Podcast: How the media and marketing sectors are rewiring through COVID-19

Leaders from Australia's media and marketing sectors have sat down for the first of Mi3's COVID-19 Update podcasts to discuss industry responses to managing through COVID-19 and how the pandemic might rewire the industry and jobs by the end of the year.

PwC's Chief Economist Jeremy Thorpe says Telstra's strategy "highlights what in the modern age is discretionary expenditure and what isn't." Telco services, he says, "are reinforced as an essential part of life but we are seeing a clear demarcation where demand elsewhere is falling off a cliff."

It's this latter scenario that has OMG's Peter Horgan and Executive Channel Holdings (ECH) CEO Charles Parry-Okeden extremely concerned about the near instant collapse of cashflow for companies in the marketing and media supply chain and the knock-on blow to jobs. Normal daily workloads for employees will likely dry-up within weeks. 

Horgan, who also serves as chair of the Media Federation, says a contraction of "20-30% seems conservative at the moment" for the media market in the June quarter. Parry-Okeden, who runs an Australian media company with screen networks across Europe and the UK, says a 30-40% contraction is a reality, along with a cash crunch which is already hitting media companies and the supply chain. Much of the market, and its people, Parry-Okeden says, will need to prepare for significant short-term job adjustments to preserve cash and jobs.      

"We will absolutely get out of this but we need a sensible conversation between employers and employees," he says. "The types of things we need to consider is leave without pay, or scenarios where we put staff onto part-time contracts for a period of time. Most importantly for me is making sure people have jobs in six months time."

Listen to the podcast here.

Source: https://www.mi-3.com.au/