Melbourne Herald Sun 17th October, 2009
It was a long time ago I first met Harold Mitchell, at the advertising agency Masius. Little did I suspect that he would one day be both rich and famous.
While I was a junior copywriter, he was only a few years older than me, still in his 20s. But already he had become national media director of one of this country’s leading agencies.
He was as smart as he was big. In board rooms he’d sit quietly as the creatives and account managers pitched a campaign to the clients. His job was to tell them how their money would be spent - on TV, newspapers, billboards - he’d briskly set out the media he would purchase for them, millions of dollars. And while they had lots to say about the ads, these clients said little about where the money would flow, trusting that Harold would buy the most cost-efficient plan.
In 1976 he picked up a new idea from the US. A consultancy specialising just in advertising media, with highly skilled professionals choosing and negotiating the very best media rates for clients, working with them directly or through their own advertising agency.
Naturally the agencies thought it was a terrible idea - this was their source of income after all - but some key advertisers like Just Jeans and Bob Jane liked the flexibility, speed and cost-savings this gave them.
Before long Mitchells were turning over millions of dollars in media billings. Nowadays it’s $1.3 billion which makes him a pretty big customer to the media. No wonder Kerry and Rupert always picked up the phone when he called.
In his recently published book, Living Large, Harold Mitchell doesn’t exactly tell all - but he tells enough about life amongst the millionaires to make it fascinating reading. I wouldn’t call it an autobiography, more what the French call a carnet. Part reminiscence, part anecdotes, part philosophy and history.
It certainly sounds like him. Short, sharp sentences crisply delivering the facts. Don’t expect to find any poetic interludes or intimate romance here. Always the soul of discretion, he tells you enough to pique your interest - but not so much as to be scandalous.
So while he devotes a chapter to Kerry Packer, it’s from the point of view of a friend he looked up to. He’s not so kind about Christopher Skase or Alan Bond.
His regard for Packer is understandable. In the 1987 stockmarket crash he came close to losing it all. The Big Fella tossed him a couple of million dollars, unasked. It was enough to keep the wheels turning till Mitchell could dig himself out of the hole.
He passes these favours on, too. One time a large client of mine suddenly crashed leaving me holding a substantial media debt. It’s the sort of thing that happens in advertising. I told Harold I couldn’t pay him. “So what can you pay?” We worked out a percentage and did the deal on a handshake. Not many blokes like that in today’s business.
It’s indicative of Harold’s political skills that the back of the book has tributes from both Steve Bracks and Jeff Kennett. They both learned that when a job needs to deliver results, he’s the man to call.
He has proved this repeatedly over the past 20 years as Chairman of the National Gallery of Australia, Victorian Museum, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Just this week I have been missing that entrepreneurial spark that so energised the Melbourne Festival when he was its president.
Masius in the early seventies was a cauldron of talent - author Peter Carey; creators of The Campaign Palace Lionel Hunt and Gordon Trembath; food writer Terry Durack. But none bigger, then as now, than Harold Mitchell.
ray@ebeatty.com
17 October, 2009
12 October, 2009
Student exchange makes the businessman
12th October, 2009
I assume that most of my readers work in some kind of business, and many of you are the parents of children. Maybe you want them to come into your business, or to be successful in their own right. Well I can tell you from my own experience that the best thing to do for them is to send them away.
I discovered this by accident 20 years ago. All I wanted was away to persuade my son to continue his Japanese classes at the end of their first year, when the going got tough and his mates dropped out. “Hang in there and I’ll send you to Japan on exchange,” I promised.
He agreed and two years later, aged 15, set off for Osaka. Fortunately the three years’ Japanese lessons taught him at least how to read the toilet signs at the airport. But from a speech point of view he felt dumb.
He lived with a host family in central Osaka - but none of them spoke English. He travelled an hour and a half each way, by train, to the school. Classes were six days a week, plus two hours’ “club” time each afternoon. Then when he got home, two hours’ homework. Very few people in the school could speak English, but having the agile brain of a teenager he absorbed Japanese like a sponge.
