What you need to know:

• Situational analysis, rethinking segmentation a big piece of work redoing its capability building media models are on the priority list for ANZ in the face of the sweeping number of macroeconomic forces and changes in consumer content consumption and behaviours, says executive manager for marketing capability, Kate Young.
• The marketer was speaking on a panel at the first in a new series of events for marketers run by the AMI and ThinkNewsBrands alongside 3AW radio cohost and adman Russel Howcroft and ThinkNewsBrands CEO Vanessa Lyons.
• Agreeing media consumption is nothing like what it used to be, Howcroft questioned whether it even has a ceiling anymore, noting “It’s just more is more. That does make it very tough if you're a marketer. But that seems to be more the reality than taking away from one media.”
• All this raises the question of how brands find and value engagement against the different types of attention and focus placed on content across channels – as well as the reality of double or triple screening. That’s where distinctiveness and two-way engagement is vital for ANZ, Young said
• Which led the conversation into to a debate as to whether marketers continue to spend their dollars in digital and social channels that are increasingly less trusted if they’re after more brand trust.  
• For all panellists and several audience members, supporting premium local media is critical. But Howcroft said it’s up to corporate Australia to make the conscious decision to spend their ad dollars that way – not the agencies. “For me, what’s very important is there is investment by corporate Australia into Australian news businesses. Because if there isn't, the big dark cloud that is global tech companies is just going to get bigger and take more and more. We have to almost make a conscious decision that is what's going to happen unless we make a conscious decision to not let that happen.”

Marketers need to up their game on analysing macro-economic forces and rapidly changing consumption of media if they want to keep up with consumers, achieve cut through, build trust and thereby ensure maximum effectiveness of their programs and activities. But they’re also going to need to stop believing less trusted digital channels carry all the audiences or are more brand suitable and recognise the power of trusted, premium news media in the mix if they’re going to get there.

That was the consensus across panellists speaking at last week’s Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) and ThinkNewsBrands event in Melbourne on Navigating New Frontiers. The event is part of a Marketing Perspective Series run by the AMI in partnership with the premium news advocacy and research body.

In response to a question on how to navigate all the macro forces facing business and consumers right now – inflation, cost-of-living crisis, budget squeezes, global political unrest to name a few –  executive manager, marketing strategy and capability, Kate Young, said it was critical marketers get on top of their situational analysis.

“You need to be understanding how that's impacting consumers. You need thinking about how consumers are changing the way they're interacting with brands in order to actually shift and pivot your strategies to be effective for growth,” she told attendees.

Spot the growth opportunities and adapt

For fellow panellist, 3AW Breakfast radio co-host and marketing expert, Russel Howcroft, it’s also about how marketers make sure they truly understand those shifts in the market more broadly “to work out where growth might come from in the future, which may not be the same as the previous couple of years”.

By way of an example, Howcroft flagged the opportunity presented by Australia’s growing and dynamic culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data, 51.5 per cent of the nation’s citizens were either born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas, making them first or second-generation multicultural Australians. In the last financial year, 1.1 million new migrants entered Australia, the second-highest number in history.

“If you're in media or the business of selling something, that's one million more mouths that have to be fed. That's a million more people that have to be housed. It's a million more people having to read the newspaper, and a million more people that consume whatever it is we want them to consume,” said Howcroft, suggesting nowhere near enough effort is going into understanding these new customer clusters.

“That is a massive opportunity. And yet I haven't really heard anyone talk about it at length. That is one million more people who are going to demand what it is we have to offer. What an opportunity.”

It's also an argument for why current segmentations need constantly fine-tuning, Young continued.

“Organisations probably need to get really big on re-segmenting what the market opportunity actually is. A lot of the time when you've just talked about a million people coming into Australia needing what we’re selling, how are we actually better understand those people and not just staying wedded to old classifications or segmentations that have maybe existed for five years?” she said.

It was a comment welcomed by panel moderator, ThinkNewsBrands CEO Vanessa Lyons, who reflected on the strength of thinking audience first, reach second.

“I love that we've started talking about audiences already in a much broader scale than just a demographic profile,” she commented. “The number of times and even from former marketing roles, we’d all talk about being audience led, yet we very quickly flip in terms of defining things.”

Content consumption doesn’t have a ceiling

Which brought the conversation swiftly into media. One of the areas where changing consumer behaviour is strikingly exhibited is in the consumption of content across media channels and platforms. In her work building marketing capability within ANZ, Young has been investigating what are the top skills and insights for professional development and admitted she’s struggling to keep up with both changing media channels and consumption patterns.

“When you talk about platforms and media, we’re doing a really big piece of work at the moment redoing our media model. What's really interesting about that work is pretty much we get it right and think we're done, then I've got to redo it because the platforms and the way content is being consumed is changing,” she said.

