Deep Dive

Hipages Chief Customer Officer Stuart Tucker and VP of Marketing Nick Ellery say growing an online marketplace requires an entirely new suite of marketing, media, tech and data capabilities most don’t have. They have to build a B2B and B2C brand simultaneously and create and match demand and supply levels between households needing a tradesperson and tradies needing work – it’s loaded with tension. But a “transformational” investment in building the Hipages brand over the past three years has meant most of its household and commercial customers looking for tradies now go direct to Hipages instead of asking Google. This year Hipages is going granular on data, tech stacks, content marketing, CX and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to drive the next wave of growth – and investors are watching. 

A former Wesfarmers CFO, of all people, led the cull of the Kmart Tyre & Auto brand after 50 years in market but took on the challenge to rebuild as mycar's Chief Customer Officer, tasking a creative agency, TBWA, with full service CX, media and brand transformation. It worked: sales are up 23 per cent, at least since 2020. Now under Adele Coswello mycar is positioning for another major transition – electric vehicles – while bidding to steal share from free-spending pure-play rivals such as Bob Jane T-Marts and Ultra Tune. It's dropped a retail, up-sell focus and gone all out for 'people first’. Coswello and TBWA are building pop-up stores next to shopping centres, putting vans on the road to deliver mobile services while putting tech into its garages that give customers a stream of their cars' vital signs – and what's being done to keep them healthy. Meanwhile TBWA chief Paul Bradbury says moving into CX and media and taking on the consulting giants is the sweeping ambition for his firm.

“Once you start thinking you can do other people’s jobs, you’re screwed.” Big Red Group CEO David Anderson is smart enough to trust Chief Marketer Paul Connell and Chief Technology Officer Brent Rutherford to do theirs. They’re tasked with enabling and delivering one ‘experience’ a second by 2030. That’s 18x growth – while replatforming on the fly, consolidating five tech stacks via an overhaul that started badly. Luckily the new CTO is a former bridge builder, literally, and is laying the foundations to link disparate brands and systems that will sit behind a multibrand ecom platform that Anderson next year aims to take to Europe. Here’s how they are doing it.

Attention measurement has captured much of the ad industry’s focus in the past two years just as the out-of-home industry body, the OMA, was well into its roadmap to apply a “Neuro Impact Factor” to thousands of individual digital and static screens. Neuro-Insight, the firm behind the measurement system, has among the most robust, academically peer-reviewed advertising science worldwide – initially designed by Professor Richard Silberstein and neuroscientists at Swinburne University’s Brain Sciences Institute to understand brain behaviour among ADD and ADHD children. A year after launch and despite the science – real advertising science as its proponents argue – media agencies are dragging the chain on take-up, certainly versus emerging and scaled attention metrics. But here’s why the industry needs both and what should happen next.

From Mecca to General Pants and Telstra, the rise of customer experience management continues just as ecom pure plays are facing a new data point – physical retail is fighting back with faster growth this year. Last click attribution is also making a comeback for some while an overhaul of the privacy act is showing signals of what new consumer consent and disclosure could to do to industry. Here’s Mi3’s top tech stories for the year featuring Coles' Sam McLeod, Mecca's Sam Bain, Steggles and Lilydale's Yash Gandhi, The Iconic's ex-CMO Alexander Meyer, Salesforce' Colin Fleming and Jo Gaines, LinkedIn's Ryan Roslansky and Jim Habig, DocuSign's Andrea Dixon, Pet Circle's Jon Wild, IAG's Willem Paling, Kaimera's Nick Behr and Trent McMillan, Rokt's Bruce Buchanan, Mosaic Brands and Alquemie's Richard Facioni, CottonOn's Michaela Michaut, NSW University's Dr Katharine Kemp, Havas' Kevin Fernandes, Avenue C's Daniel Cutrone, Nunn Media's Pete Wilson, OMG's John Lynch, Match & Wood's Michael Wretham and Jonathan James on the peak of Silicon Valley's anti-marketing movement - growth hacking   

Retailer media made all the running in 2022, at least within Mi3's top 25 media stories of the year. The main TV networks copped flack for BVOD frequency capping fails, and seemingly struggled to agree on their marketplace masterplan. Meanwhile audience IDs became the new arms race, with News and Nine going head-to-head. Here's the big hitters, featuring: News Corp’s Pippa Leary and Suzie Cardwell, Nine’s Michael Stephenson and Liana Dubois, MCN’s Mark Frain, Seven’s Kurt Burnette, TikTok’s Brett Armstrong, Amplified Intelligence’s Prof. Karen Nelson-Field, OMA’s Charles Parry-Okeden, JCDecaux’s Essie Wake, Broadsheet’s Nick Shelton, Omnicom Media Group’s Peter Horgan, Cartology’s Mike Tyquin, Sonder’s Jonathan Hopkins, Uber’s Lucinda Barlow, Dentsu’ Mark Byrne, Hatched’s Jack Byrne and Coles 360’s Paul Brooks and Jess Torre – and more.

Local CMOs throwing off the shackles of global brand hegemony; online pureplay retailers finally realising Ritson was right on digital “horseshit”; a post-Covid loyalty marketing boom; strong signals that “traditional” marketing capabilities are being usurped and some major reputational rebuilds. Mi3’s top marketing stories for 2022 feature: Reckitt Benckiser’s Saurabh Jain, Arnott’s Jenni Dill, Tabcorp’s Jenni Barnett, ex-Iconic CMO Alexander Meyer, Telstra’s Brent Smart and Jeremy Nicholas, ex-Qantas turned Jetstar boss Steph Tully, CMC Markets’ Liam Loan-Lack, Noma’s Ben Liebmann, Salesforce’s Colin Fleming, McDonald’s Chris Brown, Australia Post’s Amber Collins and whatever the collective noun is for a clutch of marketing professors.

Crap briefs, a war on vanity metrics, feuding marketing professors, and marketers getting stuck into a bit of mess. Mi3’s top 25 stories – of more than a thousand read on the site this year – mirror industry’s key challenges and looming fears. Featuring: Tabcorp’s Jenni Barnett, Essence MediaCom’s Pat Crowley, Nine’s Liana Dubois, Dr Katherine Kemp, Johnny Ryan, WPP’s Katie Rigg-Smith, Coles 360’s Paul Brooks (twice); Effectiveness’ Peter Field, Salesforce’s Colin Fleming; Initiative’s Mel Fein, B2B Institute’s Pete Weinberg and Jon Lombardo, Better Brief’s Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler,  Previously Unavailable’s James Hurman, and Professors Karen Nelson-Field, Jenny Romaniuk, Mark Ritson and a pretty punchy Byron Sharp. Bookmark this one