Yesterday, Nine’s former sales boss Michael Stephenson, now ARN Chief Operating Officer, hired his former Nine colleague Richard Hunwick to run sales at ARN. Today, ARN announced formation of a creative and ideas unit to integrate brands into its audio content, strikingly similar to Powered by Nine. 

Stephenson was unapologetic: "If we can do a good job at ARN creating big ideas for brands in and around our content and supercharging our digital product with iHeart at the centre of that, then I have every expectation we’re going to grow a lot quicker than the market." 

Speaking to Mi3 upon appointing Hunwick, Stephenson said a significant investment in its alliance with US audio platform, iHeart was central to the digital transformation of ARN to take marketshare in the fast-growing digital audio category. Pulling brands into some of iHeart’s 900,000 podcasts and its own local content and shows is another core strategic plank.  

ARN’s new Integrate unit has four “centres of excellence” across strategy and creative solutions, content partnerships, client experiences and creative studio. 

“The evolution ARN is going through as a standalone business is in some respects no different to the journey that Nine had been on before, and that is this evolution from a proven media business to a digital company,” Stephenson said. “At the very core of that transition from a proven media business to a digital one are two things: Creating a platform for brands to tell their stories through bigger, more creative ideas leveraging ARN’s assets, and increasingly using digital product and data to create more targeted advertising with a direct line of sight between investment and outcome. The challenge for us is to be innovative enough to create big ideas that brands believe will deliver a better outcome. That’s why we’ll invest in the right people, create the right structure, and give people the autonomy to be creative in that environment."

ARN has been under heat over the launch into Melbourne of its blockbuster Sydney on-air duo Kyle and Jackie O and its poor performance. Rival SCA has been moving to a “hyper local” approach to its programming in national markets, arguing the public mood and sentiment was shifting in that direction. 

Stephenson argued the answer was in “finding the balance between both of them". “The answer to your question is that it’s probably a combination of both. The reality is, Kyle and Jackie O are two of the biggest radio stars in the world. And so where you've got big stars, you should explore the ability to network. And that's exactly what Ciaran [Davis, ARN CEO] has done in Melbourne. Like anything, these things take time. It's been one year and I think they will continue to adjust the content to be relative to both markets. But at the same time, there'll be other brands that are quite obviously better suited to being localised. So even when we have networked content, we will have local windows and the ability to create local news, sport, weather, etc, within those platforms.”

Stephenson said finding the balance between local and networked content was about “maximising the return you can get on your investment with the audience that they will deliver, which ultimately will be good for advertisers and also for our shareholders".