Former MediaCom CEO Anne Parsons has confirmed she was in discussions with Harold Mitchell to run the Aegis-Mitchell group before pulling out to launch SMI’s European operations.
Speculation has been rife since late last year that the Paris-based Parsons was in talks to run Aegis-Mitchell in Australia, which she confirmed to AdNews yesterday.
“The prospect of a great job here and being able to stay in Europe won me over,” Parsons said of her new role as chief executive of SMI Europe. “The agency to watch in Australia is going to be Harold’s and what happens with his business and Aegis. It will have to take a different form to what we’ve seen before.”
Indeed there is some conjecture that the Mitchell name will at some stage come off the doors of Aegis Media’s Australian operations, based on the company’s global strategy to focus on five core media brands and service offerings: Carat, Vizeum, Posterscope, iProspect and Isobar.
To date, Aegis Media has not retained the brands of companies it has acquired. The second operating unit for Aegis Group is the research division under Synovate.
Parsons would not comment on when she finally opted against returning to Australia for the Aegis-Mitchell role but said the SMI deal “moved very quickly”. She downplayed any complications arising for the newly merged Aegis-Mitchell group following her decision to stay in Paris.
“We do lack colourful characters like Harold because this is now an industry regulated by big global networks,” she said. “Harold won’t be concerned about my decision. He’s always got many things in his planning. He’s never reliant on one thing happening.”
Parsons’ new role from March will be to expand SMI’s geographic footprint across Europe with the media expenditure data it has pioneered in the Australian market using media agency spending as the basis for real-time market reporting.
“The times of trying to understand the market by estimates or the availability of information a month or six weeks later is too great,” Parsons said.
“Immediacy and accuracy of spend data is great for analysts, advertisers and agencies. On the media owner side it gets a mixed reaction because does produce information so quickly. It gets into the market fast and its very available.”
Parsons moved to Paris after exiting MediaCom last year.
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