In the late 1980s, Michael Ebeid was a marketing executive at IBM Australia, where the global computing giant was debating whether retail customers would buy personal computers. “People were saying, ‘No one will ever need a PC at home. It’s for businesses only.’ We had to constantly challenge that thinking,” Ebeid says.
Later at Optus, the company was navigating the explosion in mobile phone use, and Ebeid, who ran commercial operations, was part of the debate about whether text messaging was really a thing.
Optus chairman Paul O’Sullivan, who worked closely with Ebeid during his decade at the telco, says he was pivotal in Optus’ shift from pay television to focus on cable internet.
“He’s got that unusual combination of being a good strategic thinker but also able to lead people and effect change,” O’Sullivan says. “You often get one and not the other.”
As head of corporate strategy and marketing at the ABC, Ebeid helped roll out the public broadcaster’s catch-up platform iview, a service that was years ahead of its commercial rivals.
Now, Ebeid, who describes himself as an introvert and an extrovert, depending on the situation, is managing director of SBS. Reflecting on his career, the always impeccably dressed Ebeid says the biggest contributor was being trusted by his bosses to drive technological change.
“What’s probably shaped me over the years is having bosses who have given me plenty of rope to put my ideas forward, to try different things, to experiment, to innovate, to be a change agent and challenge the status quo,” Ebeid says.
Differentiated offering
Ebeid is now looking to take the next step in a tough media environment. His dual challenge is to secure the next round of government funding and attract commercial revenue, which currently makes up about 26 per cent of the $380 million total budget. A large chunk of that commercial revenue comes from ads, although SBS is allowed to run no more than five minutes of ads per hour.
Getting the tick of approval from the SBS board in December, the new digital strategy will shift the broadcaster’s focus from its 6.30pm World News bulletin to putting stories on its digital platform the minute they’re ready to catch viewers on their mobile phones or laptops, as well as their TV screens, and entice them to explore the SBS content offering. SBS is hoping its differentiated offering, which involves more in-depth stories from all across the globe, will set it apart.
“People come to us for context, so we won’t just report on our evening news, say, ‘A bomb went off in Istanbul today’. We’ll say why, who, what was behind it or give context. What does it mean? If it’s a world event, what does it mean for Australia and for Australian communities here?” Ebeid says.
Ebeid’s enthusiasm for SBS is clear. The second son of Egyptian migrants moved to Australia when he was three. He remembers his father, despite speaking English well, listening to SBS’s Arabic language radio every morning.
“We set ourselves a pretty big ambition to triple digital consumption in the next three years,” Ebeid says. “We’re going to be investing a lot more in our digital platforms, and by digital platforms I mean SBS On Demand, radio, news, social [media channels]. Because of the things we’ve done over the last three years – where we’ve been experimenting and investing slowly, trying different things – we now have the confidence to almost double down on our digital investment.”
Snowball effect
Key to SBS succeeding in the new digital world is transforming from a television business that has had a one-to-many broadcast relationship to engaging individuals one-on-one. The strategy involves increasing the production of video and multimedia stories aligned to mobile consumption, and skilling journalists in multiplatform creation and delivery.
“We currently have about a million logins for SBS On Demand. We only started the logins on October 1 ... I want to get that to 5 million logins in the next couple of years,” Ebeid says.
Those logins and the details viewers put in are key to creating a snowball effect to get to 5 million sign-ups. The audience data will be valuable for SBS in building stronger commercial relationships with advertisers, but it will also help SBS market itself better to individuals.
“It’s about knowing who your audience is. We have a tremendous amount of data in our networks and platforms across the business, but up until now, we haven’t been really able to extract that data,” Ebeid says.
“It’s important so we can really recommend to you other things that we might have that you might not have seen and been exposed to and when we do get new dramas, new docos, et cetera, we will push that to you and have that relationship with you.”
Next great thing
For the past six years Ebeid has strived to make SBS a workplace where staff can feel confident enough to experiment. “I’ve had situations where things haven’t worked well here, but I’ve made a point of wanting to celebrate it because we gave it a good go. Yes, the audience might not have taken to it. The good example was when we first took over the [soccer] A-League.”
SBS created a Thursday night entertainment show around soccer, like The Footy Show for A-League. Ebeid says everything was done right in terms of the research and talent, but it simply didn’t get the ratings to keep going.
“I wanted to make sure that the people involved with that show should be congratulated for having tried something new. If you don’t do that, then people won’t dare to put their neck out and create the next great thing.”
SBS has even set up a Shark Tank-like program that enables all employees to pitch an idea to the company. “We created a fund internally to trial different things. We have a couple of directors that will hear pitches and if you’ve got a great idea, we’ll fund it to develop it a bit further and do a business case to decide whether we’ll invest in it or not.”
Ebeid is grilled regularly by politicians at Senate estimates. He often bats off questions about SBS’s existence, including from former ABC managing director Mark Scott, while other commentators question each decision being made on the taxpayer’s dollar.
But some of the most challenging questions come from within the organisation when Ebeid holds one-hour town hall sessions each month at SBS locations, with issues raised about budgets, strategy and content investments.
“People ask some pretty tough questions. Nothing is off-limits, which I think is really important.”
Culture project
According to staff surveys across SBS in 2010, before Ebeid’s 2011 appointment, staff engagement was low and there was low confidence in the senior leadership and the organisation generally.
The broadcaster was siloed. Television, radio, news, marketing and technology were kept separate and communication across the business was low. Staff engagement was at 40 per cent in 2010. It has now jumped to 80 per cent.
“The culture project was all about bringing SBS employees to believe in the one entity, believe in the fact that we have to go to market with one voice,” Ebeid says. “It was about unifying SBS under the umbrella of what we’re here to do, which is all about getting all Australians to understand and appreciate diversity. Whether you’re in news or any of those divisions, we had a common goal.”
Host of SBS’s Insight, Jenny Brockie, who has been at the public broadcaster since 2001, says Ebeid’s communication with staff has created confidence in the organisation. “Mike has fostered a really positive organisational culture at SBS. I think SBS is strong and focused under his leadership. He’s very good at communicating what his priorities are and what SBS’s role is and should be,” Brockie says.
As the final of the Eurovision 2017 Song Contest approaches, Ebeid recalls his three years of lobbying to get Australia into the competition. The event brings an audience of about 1 million viewers, making it SBS’s biggest outside the FIFA World Cup.
He approached the president of the European Broadcasting Union in Brussels, Belgium, to let Australia compete, but was knocked back again and again. The effort even involved Denmark’s Princess Mary, who is from Tasmania. Australia entered the contest for the first time in 2015.
“One thing I am disappointed about is [I’d like] to start a Eurovision Asia competition, we’ve been working really hard to get something up like Eurovision in our region,” Ebeid says.
“We’ve been working on it now for 18 months and due to the geopolitics of our area, we just haven’t been able to get it up. We haven’t quite given up on the idea, but we’re not actively pushing like we were.”
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