Page 23 - AdNews Magazine May-June 2022

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A focus on growth
Nev Hasan is approaching his 10-year anniversary at Foxtel Media. We sit down with him to look back at his career so far, and goals for the future.
WORDS BY
MARIAM CHEIK-HUSSEIN
Foxtel Media’s Nev Hasan had woken up at 5am on the day of this interview to watch his football team, Tottenham, thrash Newcastle 5-1 in the Premier League.
Hasan, raised in North London, says football was, and remains, a big part of his life.
“It’s the core thing I used to play as a kid,” Hasan says. “I also got into rugby union and enjoyed playing that as well but my passion was always football. Like every kid, if I could have been a football player I would have.”
Instead, Hasan followed a career in the Australian media industry, first joining in 2006 and going on to become executive director of agency
sales at Foxtel Media. Hasan spent much of his childhood in Tottenham before mov- ing to Southgate and attending Ashmole Academy. Once he finished school, he moved to Manchester to attend Manchester Metropolitan University where he stud-
ied business management for three years.
“University at Manchester was brilliant because it was a change from
living at home and allowed me to be independent for the first time,” he says.
“It was an absolute brilliant experience. I wasn’t sure what to study so I went for the most generic course I could find, and it covered off a bit of everything such as law, marketing, and media. It was a nice way to round out a business management degree.”
After university, Hasan left the England to travel around Asia for four months and then arrived in Australia for what was meant to be a one-year stay. Instead, Hasan worked for two and a half years as a kitchen chef and received his residency, having previous experience in kitchens with his dad running cafes and restaurants back home.
Hasan then gained his first role in the Australian media industry at online affiliate marketing company DGM Australian in 2006.
“Once I arrived in Australia, my cousin who worked at OMD at the time introduced me to a lot of his friends, and the majority of them were all in media,” he says. “It just sounded like a really exciting platform to work in.
“It sounded like an opportunity to really do well in the Australian market.
“Listening to their stories, their experiences, and their roles was the first catalyst to really get me into the media industry. Then a friend, James Simmons at Match Media, heard of a role at DGM and put me in contact with them. That’s how I got my first foot in the door.”
After a year at DGM, Hasan then moved to Ninemsn as a sales executive. “When I first entered the industry, I was a digital native,” he says.
“I didn’t really have many expectations about the industry, I just knew