Marketing

Retailers are going harder and earlier in their quest to make the most of Black Friday, gambling on a larger share of the consumer dollar pool ahead of any economic green shoots forecast in the New Year. Execs from Freedom Furniture, David Jones and Woolworths MarketPlaces unpack why they’re stretching the concept of Black Friday from a four-day blitz to month-long bonanza despite fears of how relentless discounting and promotions hits consumer behaviour and expectations. Plus, what consumers are looking for.

Fifty per cent of consumers participating in Walmart’s car seat recycling program were net new customers for the retailer. BiC’s writing instruments and Royal Canin’s pet food packaging recycling programs opened up access and engagement with hard-to-reach but critical stakeholders. That’s the kind of demonstrable customer and sales value TerraCycle CEO and founder, Tom Szaky, says more marketing teams could be capturing if they leaned into waste management and recycling as less of a regulatory sustainability activity and more of a brand and business growth opportunity.

GroupM is making a major play for commerce revenues as retail media continues to rise. Ex-Amazon and IPG Mediabrands' Cadreon boss, Marc Lomas, is spearheading the play – along with former Goodman Fielder marketer Leah Jackson, who in her previous gig played a key role in handing trade marketing budgets as well as media to Initiative. Now at GroupM Commerce, the duo will be aiming to convince more brands to take a similar approach. But that requires proving incrementality – i.e. that media investments are leading to new sales and hard growth outcomes and linking measurement across all digital channels directly to the in-store shop floor. No mean feat, but Lomas, Jackson and Mindshare CEO Maria Grivas say they can do it.  First port of call? Busting measurement mind-sets away from “dumb” ROAS metrics, per Lomas. Then convincing more brands that an integrated operating model that aligns sales, marketing, brand, ecom and retail media should no longer be an outlier.

Virtual professor Mark Ritson reckons key strategic marketing planning functions face automation within five years or so. Marketing and its supply chain should prepare accordingly, though Ritson thinks creative agencies may survive a cull coming faster than many realise. With a hard swing to the right globally, he suggests sustainability and purpose are being rapidly downgraded – and only the "naive" now position the latter as a revenue driver. Big platforms have likewise pivoted to mass reach over pure personalisation – hoovering up what the virtual professor sees as an investment swing back to brand. Hence TV, especially locally, being overlooked despite continuing to deliver the goods, per Ritson: "I've never seen a bigger delta or disparity between how the tool [TV] continues to work very well for brands and how marketers look at it ... It's still a very strong medium."

Singles' Day, originally Alibaba's strategy of transferring Amazon's Black Friday sales to China, and now likely the biggest shopping down in the world, has gained significant traction in Australia, becoming a key player in the retail landscape as consumers gear up for the holiday shopping season. In 2024, retailers across the country capitalised on this growing trend, offering substantial promotions and discounts, thereby marking the event as a critical milestone in the festive shopping calendar. Despite its rising popularity, Singles' Day still lags behind Black Friday in consumer awareness, but retailers are steadily making their mark with enticing deals and early promotions.

Commbank’s push for high margin ad revenues from its owned media and data will likely see more banks, telcos, utilities, petrol-convenience stores and travel companies break cover – and could spur further acquisitions in the mould of Woolworths $150m swoop for screen network Shopper Media. Owned media specialist Sonder has just polled 50 global marketers across brands including Accor, BP, BT Group, Citibank, Emirates, Hertz, Hilton, ING, KFC, Marriott, Mastercard, NAB, Nokia, Shell, Tesco, Turkish Airlines, Verizon, Visa, Vodafone and Western Union – and their answers imply a doubling of owned media and first party data monetisation within two years. But the report also suggests some amateurish approaches could prove costly – especially if owned-retail-paid media converge.

Top digital marketing and customer execs at the fancied $22bn New Zealand appliances giant Fisher & Paykel are quick to acknowledge they were “just very lucky” to have had colleagues “passionate about getting the data right early on”. Because as AI deployments gather pace – along with corporate frustration – Fisher & Paykel has been able to test, adapt and deploy fast from bots to co-pilots and now autonomous AI agents. The business has been “hot” on clean data for some time, says Chief Digital Officer Rudi Khoury and General Manager of Digital Sarah Lukins, underpinning their confidence in early trials that autonomous AI agents powered by Salesforce’s “reasoning engine” will ultimately solve “80-90 per cent” of the company’s customer contact volumes at much higher satisfaction levels than today. It’s only part of the Fisher & Paykel plan for AI across marketing, customer service and ecommerce, but it’s where some of the early learning and gains are being made. 

