The Huffington Post has been on the ground officially for three weeks in Australia, and it's tying up partnerships left, right and centre.
The local arm of the publishing powerhouse is extending its global partnership with creative agency Leo Burnett locally. Its vice president of brand strategy and sales at The Huffington Post, Lauri Baker, told AdNews that often creative agencies are closer to the heart of the brand than media agencies and it's been an exciting process working in partnership in the US and in other regions.
“When we partnered with Leo Burnett it was a huge opportunity to understand: “Hey you know the clients really well, you have been telling their stories for years, lets come to together and see what we can do,” she said.
“We've had a lot of learning from that, we've executed some great stuff and we've got some great stuff coming up that we're really excited about, but it was big learning process,” Baker added.
The global deal was inked in October of last year and it saw the two businesses come together in order to work to develop strategies and then produce content for the ad agency's clients.
Baker explained that she's already starting to see creative agencies starting to re-think how they can get involved in brand stories and she said the two businesses have already had success with global campaigns.
“It was a global partnership and one of our first campaign that we executed was for a P&G brand called SKII, we did a native series across Japan, Korea, and the US and we did a whole bunch of native pieces, that were unique and organic in those individual countries.”
Baker told AdNews she was having conversations with Leo Burnett about the partnership in Australia and said that she was meeting with the agency to discuss the possibilities here.
“We just launched Australia – I know internally at Leo Burnett they’ve talked at length and I'm going to sit down with them to noodle on what we can do and bring the partnership here,” she added.
The news comes as it was announced that Dentsu Aegis secured the exclusive rights for The Huffington Post's display inventory, which sees Dentsu's clients given the first, and only, access to display advertising across the site.
At the time Paul Brooks, managing director of Amplifi, group investment and partnerships for the Dentsu Aegis Network, told AdNews that deal represents a great deal for the network's clients.
“The Huffington Post represents a great opportunity for our clients at Dentsu Aegis Network. It is a further proof point around our philosophy in creating unique offerings for our clients by creation of partnerships such as this with the HuffPo Australia,” he said.
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