Mike Sneesby has only just left the Nine building as CEO after what he called one of the “most challenging” years of his career.
But there was a period when life was a little more chilled.
When he was CEO of Stan there was time to visit viewers -literally- as this story published in 2018 relayed…
A Stan subscriber in Newtown was having so much trouble with his buffering that he tweeted to the Stan team, inviting them to come over for Nachos and Beer to check it out.
I’d like to formally invite a member of @StanAustralia to come watch TV with me, fix my service and try some delicious nachos at the same time. Guaranteed the best service will be my nachos. #stan #stanaustralia
— Sindy Sinn (@SindySinn) May 1, 2018
Stan CEO Mike Sneesby took him up on the offer. Literally.
Five of the guys from Stan, including brand ambassador Beau Ryan dressed in a Breaking Bad outfit popped over later that week to watch some TV and fix his problem.
On his illustrators blog Sindy Sinn (pictured front right) says, “In walks a guy in a full body hazmat suit. Having watched Breaking Bad on Stan I knew this man. This is Walter White. ‘We’re here for the pest extermination, mind if we bring in some equipment?’ He takes off his respirator gas-mask. It’s Beau Ryan. Then in comes the rest of the Stan team. Among them is Mike (pictured centre). Hugs and handshakes were exchanged. And I think we all relaxed as we realized none of us were serial killers.
“I showed them what was wrong with my Stan. Thankfully, it didn’t work. It played blurry and took ages to load. One of the team was their IT guru. He got stuck straight into the TV, while the rest of us got stuck into the killer nachos. Beth had nailed it. Meanwhile a computer flashed numbers and diagnostics, like some sort of hacker breaking into a crypto-safe. ‘We’re not leaving until this is fixed!’ Mike explained. I joked he could sleep on the couch if he needed.”
He added, “Mike told me about Stan and how it all started. He also told me about shows that were about to come out that nobody knows about yet (shh). And I talked about my art stuff, Young Henrys beer and how I’d recently found out my next door neighbour is a magician (that’s another story). Around 11ish, their guru Pranav has found and isolated some errors. It seems the Stan buffering blah-blah router algorithm blah blah code doesn’t like my modem. So they reveal a shiny new modem and Mike triumphantly stomps the old one to death and throws it into the bottom of the ice-watery esky.”
The gesture is already getting media attention online and radio.
Very cool.
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