Expect more structural upheaval in the $14bn ad market in the next 12-18 months as more corporates like Commonwealth Bank’s move this week to monetise owned media assets join retailers in carving out new touchpoints to customers, says Coles360 boss Paul Brooks. Broad consensus has retailer media growing 10-20 per cent at present and will exceed forecasts of a $1.6bn to $1.9bn pool by 2025.

Brands and publishers were put on notice yesterday that policing, fines and infringement notices are coming over the use, disclosure and consent required for tracking pixels on websites – and the likelihood that some user details in data matching and cleanroom processing is "personal information" and breaches current privacy legislation. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), which houses Australia's Privacy Commissioner, this week published new advice on pixels and personal information, ahead of an enforcement crackdown flagged last month in Mi3's podcast with Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind. The OAIC now has powers to impose substantial fines – up to $330,000 – and has signalled more aggressive policing. Privacy specialists urge brands and publishers to heed the warnings ahead of the new year.

Three years after taking on the daunting challenge of rebuilding respect for the AMP brand, Renee Howie has been lured by the appeal of a group-level executive role to join Insignia Financial as chief customer officer. It's a mega remit, spanning all traditional marketing functions through to digital, data, analytics, marketing, brand, customer analytics, government relations, media, public relations – and, overseeing the advice business, she’s also picking up a P&L. All of which comes under the watch of a recently installed CEO who’s future focused and chasing growth for an ASX-listed group that now managed $311bn in funds. As Howie tells Mi3, it was too rare an opportunity to pass up.

Use of generative AI by business decision-makers in the US doubled over the last 12 months with 72 per cent now utilising the technology weekly. It's a significant leap from just 37 per cent a year prior. This growing reliance on generative AI is accompanied by a dramatic increase in budgeting, with organisations planning to double their spending from an average of US$4.5 million in 2023 to an impressive US$10.3 million in 2024. As companies shift their focus from initial experimentation to strategic implementation, the potential of generative AI to drive efficiency and innovation is becoming increasingly clear, prompting executives to re-evaluate their investment strategies in pursuit of tangible returns on investment.

Nine is touting younger audiences on its total TV services, claiming one in three signed in viewers are millennials. It's gunning for more, per Director of 9Now and programming Hamish Turner, transforming content formats and programming efforts to keep the advertiser catnip incoming. Among its bets: Vertical video, shorter, personalised news formats, a willingness to embrace the intersection of data, product and tech – and more off-platform partnerships.

This year’s winner of the Australian Marketing Institute’s Certified Practising Marketer award, Paper + Spark’s Paul Everson, is in plenty of conversations right now, but reports a market afraid to commit to decisions as socio-economic uncertainty and short-termism persist. It’s not helping many marketers are either struggling to draw insights from data, or lack commercial nous to connect the dots to the business bottom line, he says – a big reason why skills development programs like Certified Practising Marketer are so critical to the industry. But with the core fundamentals of marketing as solid as ever – even with more channels and sophisticated terminology at our disposal – this experienced agency leader, marketing industry mentor and Uni lecturer is keen to see the industry embrace big M marketing with more confidence.

Australian accounting software powerhouse MYOB was a pioneer in the use of customer data platforms (CDPs) in Australia. Even a decade later, the technology is still delivering new and impressive benefits, and equipping the brand for a new stage of technology innovation: Personalisation at scale.

There were audible gasps when the Treasury Wine Estates board saw the first non-red Penfolds Grange gift box designed by creative collaborator, Japanese artist, Nigo, earmarked for the ever-younger luxury market. But as chief data and technology officer, Kate Whitney, points out, all the consumer insights, demand zone mapping, consumption occasion trends, moments and retail markers make it plain: Disrupting the wine category by building cultural credibility and meeting changing retail experience expectations is critical if Penfolds is to win against declining wine preferences. The former CMO joined Mad Paws CEO, Justus Hammer, plus FiftyFive5 head of cultural forecasting, Michelle Newton, to debate the facets of future retail and changing consumer views of value on a panel at the recent SXSW Sydney event.

It is a mistake to pit the priorities of online safety against those of online privacy, and many of the people who do so represent the interests of giant digital platforms that promote the idea of a decentralised open web, despite having enclosed and centralised control of that same global infrastructure. That was a key message from Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, lawyer and human rights activist Lizzie O'Shea, and UNSW Criminology Professor Michael Salter at SXSW last week. The "data extractive business models" of digital giants came under heavy fire and limiting those models was described as the best way to limit privacy and safety harms by removing the economic incentives that underpin "surveillance capitalism."