“Just when we think we've got our strategies right and training content right, we haven't. What I would say is yes, we are constantly looking at that. We are now wanting to be a little more anticipatory around what the future might look like in terms of how marketers prepare investment and do the best work when it comes to understanding platforms.”

Howcroft quoted Harold Mitchell, who used to say: ‘It's eight hours for sleep, eight hours for work and eight hours to consume media”.

“The media competition was for the eight hours – the media competition for money, the competition for eyeballs… But people in their 30s? You've got to be joking. It's 16 hours of media and eight hours of sleep,” he said.

Howcroft in fact questioned whether media consumption even has a ceiling anymore. “When you think about where you put your money and your effort, increasingly you point it everywhere because people are consuming everywhere,” he said.

Take a conversation around a podcast and that getting in the way of someone, or taking up time some previously used to listen to the radio. “You might initially think it's radio because podcast is audio. That's just not true. Radio in the Melbourne market has stayed basically flat. A million people listen to the radio every single morning, it's always been the case. So it hasn't come from there,” he said.  

“It’s just more is more. That does make it very tough if you're a marketer. But that seems to be more the reality than taking away from one media.”

Prioritising two-way engagement and trust

All this raises the question of how brands find and value engagement against the different types of attention and focus placed on content across channels – as well as the reality of double or triple screening. That’s where distinctiveness and two-way engagement is vital for ANZ, Young said. With consumers arguably considering banks to be pretty similar at first glance, ANZ needs to show up in a way that’s distinctive and meaningful.  

“We need to do something that’s more about engagement and use channels effectively to enable engagement, conversations and something a bit more two-way than what we have done in the past,” she said. “Because if you are watching MAFS [Married at First Sight], and the ads come on, you probably will go make a cup of tea.”

Young also noted the need to attain brand trust has been elevated in the banking sector. “Trust, certainly in banking, is a pinnacle of what we do. If we don't have trust, we know we’ll struggle to be in the consideration set to acquire customers and equally to retain them,” she said.

“But it’s also about recognising the things that might be impacting trust you can't control as well. That's just a really interesting sort of thing to think about. If there is something that happens in the macro environment that means that trust over all goes down for all the banks, how much mitigation strategy do we need to do? I'm not saying you don't. I'm just saying that a consciousness around what the metric is actually caused by what those fluctuations might look like, where are you actually going to invest? Where are you going to spend your time and effort, and in what channels to continue to build that trust?”

Trusted media over platforms

The comment quickly led to a debate as to whether marketers continue to spend their dollars in digital and social channels that are increasingly less trusted if they’re after more brand trust.

Howcroft acknowledged the importance of being in trusted premium news and mainstream media and took it a step further, calling on corporate Australia spending the dollars on advertising to do a better job of supporting local media outlets and trusted media channels.

“I do think there's a conscious decision that needs to be made about how much you're prepared to put into media which may not be as trusted,” he said. “I genuinely think that is a corporate call. Part of that corporate call is this: Is it important that there are strong Australian media companies? Is it important that there are strong Australian news outlets? I do think there is a corporate decision that needs to be made around that. Maybe that is a subjective point of view. I'm not so sure however, I would always say that.

“For me, what’s very important is there is investment by corporate Australia into Australian news businesses. Because if there isn't, the big dark cloud that is global tech companies is just going to get bigger and take more and more or more. We have to almost make a conscious decision that is what's going to happen unless we make a conscious decision to not let that happen.”

And it needs to be the advertiser's call, not the media agency's call, Howcroft added, referencing the recent US Senate Collusion in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media hearing on why big agencies are supporting Meta. In the hearing, GroupM chief, Christian Juhl, said the reason media agencies aren’t investing in news media and vetted media environments is because advertisers feel their audiences are elsewhere and don’t want to be next to potentially negative news story content. As a result globally, only 1.28 per cent of brand spend is allocated to online news media.

Yet both panellists and attendees at the AMI event agreed local media was an important part of society and needed support.

“With respect to the media agencies, the corporate needs to say 'no, we need to make sure money goes to X [publishers, i.e. news]'. Now I know it used to be simpler and life was easier. But in the end, it's the advertisers’ money. They can influence where it goes,” Howcroft said.

Lyons also questioned whether this blanket ban on advertising in trusted news media and “brand suitability” argument, which led to other less trusted channels gaining more and more ad dollars, was a contradictory concept of risk.

“If it's up to advertisers to have a conversation, you can't be calling the pot calling the kettle black. You can't be going, let's go into fake or unvetted environments knowingly, then do the opposite in another environment,” she said.