At the end of the exchange year he was perfectly fluent in Japanese - both formal and local dialect - could read and write all three Japanese scripts like a native. He had chosen the school’s Judo Club so by the end of the year he had a black belt and more importantly, his skinny frame had filled out into a muscular, young man.
Did he miss very much? Well I knew from his older sister that Year 10 is not an academically important year. They seemed to spend much of their time on parties, social experiments, and discovering the opposite sex, as they waited for Year 11.
So it was that my boy missed making the front pages when a riot broke out between a large number of his schoolfriends and some gatecrashers. He also wasn’t there when some of his schoolfellows were busted for drugs.
When he returned he was no longer interested in teenage mischief. The Japanese work ethic was so strong that he powered his way through the Baccalaureate. At university the BA in Japanese he did in two years without a strain, and put his efforts into a Bachelor of Commerce.
I first came across exchangers when I worked at an advertising agency in Bangkok. These young executives had spent a year of their teens at school in America or Australia and were the only ones among our local staff who deeply understood western marketing and advertising, and could translate them into a Thai context. In fact the firm would actively seek them out.
So I knew my kid would never be unemployed. Hell, even if the whole world economy collapsed he could still drive a tourist bus. My stepdaughter is a few years older and also exchanged, spending a year in an American high school learning to chew gum and put marshmallows in the salad.
Her mother soon straightened her out that this wasn’t 90210 but the maturing process had done its trick.
She’s now a marketing manager with a world-leading IT company, has a Qantas Club card and takes her husband on overseas luxury holidays on her frequent flyer points.
So, seriously, take a good look at your teenybopper. Maybe the best thing you can do for them is send them away.
ray@ebeatty.com
I assume that most of my readers work in some kind of business, and many of you are the parents of children. Maybe you want them to come into your business, or to be successful in their own right. Well I can tell you from my own experience that the best thing to do for them is to send them away.
I discovered this by accident 20 years ago. All I wanted was away to persuade my son to continue his Japanese classes at the end of their first year, when the going got tough and his mates dropped out. “Hang in there and I’ll send you to Japan on exchange,” I promised.
He agreed and two years later, aged 15, set off for Osaka. Fortunately the three years’ Japanese lessons taught him at least how to read the toilet signs at the airport. But from a speech point of view he felt dumb.
He lived with a host family in central Osaka - but none of them spoke English. He travelled an hour and a half each way, by train, to the school. Classes were six days a week, plus two hours’ “club” time each afternoon. Then when he got home, two hours’ homework. Very few people in the school could speak English, but having the agile brain of a teenager he absorbed Japanese like a sponge.
At the end of the exchange year he was perfectly fluent in Japanese - both formal and local dialect - could read and write all three Japanese scripts like a native. He had chosen the school’s Judo Club so by the end of the year he had a black belt and more importantly, his skinny frame had filled out into a muscular, young man.
Did he miss very much? Well I knew from his older sister that Year 10 is not an academically important year. They seemed to spend much of their time on parties, social experiments, and discovering the opposite sex, as they waited for Year 11.
So it was that my boy missed making the front pages when a riot broke out between a large number of his schoolfriends and some gatecrashers. He also wasn’t there when some of his schoolfellows were busted for drugs.
When he returned he was no longer interested in teenage mischief. The Japanese work ethic was so strong that he powered his way through the Baccalaureate. At university the BA in Japanese he did in two years without a strain, and put his efforts into a Bachelor of Commerce.
I first came across exchangers when I worked at an advertising agency in Bangkok. These young executives had spent a year of their teens at school in America or Australia and were the only ones among our local staff who deeply understood western marketing and advertising, and could translate them into a Thai context. In fact the firm would actively seek them out.
So I knew my kid would never be unemployed. Hell, even if the whole world economy collapsed he could still drive a tourist bus. My stepdaughter is a few years older and also exchanged, spending a year in an American high school learning to chew gum and put marshmallows in the salad.
Her mother soon straightened her out that this wasn’t 90210 but the maturing process had done its trick.
She’s now a marketing manager with a world-leading IT company, has a Qantas Club card and takes her husband on overseas luxury holidays on her frequent flyer points.
So, seriously, take a good look at your teenybopper. Maybe the best thing you can do for them is send them away.
ray@ebeatty.com
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