Mediaconnect

In 2004, MediaConnect greatly increased the sophistication of the MediaConnect website, incorporating contact management tools that enable PR professionals to better manage their interactions with journalists. The first MediaConnect Forum event was held in Asia. The following year, saw a significant restructure of the MediaConnect business, with the Asian and Australian businesses becoming separately owned entities and Phil and Donna Sim taking full-ownership of the Australian operation, which was re-birthed as MediaConnect Australia. Meanwhile, MediaConnect Australia moved from its home in Crows Nest to a new lakeside-office in the burgeoning Norwest Business Park in Sydney's north-west. In 2007, MediaConnect Australian launched its PRWire service before launching a complete redevelopment of its software platform as a PR management tool in 2008. MediaConnect celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2010 with work well-under way for a major expansion of the business over the next couple of years. In 2011, MediaConnect re-launched its software platform under the Influencing brand and entered into a beta-period with expansion beyond its IT roots. It celebrated ten years of MediaConnect Forums and in 2012 hosted the tenth annual IT Journalism Awards. However, 2012 was most significant for the realisation of the vision as Australia's only end-to-end PR management platform. Launching a raft of tools that had been honed over a two-year testing period, Influencing became Australia's most advanced PR workflow solution offering media list management, news distribution, online monitoring, sophisticated reporting and much more. Meanwhile, its database grew to encompass more than 10,000 journalists and editorial contacts across more than 6,000 outlets and it has quickly become the engine driving many of Australia's largest and best PR agencies.