Page 24 - AdNews Magazine May-June 2022

Profil
it would be hard work. It'd be some- thing where I would learn some- thing new daily, and it just seemed really exciting. Particularly in digital because going that far back, digital was just starting to carve its niche in the marketplace. It wasn't the known media, print and TV was still the dominant one.
“So, digital was the challenger brand, it was the new kid on the block. They had lots of acronyms, really cool technology, and it was really enjoyable.”
After working at Ninemsn, Hasan then joined Yahoo! In 2010 as senior account manager and then Yahoo!7 in 2011. At Yahoo!7 he worked within the SMG RED team as integrated business manager.
In this role, he was the digital lead for the SMG RED team for Yahoo!.
“I did a little bit of integration work at Ninemsn but at Yahoo!7 it was the first time where I solely worked on integrated responses across TV, magazine, and digital,” Hasan says.
“I really enjoyed it, realising what the media opportunities could be in terms of execution, all the different types of budgets, the different clients, their different KPIs and really working closely within that SMG RED team. And then within Channel 7 as well, I made some really good friends who are still colleagues today from working within that role. So, I absolutely loved that job.”
“I worked with Josh Martin who was just brilliant from a leadership perspective. He was always push- ing me to learn more, do more. The fun bit about the SMG role was, depending on how you look at it, being the digital player, we had to fight to get onto the brief and actu- ally drive decent revenue opportu- nity because again, print and TV were a dominant media.
“You really had to cut your teeth into challenging the status quo within that group, defining why digital needs to be on the plan and why it needs a larger share based on its audience profile, the execution, the output, et cetera. I absolutely loved that role.”
Hasan says it’s only in the last five years digital has become more prominent to become seen as a must-have on briefs.
“That’s really accelerated in the last three years, especially within the video landscape,” he says.
“Six years ago, I think people realised if you didn't have a digital strat- egy or digital wasn't part of your media mix, you were definitely missing out. That’s evolved to the point where it wasn't a ‘why digital?’, it was you need to have digital. In the last three years, the acceleration with BVOD and the way that video is becoming such an integrated part of day-to-day life from a consumer perspective, it’s made it, although TV is still a huge medium outright.”
Throughout his career, Hasan notes a few other industry people he has learned from, including Orchard managing partner Andrew Antoniou. “Antoniou was prominent throughout my career, he is one of my best friends in that respect. To have a sounding board to ask stupid questions,
how you manage challenging situations was great to have,” he says.
“I also have to call out my old boss Nick Young who I worked with at Ninemsn. Young asked me to come and join MCN at the time. I spent about six years working with him during that time and he progressively helped me evolve within my role from Ninemsn to today. He's been a big influence
in that respect.”
Hasan joined MCN, now Foxtel Media, in 2012 as digital group sales
manager, working his way up to become director of advanced advertising in 2018. The following year, MCN was rebranded to Foxtel Media after its contract with Network 10 ended.
“I’ve seen a lot of change within this business and that’s been bril- liant,” he says.
“When I joined the business, we were bringing on Telstra’s media assets that we were going to represent. It was the first time MCN as a business had a big digital play with all the Foxtel assets and all of the Telstra Media assets, which include AFL and NRL.
“So it was a really exciting time to join the business because we actually built the sales team within Foxtel Media. We onboarded a lot of new talent, the product, operations, and it was almost like we were a start-up within an established company. We could take risks and we were very much driving an agenda within the company which they've never had before.
“Don’t get me wrong, MCN/Foxtel Media had its challenges, but it was a fun time. When you're having to manage rumours of losing networks or Ten's going to disengage, and people are potentially going to lose their roles, that's hard. That's hard to manage, but overall it was a really exciting time to be part of the organisation.”
Hasan stepped into his current role as executive director of agency