The AdNews end of year Perspectives, looking back at 2024 and forward to next year.
Sam Buchanan, CEO, Independent Media Agencies of Australia
I don’t think many people in our industry and business will argue against 2024 being a challenging year. The industry has seen redundancies, pitches slowing up in second half of the year, and six consecutive declines in SMI ad spend.
Despite the often spoken about economic headwinds, however, it has also been a year full of growth for both for the indie agency sector as a whole, and the IMAA.
IMAA member agencies reported record retained client accounts and new business wins, recruited new staff (and helping those looking for work where they could), and prioritised professional development and education.
This year the IMAA has been heavily involved in advocating for change surrounding the Master Media contracts at both the Federal and State Government levels. We pushed for an independent agency consortium to service the Federal Government’s Master Media account, and whilst we were disappointed with the Government’s rejection of the proposal, this was certainly not the end. The IMAA will continue advocacy efforts, and work towards making sure that the indie sector continues to influence the industry and level the playing field, especially for government accounts.
A major focus for us in 2025 will be the upcoming WA Government’s master media tender, and we will be calling for the government to include indie agencies in its tender process.
2024 saw a boost in initiatives launched by the IMAA, including the inaugural and hugely successful Pitch-Chella event. With 76 participants from 21 member agencies, the concept offered a platform for budding professionals to team up, share knowledge, and practice their pitching skills for two national charities. Congratulations to the team at Enigma, who won when they impressed the judges with their “Blak Tank Australia” pitch – inspired by the TV show Shark Tank. Stay tuned for more news here.
This year, hundreds of indie media professionals completed the eight training modules of the IMAA Academy. The final e-learning courses were launched this year – Publishing & News101 (in partnership with ThinkNewsBrands) and Digital101, our largest module to date, launched at our first Digi Byte events in Sydney and Melbourne. Our education initiative received four awards at the prestigious 2024 LearnX global education awards.
The Academy also partnered with SBS to provide inclusion training, covering gender equality, cultural diversity, disability, First Nations, LGBTIQ+, and generational diversity.
Tackling the equity gap for women in senior media roles head-on, the IMAA launched the Female Leaders of Tomorrow programme. Pairing 16 emerging indie media talent with industry leaders, both mentors and mentees called it “life changing.”
The first cohort saw all the mentees report improved leadership skills, and in November we announced that the program would be expanding to Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia for 2024/25 and introducing some of the industry’s top media and marketing leaders as mentors. The latest programme has almost doubled in size and will now have 28 mentors paired with mentees.
In another industry first, we formed an affiliate program agreement with the Independent Media Agencies of New Zealand (IMANZ) whereby the IMANZ will now be considered an international affiliate of the IMAA, enabling the association to tap into the IMAA’s initiatives and policies, and to assist in the set-up, brand usage and governance of the IMANZ. IMANZ members will be able to leverage the IMAA’s education initiatives, with plans also underway to explore regional group deals.
We announced a record number of media partners for 2024 – with 45 partners – and, for the first time, this year’s media partner applications were reviewed against a criteria of channel diversity, market alignment, customer needs and feedback to ensure they aligned with the IMAA’s overall strategic objectives. These partnerships give exclusive access to IMAA members for group and bespoke events and have become so popular the demand is exceeding what we can supply!
In 2024, I am proud to say that the IMAA stayed faithful to our core values of education, diversity and inclusion, and reconciliation. All our initiatives and events this year have contributed to our mission of bringing collaboration, creativity, trust and transparency in the indie sector.
With half our member agencies predicting market ad spend will grow this financial year, by between 10% to 20% year-on-year, the indie sector is not only optimistic but continues to punch above its weight. Bring on 2025.
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