About two weeks ago an elite group of Australia’s blue chip marketers and media agency bosses signed NDAs and flew to Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley for a series of briefings no-one is allowed to talk about. Facebook-Meta perhaps for the first time in a decade, is under the pump in the ad business. Enter Sue Fennessy, the co-founder and former CEO of Standard Media Index (SMI), now owned by private equity. She's is building a social platform with an ultimate ambition of 80 million people getting paid to watch social ads but designed entirely upside down and inside out to the social friction that platforms like Facebook today engineer to drive eyeballs and engagement. Fennessy was the latest exec to address 20 CMOs at an invite-only Mi3-Accenture Song roundtable series, The Value Creators Forum, under Chatham House Rule.  

Former Commonwealth Bank chief Ian Narev, now CEO at Seek, popped more than a few industry bubbles with 20 CMOs at the latest invite-only Mi3-Accenture Song roundtable series, The Value Creators Forum (VCF). To ensure candour, Chatham House Rule applies, although Narev agreed to be quoted on some themes around talent trends and innovation at Seek, which has 11 million users a month and recently posted a 46.8 per cent revenue gain to $1.1bn for the 12 months to June. Narev says a key competitive play for Seek is its industrial-strength commitment to a no-share policy on user data and privacy. The Australian-founded, global jobs marketplace boss warns water-tight company positions ring-fencing user data will only escalate in coming years, reversing the assumptions and investments companies have made over the past decade in audience and customer profiling – outside their first party data assets.   

Nicky Sparshott, Unilever’s ANZ CEO, is the second high-profile company leader to headline an invite-only Mi3-Accenture Song roundtable series – The Value Creators Forum. To ensure candour, the conversation was under Chatham House Rule although Sparshott has agreed to be quoted on some of Unilever’s journey to purpose for its stable of 400 global brands. Sparshott says public attitudes in Australia have moved markedly in five years and Unilever wants to keep setting the pace for industry on the purpose nexus between profit, people and the planet. For their part, the 20 blue chip CMOs – Sparshott was one before her rise to the top – probed the merits of purposeful brands and the tension in brand versus corporate purpose. Here’s Mi3’s abridged account of the debate.

The widely regarded former CEO of IBM and Telstra and current chair of the $17bn tech darling Xero, payments group Tyro and the CSIRO, David Thodey (AO), opened the first of an invite-only six-part, Mi3-Accenture roundtable series – The Value Creators Forum – with 16 of Australia’s top CMOs. To ensure candour, there’s no names or attributing quotes under the Chatham House Rule, but the high-energy, robust debate traversed why boards, company leadership and brands and marketing are lagging the world in the global sustainability crisis. And more broadly, what’s holding back broader business innovation in Australia. Does marketing have a role to play and if so, why isn’t it? Here’s Mi3’s abridged account of the lively, three-hour dinner debate.