Can't make every session at SxSW Sydney? Fear not. The Mi3 team is on the ground with this daily wrap of bits, bytes and banter from SxSW sessions, speakers and conversations each day. Here's the latest of Mi3 dispatches from Thursday 19 October.

CMOs are too wrapped up in executional capabilities and aren’t spending enough time on the most important lever they have for building brand: creative capability, Telstra’s Brent Smart says. The comments arose as part of a panel at SxSW also featuring the CMOs of CommBank and Canva that explored brand innovation, trust and storytelling. And it comes just days after Smart unveiled a new one-bill, two-pronged creative agency line-up coupling the flair of an indie player with a larger networked business able to support the size and stature of Australia’s largest telco.

Arguably Australia’s greatest advertising export reckons the industry needs to kick its anxiety about Gen AI and focus on how machines can enhance, rather than hinder, the creative industry. In a forthright and punchy conversation with marketing consultant, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers and UN Global Compact Network Australia Non-Executive Director Sunita Gloster, Accenture Song CEO David Droga urged creatives to take off the rose-tinted glasses and embrace how tech can power their roles. If not, they should leave advertising. There have been a lot of sessions at SxSW Sydney about Gen AI and whether it is a force for good or evil, but Droga reckons it’s not binary. He called out the “self-inflicted” damage of “garbage” TV advertising and reckons that Gen AI will weed out mediocrity, but also elevate the need for distinctive creativity. One of adland’s great thinkers also reckons he should run for PM.

The underinvestment in brand building in Australia is a "criminal indictment" marketers should fess up to, says Analytic Partners MD. But as a panel of marketers at SxSW Sydney demonstrated, it’s not the only problem with the way marketers are utilising insights and science in combination with the art of marketing to drive true effectiveness.

Can't make every session at SxSW Sydney? Fear not. The Mi3 team is on the ground with this daily wrap of bits, bytes and banter from SxSW sessions, speakers and conversations each day. Here's the latest of Mi3 dispatches from Wednesday 18 October.

With a few disgruntled exceptions, most advertisers and media buyers exited Sydney’s International Convention Centre last night after Seven’s “massive” Upfronts pitch, relieved that it fell well short of a two-hour epic and cautiously upbeat about an AI-laden rollout of initiatives and all-screen sporting rights that Chief Revenue Officer Kurt Burnette declared was the “biggest news of any upfronts” and the “biggest change-up to sports rights in history”. The snappy event was the first for former Optus CMO Mel Hopkins, who as the show’s Executive Producer and Seven’s new-ish Chief Marketing & Audience Officer, beseeched a few thousand to keep an open mind as she channeled her past life in the audience as a customer of Seven “intrigued … and perhaps a little skeptical”. 

By putting their heads together and aligning behind brand, marketing and people leaders have the power to deliver significant impact, growth and differentiation for an organisation. It’s a functional alignment that’s even more critical when times get tough or that complex M&A deal is underway, CBRE’s people chief and Deloitte’s former CMO agree. But it’s an alignment that’s still lagging, if the discrepancies between external and internal brand work is anything to go by, Landor & Fitch says.

Seven this year made the biggest overhaul of its Upfronts format in decades, going all-in on SxSW sponsorship and a week-long program. Chief Revenue Officer Kurt Burnette had to sweat hard to get the investment over the line with the board in a bid to put Seven at the heart of the creative-tech nexus – and blow domestic and international rivals out of the water. But CEO James Warburton backed him all the way and the network yesterday used the platform – packed with marketers and the media supply chain – to unveil its Phoenix total trading system, a major push into personalisation and, per Burnette, "guaranteed outcomes" for advertisers that he boldly claimed signals "the death of make-goods".

Virgin senior marketing manager Patrick Millington Buck claims he's hit on a win-win-win formula for the airline, its partner and fans alike with its AFL deal. He's blending Binet and Field's brand to demand rule of thumb, mixing in some revenue sharing affiliate deals with AFL club partners, and then connecting players and fans flying to games on its flights – hitting the socials fast and hard.

Uber’s marketing team used a SxSW session yesterday for a stealth upfronts pitch for its burgeoning Uber Ads business but it was APAC marketing boss Andy Morley’s unequivocal backing of attention metrics over long-entrenched industry convention for audience reach and frequency measures when choosing media that will likely trigger some navel gazing among his marketing peers – and their media agencies. 

The future of Web 3 is open data enabling consumers to control what information they share and who they share it with. It’s a progression that could finally give brands the key to understanding the things that matter most to their customers, per several pundits speaking at this year’s SXSW Sydney event. But gaining loyalty off the back of such insight will only be achieved if brands are willing to also embrace the two-way value exchange, partnerships and experiences required along with it.

Can't make every session at SxSW Sydney? Fear not. The Mi3 team is on the ground with this daily wrap of bits, bytes and banter from SxSW sessions, speakers and conversations each day. Here's the latest of Mi3 dispatches from Tuesday 17 October.

One of the world’s leading futurists has warned that the rush to embrace Gen AI could place too much power in the hands of very few tech giants. The upshot is that search could be replaced by a frictionless system where technology provides all of the answers without human interrogation. For brands, a catastrophic outcome could see the erosion of choice and human marketing. For society, the stakes are even higher and our lives can be materially different and much worse in ways that are largely invisible. Amy Webb, founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute, described this dystopian scenario as living with 5,000 papercuts in a constant recommendation loop that replaces our agency to choose what we like with blandness, such as terrible ‘smooth jazz’ conference music on repeat.

Australia's failed Voice to Parliament referendum, along with the horrors of war in the Middle East and in Ukraine have brought the issue of misinformation and disinformation back to the centre of digital industry debate. But digital giants and social media platforms now also face heat over their failure to adequately address the distribution of child sexual abuse content, with Australia's eSafety commissioner issuing X with a $610,000 infringement notice for failure to provide the regulator with the information it requested. The damage could swell to tens, potentially hundreds, of millions of dollars if the courts get involved. Google is also on notice and has been issued with a formal warning. This lack of care and transparency is par for the course, according to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who told SxSW that Facebook had to rely on Twitter data from external researchers to identify misinformation being deployed on its own platform.

Can't make every session at SxSW Sydney? Fear not. The Mi3 team is on the ground with this daily wrap of bits, bytes and banter from SxSW sessions, speakers and conversations each day. Here's the first of Mi3 dispatches from Monday 16 October.