What you need to know:

• Former Zenith Media CEO Nickie Scriven has unveiled her next plans: Running a full-service agency and consultancy, Alchemy8, and a new community called Chief Meta Chicks.
• Scriven says she loved her time at Publicis-owned Zenith Media, where she worked for more than eight years. But eventually the time came to build something for herself. 
• As an agency, Alchemy8 will have a special focus on sonic brand identity. She is already working on a project with at least one client and reckons sonic branding has been overlooked, especially in the area of attention.

Former Zenith Media CEO Nickie Scriven has launched a full-service agency and marketing consultancy called Alchemy8 and is building a second venture - Chief Meta Chicks, a mentoring and tech start-up community for women.

Alchemy8’s website went live this week, describing the agency as one that “only employ(s) senior experienced business, marketing and media professionals” to build brand, develop brand strategy and identity, and provide insights, data and analytics. Scriven is working with at least one client already – she couldn’t say who – and expects to specialise in the area of sonic brand identity.

“I’ve gone back to my roots and my passion for branding and marketing, doing some consulting for clients,” Scriven said. “Start-ups often don’t know where to start when it comes to sourcing brand, marketing and media suppliers. I’m being engaged to be their brand custodian. I’m fast tracking that process for them.” 

Scriven spent eight years at Publicis-owned Zenith, first as Managing Director of Melbourne and as CEO for almost the past six years. Jason Tonelli has taken over as CEO of Zenith. Before that she worked in marketing at brands like AustralianSuper and NAB.

“I loved my time at Publicis. They were incredibly good to me, I had an awesome executive team, it was a fabulous experience for me, but I’m really enjoying building my own thing, having my own vision, putting my time into the areas I want to build,” Scriven said. “Being CEO of a multinational-owned agency is a pretty big gig. It can be quite stressful, I’m looking forward to having some time for myself, too.” 

Alchemy8 is starting with three staff and a network of partners and will source talent from her second venture, Chief Meta Chicks.

“Think business mentoring meets Shark Tank,” she said. “If you look at the current workforce, there are a lot of people doing side hustles wanting to do their own things, there’s constant churn in organisations, more people want more flexibility, want to do their own thing. Chief Meta Chicks as a community will address that.”

The two will complement each other, she said. When work comes into Alchemy8, it’ll be briefed into the Chief Marketing Chicks community, which is due to launch later this month. It will be run by a group of senior female leaders who’ve built businesses.

“Just wait until you meet by Chief Meta Chicks,” Scriven said.

Sonic brand building

Sound has been a missing piece of the puzzle for marketers looking to drive attention and results - hence Alchemy8’s focus on developing sonic brand identities.

“We’ve been obsessed with attention metrics and eye tracking. It’s fundamentally flawed as a measure – we need to measure impact. You need to look at subconscious processing, and that happens with sound,” Scriven said. 

“Our key area of specialisation is sonic brand identity. I’ve been speaking about it at different events. I partnered with [Neuro-Insight APAC CEO] Peter Pynta, I’m working with Southern Cross Austereo at the moment on a project."

Brands like Intel and Bunnings have used sonic branding hugely effectively, using melody, phrase and sound to drive recall and memory encoding, she said. But many brands have forgotten about the power of sonic branding, which is a big missed opportunity. 

"Think about the advertising landscape. Before Reels became a thing, we were talking videos, six seconds without sound," Scriven said.

"A lot of marketers got focused on video but they forgot about the impact of sound. They stopped investing in sonic brand identity, which is a major contributor to what drives attention.”