Miroma

John Petropoulos had a high-flying career at some of Australia’s leading media agencies, becoming CEO of buying and planning powerhouse Mindshare.

 

However, he decided to swap the corporate world to launch media barter business Miroma in Australia.

 

He explains how he plans to introduce a new concept to the Australian marketplace, with a little help from, among others, Shane Warne.

 

Can you explain a bit about the concept behind Miroma?

 

Miroma is involved in the corporate or media barter space – effectively, through our models, we help advertisers part pay for their media/marketing budgets and create new sales distribution opportunities for them.

 

Most marketers would have heard of this concept in conjunction with advertising, but for a lot of them it is filed under a possibility rather than a must-do for their brand or business.

 

It tends to be thought of as too complex. This may have been true 10 years ago, but now companies like Miroma are specialists in making this a robust, transparent, controllable way for brands to firstly increase their advertising budgets (anywhere between 10-20% is typical) and to secondly align and enhance their brand distribution strategies.

 

Realistically, barter has three main stakeholders in media trading; the client, the media agency and the media owner and must deliver value to all three – hence the necessity for a specialist like Miroma to be involved.

 

The realities are that businesses increasingly need a stimulus to drive growth or eradicate stock issues, and not all media inventory is sold. We connect the two to create that sales stimulus.

 

The main principle behind corporate barter is simple.

 

From the advertiser’s point of view barter should create the opportunity for advertisers to part pay for advertising using their goods or services, it should also add to the media plan through an increased media footprint and, finally, it adds value to product distribution strategies by opening up new sales channels.

 

Although simple in concept, it is like no other strategy in that it needs to be well thought out and pre-planned with all relevant stakeholders.

 

Alignment with existing sales/marketing and media strategies is a key so that the optimum benefit is achieved.

 

How did the opportunity to launch the business come about?

 

The business was launched 10 years ago in the UK. Miroma, in fact, shaped and improved existing models to suit all stakeholders, to the point where the market there utilises the barter model as a means for new business development and growth.

 

Australia was seen as an opportunity, as it was not too dissimilar to the UK: underutilised, misconceived thinking in the specialist service, a large advertising economy with similar clients that we have worked with in the UK, and a lack of marketing or media outcomes that would benefit advertisers.

 

The founders Marc Boyan and Michael Hindhaugh found the relevant partners (Shane Warne was one) and then put in place people like myself who are well versed in the local requirements of clients, media agencies and media owners.

 

Shane’s interest was that he thought the concept of corporate barter was a great idea and we thought, what better way to launch into the business community than with a high-profile personality like Shane?