Fran and George here!
This week is a very special week for the team at MediaCast, because not only are we in the midst of delivering 20 campaigns (phew!), but it is also our birthday! MediaCast turned six on the 1st of June and we’ve spent some time reflecting on a what a journey it has been over the last six years and particularly in the last 12 months! COVID certainly threw us some curveballs, but we’re enormously proud of the way our business has come out the other side unscathed and stronger than ever.
So please enjoy a highlights reel and some of our learnings from the last six years – it’s been a wild ride!
We started out as a team of two, a Brit and a Kiwi, ready to tackle the Australian media landscape and build our business from scratch! Fast forward six years and we have a thriving team of seven, we are just about to outgrow our fourth office and are managing more campaigns than ever.
A game-changer for us was bringing in our Campaigns Manager Cavill, to have complete oversight of our campaigns and clients, manage our delivery team and be a go-to for clients. This allowed us to step back from the day-to-day of campaign delivery, and really be able to focus on growing the business and our strategic goals. It’s clearly worked wonders, because in the last 12 months we’ve experienced enormous business growth and evolved our agency into three distinct arms – retainers, projects and agency work.
The biggest challenge our business has probably ever faced was the uncertainty of COVID-19 in the early days of March 2020. As coronavirus was declared a global pandemic, we were hit with a flurry of panicked phone calls from clients, nervous about investing in PR when the state of the world seemed so uncertain. But somehow, without losing any clients at all, we managed to hold our nerve, pivot our current campaign creatives to include the now all-consuming COVID-19 messaging and deliver some of our biggest campaigns to date.
Our team packed up their desks and worked from home for 12 weeks before we reunited in a new office. It was a nerve wracking few weeks to be sure, but we’re proud to say that our year-on-year growth in the midst of COVID saw a 57% increase from 2019-2020 and this year, we’re on track to achieve an increase of 45%. #humblebrag
Despite the pandemic, MediaCast has welcomed 40 new clients to our books this financial year alone. We have expanded our reach to start working with clients offshore such as Fantastic Services Group, GreenPan and Odoo! Another feather in our cap, includes our ongoing retained work with NASDAQ listed, global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. We’ve had the pleasure of securing continued top tier coverage for all of these new clients including multiple appearances on Sunrise, Today, The Morning Show and Weekend Sunrise.
Apart from some of our most recent wins, there are just so many things that give us those constant ‘pinch me’ moments when we look back on our journey as a business. Winning a PRIA Award in 2019 for the best small budget campaign alongside Act for Kids, our level of client retention and the opportunity to work with clients year after year on some of their biggest campaigns. A special shout out to 1:1 Diet, Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia and Volunteering Australia for being some of our longest standing clients. We love you!
And a more recent but extremely important learning; we are exercising our right to say no. We’re humbled to be at a point in our journey where we get to truly analyse every opportunity that comes our way and politely decline the ones that don’t make business sense for us or that we know doesn’t align with our reputation within the media.
Speaking of the media, over the last six years we have developed some truly exceptional relationships with journalists, producers and presenters across the country. We overhear our team speak about journalists as if they are close friends, and in many cases, we really do feel that way. We are pitching to radio stations anywhere between three and 12 times a week so it makes sense that our team would feel a sense of companionship with the contacts they speak with almost daily!
Finally, one of the things we are proudest of, is the incredible team we have behind us. Our most important asset at MediaCast… We will never take for granted the team we have around us, who show up every day, with a positive attitude and a smile on their faces ready to tackle a day of unknowns. We’re the first to admit that agency life can be tough – it’s fast paced, ever-changing and certainly not as glamourous as some people make it out to be. But when the people you work with are family, camaraderie is second nature and having six cheerleaders in your corner at any given moment is a bloody good feeling.
We’re all about celebrating the wins at MediaCast, so thanks for reading this far and celebrating our six-year milestone with us. We look forward to the next six – whatever they may bring!