Southern Cross Austereo held its 2014 client and agency function at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, emphasising how the company's talent will engage with clients in a deeper way than ever before.

"We now have a roster of talent who are used to working with clients... they know how to put the commercial in commercial radio," said National Sales Director Andrea Ingham.

Southern Cross Austereo has embarked on a new investment and content partnership with Omny, the personal radio product launched in Australia late last year.

Omny allows mobile users to create their own personal radio experience made up of radio show content they love, news, sport and weather they need coupled with their favourite streamed or owned music, without the need to continually switch apps of streaming music providers.

Just last week Austereo informed the stock exchange that its CFO Steve Kelly would be stepping down. 

The sad news has come through that he has passed on. 

Southern Cross Austereo’s current Adelaide Sales Director Rick Tyrrell has moved to Brisbane as Agency Sales Director, commencing on 13 January.

Replacing Rick as Adelaide Sales Director is Rob Iannazzo. He joins SCA from the Australian Radio Network where he was Melbourne Sales Director and will commence in early 2014.

Both Rick Tyrrell and Rob Iannazzo will oversee teams selling the full portfolio of SCA assets including radio, television and digital.

The research team at Austereo has presented  the ‘6 key themes of the summer’, to help clients understand how to sell to customers who are in the holiday mood.

Southern Cross Austereo has delivered huge growth on Facebook to almost four million fans according to their latest digital results. The company has also experienced substantial growth on Twitter holding a 72% share of the Australian social radio market. 

View the full October digital results here.

Highlights include:

But their readers aren't buying it. Comment from Peter Saxon
 
SCA Chairman Max Moore Wilton – widely known as Max the Axe from his days as Secretary of The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in the Howard government – has a reputation to protect. He’s not backing down from his now infamous comment regarding what his company refers to as “The UK incident.”
 

Peter Saxon crashes the ARN party

As the ACRAs has grown in excitement and prestige, the After Party event which has surfaced in its wake, is emerging as the ultimate definer of who’s hot and who’s not. Or who’s cool and who’s not. No one has yet been able to explain to me how these opposites can mean exactly the same thing. Merely winning an ACRA is no longer enough to catapult you from nerdy intern to radio star. You need to be seen at the right after party.

The doom and gloom is over-hyped

According to SCA’s research, despite the ‘tough economic climate’ and plans to ‘tighten the belt’, 85% of consumers last year spent the same or more than they had in the previous year.

Last year nearly $40 billion was pumped into the economy during November and December, as consumers got into the spirit buying everything from groceries, to presents and decorations.