Greenhushing versus greenwashing: How companies tout their sustainability progress is increasingly a binary argument as they balance the risk of saying nothing at all with regulatory and consumer retribution for ego marketing or making claims they can’t evidentially back up. Which is why the AANA’s CEO Josh Faulks says its newly updated Environmental Claims Code was so important to get into the advertising industry’s hands sooner rather than later.

Clear career goals, an insatiable desire to lean in and learn new skills, and mentorship have all helped emerging marketing and business leaders from ANZ Bank and Move Bank to be recognised in this year’s this year’s Australian Marketing Institute's Marketing Excellence awards program. And their passion for marketing as both a growth engine and as a team sport could teach other brands a thing or two.

Personalised Plates Queensland (PPQ) has overhauled its data-driven approach to marketing on top of a new platform implementation built upon Tealium, Dotdigital and Craft CRM. It's part of a wider change which has also seen the creation of a digital experience team inside the group. And they are getting wins on the board with strong conversion rates and much higher visibility over the audience thanks to much more sophisticated approach to analytics.

Ill-conceived KPIs have led marketers down the murky path of less-than-informed consent. Now regulators are mobilising and it's time to ditch old-world data sets and processes, say those in the know from Qantas, Choice and ADMA. Clinging on to business as usual will prove highly risky, they warn, and tougher enforcement is coming sooner rather than later.

There's an urgency to dealing with the world's climate crisis, but can the ad industry drive actual change? At SXSW, 42North Consulting's Kiranpreet Kaur Dhillon and B Lab Australia's Andrew Davies shared why they don't believe the compulsion for claims is a good idea for brands anymore – and what they believe is the story necessary for advertisers and agencies to tell when it comes to climate.

Qantas' brand has taken a roasting in recent years. But thanks to artificial intelligence, it's no longer serving up dry chicken. Since taking the helm from Alan Joyce, new chief Vanessa Hudson has made customer experience key to the trust rebuild – and AI is playing an increasing role. Scott Wilkinson, executive manager, digital and direct customer experience, outlined three early CX use cases during a panel discussion at SXSW this week: Ticketing; giving customer agents additional firepower; and spotting and solving problems and complaints – e.g. paltry poultry – as they emerge rather than months later.

Travel is now surpassing pre-pandemic levels – even amid an economic crunch – and airports are looking to up their CX act with millions in Capex outlay to refine the terminal experience. JCDecaux has taken the wrappers off a new ‘connected journey’ media buying proposition across Australian airports for brands plus new program options that go beyond the screen. With the final arrival of Move 2.0, it’s not just the OOH provider’s CEO who sees a more compelling full-funnel narrative in his sights – agencies are welcoming on the flight to better outcomes for brands.

If you’re in a marketing team still attempting to crack how AI can be deployed safely, effectively, and efficiently with some scale and real ROI scenarios, saddle up to an industry peer in the next six months who’s road-testing the “no code” drag-and-drop templates and process-collapsing, easy-build, AI capability claims launched last month by Salesforce across its multiple cloud offers. The customer tech giant this week is on the Australian leg of its “World Tour” to 3000 delegates and such is the pitch - that it has simplified and revolutionised “applied AI” for businesses that have struggled so far to cut through their hallucinogenic concerns and deployment complexity - that all industry eyes and ears in the next six months should be on whether early users agree with the bold claims pasted on the Salesforce can.

Concern is mounting that firms are deprioritising data and privacy compliance after a weaker than anticipated first tranche of legislation. The worry is it’s eroding gains marketers had built with cross-functional peers and the board. The Privacy Commissioner, ADMA, Clayton Utz, Civic Data, Data Synergies and marketers on why taking the foot off the gas is a big mistake – and the grey areas that now require immediate attention.

In the last six months, Salesforce ANZ chief Frank Fillmann has met 70 Australian CEOs. They're facing pressure to move on AI from four sides, but he says leading with cost-out won’t relieve that pressure. Leading with experience will. That’s what Hipages is now doing, cutting tradie onboarding from an hour to 10 minutes. Likewise Fisher & Paykel is using autonomous agents to cull service enquiries by 30 per cent, freeing 3,300 hours a month. Which means cost out, employee experience in, and customer experience wins. The trade-off between cost efficiency and experience, reckons Fillmann, “is rapidly becoming a myth.”