E-learning provider Online Education Services (OES) has shortlisted three agencies for its $20 million media pitch, AdNews reveals.
The shortlist includes incumbent Mediabrands, Havas Media and one other, AdNews understands.
Industry insiders suggest the account is unlikely to move from the incumbent. However, after Havas lost Kia at $12m in September the agency is expected to fight hard.
OES, owned by digital employment platform Seek and Australia’s Swinburne University, is essentially an online amalgamation offering courses from all the big universities on its global platform.
In January OES appointed Jaywing as its creative agency.
Last year SEEK appointed UM as its media agency. Initiative has held Swinburne University's media account for eight years.
The brand's offering has been questioned this year with a Guardian investigation revealing some courses use out-of-date prerecorded lectures and involve “no actual [live] teaching”, according to one academic.
“If you look at how these courses are marketed, people think they’re just clicking on an online course taught by a university and that’s not the case. It’s very misleading,” Molly Dragiewicz, a criminologist and domestic violence expert, told Guardian Australia.
Dragiewicz resigned from the Queensland University of Technology in 2019 in part over concerns about how a graduate certificate she designed was outsourced to OES.
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