What's Next with Brian Gallagher

In this episode, we speak to Brian Gallagher, who shared his insight as the Chief of Sales at Australian Media Owner SCA on the changing media landscape and how the pandemic has helped shine a light on localism.

SME businesses were the first to feel the pain of the Covid-19 outbreak in Australia. SCA quickly mobilised a 'Shop Local' campaign on a national basis, with localised campaigns running on social radio shows, where local people could call in and talk up their favourite local businesses.

"...because of the very highly social nature of radio, we were also able to use our morning shows, our drive time shows, and our daytime shows to get consumers to call in and tell stories about great local vendors, what they were doing, and how they'd helped them."

Brian also spoke on the attractiveness and dominance of the big giants Google and Facebook for SME advertisers and why SCA brought in more digital marketing experts to help their customers understand the importance of advertising outside the giants with a blend of mediums to achieve their goals.

"Facebook can operate at any budgetary level. They operate in a dashboarded scenario... It's a slot machine for marketing; depending on how sophisticated a client you are, you can very quickly put a lot of coins in the slot. Cost per acquisition seems to rise inexorably. We feel very strongly that those platforms, while appearing convenient or cost-effective, there's a hidden cost there, and our small to medium advertisers, in the main, don't see how that works. We are fiercely local about our content and our connection with our communities, but we've implemented more and more executives who are experts in digital marketing in these communities so that they can take hold of those advertisers and say, "Yes, you should be in search. "Yes, you should be in social, "but you should be deploying in this manner." 

ABOUT BRIAN GALLAGHER

Brian has over 30 years' experience in the broadcast and digital media industries, from advertising sales to developing video content production business's. He has focused his career on the successful intersection of content and brand storytelling. Brian has led the successful development of brand integration strategy and workflow for broadcasters and production companies which led to him to build a successful brand funded television programming business.

Brian has developed several business's from start-up stage to commercial success.

In his current role as Chief Sales Officer at SCA he enjoys driving business growth for the many major advertisers and SME's that SCA support via Australia's largest network of Radio, TV and Digital, by driving a passion for 'great ideas inspired by insight' across the team.

ABOUT SCA

Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) is one of Australia's leading media companies reaching more than 95% of the Australian population through its radio, television, and digital assets. 

Under the Triple M and Hit network brands, SCA owns 99 stations across FM, AM, and DAB+ radio. SCA provides national sales representation for 34 regional radio stations. 

SCA broadcasts 93 free to air TV signals across regional Australia, reaching 2.7 million people a week, with Ten Network programming and advertising representation across regional QLD, southern NSW and regional Victoria, Seven Network in Tasmania, Seven and Ten in Darwin, Remote Central and Eastern Australia, and Seven, Nine and Ten in Broken Hill and Spencer Gulf. Sky News Regional will also be broadcast in 17 of SCA's regional markets across Victoria, Southern NSW and Queensland.

SCA operates LiSTNR, Australia's free audio destination for consumers housing radio, podcasts, music and news. 

SCA also provides Australian sales representation for global open audio platform SoundCloud and Sonos Radio. 

SCA's premium brands are supported by social media, live events and digital platforms that deliver national and local entertainment and news content.  

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