Tony Thomas leaves Nova

After nine years as Chief Marketing Officer for NOVA Entertainment Tony Thomas has resigned and will leave at the end of this week.

“Since 2010, Tony has played a critical role in the development, growth and success of NOVA. We are incredibly grateful for the contribution he has made.

His achievements include rebranding dmg Radio to NOVA Entertainment, helping take Nova to the number one national network and developing an outstanding team of marketing professionals,” says Cathy O’Connor, NOVA Entertainment CEO.

Tony Thomas is proud to have been part of the leadership team that helped build NOVA Entertainment into the Australian media success story that it is:

“There are so many highlights of my time at NOVA Entertainment such as launching the hugely successful smoothfm radio brand, the invention of Nova’s Red Room, leading the GOAT.com.au launch and importantly building a team of marketing professionals who are the best in the media business.”

With an extensive career in media, advertising and marketing, Thomas joined NOVA Entertainment in August 2010. During his nine years with the company, he has been involved in the growth and diversification of NOVA Entertainment into a successful media and entertainment brand. Thomas previously worked for companies including the Coles Group, ninemsn, Diego and PepsiCo.

In 2014, Tony Thomas told radioinfo’s Peter Saxon about the name change marketing strategy for Nova after Lachlan Murdoch bought it from DMG:

Thomas: We actually didn’t want to change our name and put a new position out into market until we had all our ducks in a row around the type of business we aspired to be. The change from dmg Radio Australia to Nova Entertainment was really just the last stage of a fairly long process of us evolving the business from what it was, which was a  pure play broadcast radio business into a broader entertainment business, that not only did radio, but also a lot of content plays that sat around radio.

radioinfo: What are the challenges associated with rebranding something that’s been pretty much the same for 100 years?

Thomas: I don’t think the essence of our business has changed significantly. We’ve always been an ideas based business that has a hell of a lot of creativity and agility and is quite fast moving.

I think the biggest challenge is changing the perception in our customers’ minds and in trade and agency land that we’re not just a radio business. In fact we are a much broader business than radio. It’s about getting out into market and convincing the trade, the people who buy advertising off us that they can do a lot more with us than they ever did before.

Two years ago radioinfo was with Tony at Radiodays Europe, where he talked about neuroscience and marketing the smooth fm brand.

 

 

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