ve come a long way in eight years.
Monetising digital
What we’ve done is build out our customer data platform within Intent Connect which has been critical. We’ve spent the last eight years doing that. And we’ve done a really good job.
It took us six years to get our CDP (customer data platform) together with Foxtel and REA. But that was a catalyst. Now we’re in a very, very good place.
We’ve still got a massive audience on News.com.au. The big message I’m taking to market at the moment is around engaged reach. Making sure that we focus on engagement, rather than just empty eyeballs. Look at Meta, empty eyeballs.
Along the way, we’ve brought some great digital people into the business. Pippa Leary [managing director & publisher, free news & lifestyle] for example who came on a couple of years ago.
More recently we brought Cam Curtis [general manager of performance, planning and strategy] into the business. Cam worked with me a number of years ago at ACP. He went away, leaving ACP to go into digital startups.
Cam’s now a digital native and has brought his expertise into the business. We brought Dean La Rosa in, who is our new head of data. We’ve got some very good digital expertise in our business now.
In sales, I don’t employ people without digital expertise now. It’s critical. We’re constantly addressing capability in the business to make sure that everyone is educating the young ones and bringing them through the business so that they are digital natives.
Print’s easy, darl. Digital’s complex.
Digital is the future, but print still works
Look at the travel sector. We’re up significantly in travel this year. Travel just keeps going from strength to strength because print still works.
Look at Katie Page. The majority of her spend is in print because it works. Some people who have stepped away from print are now coming back because they’re seeing the value in print.
It’s a wonderful vehicle for helping build brands alongside digital.
[Speak to Lou for a deal on print/digital combo.]
Absolutely. Oh, 100%. I’ve got a rate card that does that. It rewards both.
Lou Barrett is a busy person, how does she manage?
I know this sounds really boring because, over my years in the media industry, I have been a massive drinker. I really don’t drink much anymore, James.
I talked about this when we had our Pace Setters conference with all my team in Byron Bay, particularly the young ones.
I’m like, guys, I went and saw Steven Bartlett earlier in the year and his Diary of a CEO.
Something that really resonated me was sleep. I was already on that bandwagon anyway, and I’ve become a professional sleeper. It’s one thing that keeps you healthy and you’ve got to have is sleep. To be able to function at a very high level, you need to be able to sleep.
That’s the biggest mistake you can make as a young one in this industry. You go out partying and you just don’t get enough sleep.
I know that sounds really boring, but for me now, it’s making sure that my health is where it needs to be because I haven’t always taken care of my health.
And I exercise regularly. Pilates, it’s changed my life.
[Lou Barrett’s sleep regime?] I can’t function on anything under eight hours.
News Corp Australia colleagues Pippa Leary and Lou Barrett
Too many meetings?
The one thing Michael Miller said to me when I first came to News Corp, he said, ‘Lou, don’t get dragged into the News vortex. It’s very easy to do when you’re in a very big business to have meetings for meetings sake.
For me, it’s about balancing my time so that I don’t get bogged down in internal meetings
Doing that enables me to spend more time in market with our clients.
In person or Zoom?
It’s got to be in-person. We’ve just had a lot of agency pitches. I’m really adamant that we’ve got to go to them in person.
Some of our team in the other states have to be on conference calls, but we’ve got to be there in person.
I’m big-time on meeting people in person.
Having a boss who just understands the business
I have a wonderful relationship with Michael Miller and I really love working with him. He’s a brilliant executive and he absolutely deserves to be the number one on the Mediaweek 100.
He is very measured. He’s very fair and he just understands the business.
What Michael also understands is work-life balance. There’s not a lot of people at the executive chairman level that understand that.
That’s what gives you longevity in the business. You’ve got to get your work-life balance right. If you don’t, you’ll burn out in this industry.
2025 planning is well underway
We’re done with D_Coded which will be in March, so it’s a bit earlier next year.
Then we’re going to run our Frontiers program off the back of that. We’re good to go. We’re very excited about what we’ve got for D_Coded.
Watch this space, there are some good announcements coming.
Looking at the other Upfront events this year, I felt they were a bit lacklustre. I didn’t see any big announcements.
There was nothing. Where was all the big programming that TV is bringing to the fore?