Matt Bale has been a pivotal figure in New Zealand's advertising landscape for over two decades. From his early beginnings at Saatchi & Saatchi to co-founding MBM, one of the country's leading independent media agencies, his journey reflects a blend of innovation and resilience.
In this edition of Decoded, Matt delves into the challenges and triumphs of establishing MBM, the implications of AI in media and his vision for the future of advertising in a digitally driven world. His most recent endeavours include studying AI at Stanford and Youdooh – a platform democratising outdoor advertising. We even used it to book this billboard!
Kia ora, Matt! Tell us about your first steps into advertising – what drew you to it?
I initially wanted to be a journalist. That will seem hilarious to anyone who knows how bad my spelling is. I studied media and communications at Massey and was drawn to advertising like a moth to a flame. The technical aspects interested me – first editing and then messaging dissemination, which was undergoing a total revolution with the early 90s internet. My father was worried, I think, that I’d bum around after uni, so he got me an interview at Saatchi & Saatchi. So I’m a product of nepotism, well probably more correctly, the product of connections. I think they liked that I wanted to work in the media department. Most applicants wanted to be rockstar creatives or flashy suits in account management.
What did you do in that first job at Saatchi & Saatchi?
I started at the very bottom. Effectively my job was to man a dot matrix printer. Everyday at 10 am it would spit out all the TV ad spot ratings from the day before. I would then highlight each TV buyer's ad spot ratings, then manually input those into a spreadsheet so each buyer could see the overall performance of their TV ads. If the printer jammed or ran out of paper, I was toast, and this fact was made blatantly clear to me from day one.
From there, I managed to learn enough, work hard enough and show enough occasional sparks to progress in the media industry. It's been very good to me, and I’ve had excellent teachers, like John Dee, along the way.
What inspired you to start MBM?
By 2010, I’d spent 15 years in media in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. I had an opportunity to work overseas, but I was, in truth, becoming increasingly frustrated working for a multi-national agency group, who, to me at least, cared more about margins than the quality of the work and its success for our clients.
I wasn’t down on global holding companies, they had taught me how to run media businesses, but I just felt that I could do more if I was independent. Independent media agencies were an uncommon thing at that time. Most had been acquired in the 80s and 90s by the big globals. I was filled to the brim with ideas, but I needed a push to get started.
Where did that push to go independent come from?
Sean McCready – a friend who I first met back in the mid-90s at Saatchi & Saatchi – was in Auckland to do some media consulting. He called me up, said he was in town and we had lunch at Pravda Cafe on Customhouse Quay. He asked what my future plans were. I vomited out a ton of ideas, and he simply smiled, because, as it turned out, he wanted to set up an independent media agency business and really go after it. So literally at that very table, MBM was born.
What were MBM’s initial goals?
We saw a gap in the market for independent thinking that focussed on fusing the digital revolution with smart media strategy. We wanted to use client-centric philosophies to unlock the power of social media. I was obsessed with social media at the time from a media perspective. I knew it was out of Pandora's box and wasn’t going back in.
Sean and I had learned the advertising craft in a different era, before the artificial divide between media and creative agencies formed. We knew we could help unlock creativity via the media in the coming revolution. We knew how to truly collaborate and work with creatives to enhance a really good idea. The days of just buying spots and dots were at an end.
What were some of the biggest challenges in MBM’s early days?
Sean and I had good reputations, but building trust takes time when you’re looking after other people's money. We were a small but amazing team. We were hands-on, working all day, then ad-serving at night. We didn’t have media accreditation to buy traditional TV. In the early days we had to prove we could be true partners for clients and help them grow.
We also needed to create a network for client engagement. Independent creative agencies were crucial partners on this. I firmly believe magic happens at the intersection of creativity and media. We worked with agencies like Assignment, Sugar and Special Group to make it happen. Media owners supported us, trusting our no-nonsense yet innovative approach. Many were a bit mystified I think, but they trusted us. You can’t undervalue trust in business. For MBM it helped create a ~$145M a year turnover business by the time I exited in 2022.
You’ve been studying AI at Stanford – what got you started on that journey?
My interest in Artificial Intelligence came from my time in media. I was interested in social media and wanted to understand algorithms. Then I wanted to understand machine learning as it relates to search and programmatic media buying. This led me into the deep whirlpool of Artificial Intelligence. My timing was fortuitous once again. I was accepted into my Stanford study programme a month before ChatGPT broke like a wave upon the world, and interest in AI went through the roof.
Tell us about your work with Youdooh, what problem is it trying to solve?
Youdooh is the creation of Richard Pook and Bram Stevens. I’m just chiming in with ideas, but it stems from a simple observation – digital outdoor advertising spots, like billboards and bus shelters, are the domain of a few big brands. But New Zealand is a country of small and medium businesses.
There are currently around 3,000 outdoor screens here, but how to buy those spaces has been confusing. Do you go and talk to the owner of the screen? Or the dairy, for example, that it’s attached to? As a result, outdoor ad activities have not been a part of small business’s marketing plans.
Youdooh aims to democratise access to digital outdoor advertising, making it simple and accessible for local businesses, startups, and organisations to reach specific audiences in public spaces. You just choose the screen and the hours you want rather than buying a full week, so it’s much more affordable. Businesses can book space for as little as $50.
If you had to predict one major development in media over the next five years, what would it be?
There are three macro trends I keep thinking about. Firstly, I think media consumption will become increasingly tailored to individual preferences by combining advanced AI personalisation with immersive tech. I can see a media future, for example, in which you are watching a movie where you control the narrative, interact with characters, or explore alternate storylines based on your input.
Secondly, I think decentralised media ecosystems are on the horizon. I think creators will seek alternatives to centralised platforms like YouTube, Spotify and Instagram, which take significant revenue cuts and control content distribution. Decentralised platforms will allow creators to engage directly with their audiences and monetise that.
Finally, we might see generative AI tools increasingly assist human creators in producing films, music, art and articles. Entire scripts, characters and scenes might be created by AI, while human oversight might focus on curation rather than raw creation. AI-powered localisation might enable real-time dubbing or cultural adaptation of content for global audiences. I can also see automated newsrooms producing hyper-localised content at scale, perhaps allowing for the rebirth of local news. On the advertising front, agencies have already been undergoing their biggest reorganisation since the 1960s due to the digital remapping of entire workflows.
