In a wide ranging discussion about media and advertising, outspoken marketer, Skingraphica CEO Mat Baxter, challenged the Mumbrellacast team on why broadcast television is losing out to streaming, in a live podcast recorded at SXSW Sydney.
Speaking to Tim Burrowes, Cath McGinn and Abe Udy, Baxter said: “In the US, television streaming platforms could have combined into a single streaming app ten years ago to compete against the Amazon Primes and Netflix. If they did that, they might have had a chance to compete, but that opportunity is gone… The same has happened in Australia.”
“The tv networks are facing an extinction level event… so are media agencies,” said Baxter.
Media marketing and buying agencies also face the same problem, according to Baxter. “New companies entering a market can always start from scratch and rewrite the rules. Media and marketing agencies will face the same challenge, especially now with AI.”
After a decade working in New York ad agencies, Baxter returned to Australia to found Skingraphica, the first luxury skincare brand dedicated to tattooed skin.
Unlike television, the Australian radio industry began the streaming era with a collaborative not a competitive approach, with all commercial radio stations available on the one Radio App, so audio has had a different evolutionary path, but it is still facing similar ongoing challenges.
Discussing the trend to replace journalists with AI, Baxter said: “AI is always coded language. Whenever the term AI efficiency is mentioned, it usually ends up with efficiency of the labour force, job losses. For Interviewing and connecting with people in a content industry, people are required. If you replace that with AI you will lose the personal connection.”
Tim uses AI as a “glorified spellchecker,” but is not planning to use it to replace journalists any time soon. “Trade publications like ours should be offering content and analysis. There may be a place in some markets for AI generated content, but that’s not our market position. You risk training your potential audience that there is not much of value or insight, so they don’t come back the next day,” said Mumbrella publisher Burrowes.
Discussing radio, Baxter said: “Play ot your stremgths in radio and stay local. Radio content is local.”
Asked about the ARN plan to take the Christian O’Connell show national he said: “Christian will not work in Sydney… You can only do well in one market because your focus has to be on one, not both, major cities. You always have your hero city… local context is essential. It’s the same with agencies, even national agencies have a hero city where they do their best revenue.”