Deep Dive

It’s not a normal forensic look at marketing sciences, agency structures or CMO tactics this week – instead we speak to four alumni of The Marketing Academy’s scholarship program, a yearly development program for 30 emerging leaders. Without exception, all of them rave about it being electrifying, transformative, emotional and raw. But why? BWS’ An Le, KFC’s Warren Mo, Edelman’s Fern Canning-Brook and former Broadsheet reader revenue director Skye Rugless detail how they changed before and after completing the program, what super chickens can teach about leading and why quiet leadership can be a big strength.

Journalists have long hated advertising and sales. Now Nine has a battle-hardened journo responsible for the P&L of its publishing division, joining the likes of John Hartigan, John Alexander and Greg Hywood as one of the few hacks in recent decades to be entrusted with the fortunes of an Australian news media empire. Having already triggered James Packer, James Chessell carefully espouses his views on News Corp’s corporate and editorial agenda, though jabs The Guardian for running “scared” of taking on risky, investigative stories. As the "once in a lifetime" Covid audience boost passes, can the one-time business journalist and masthead editor continue the renaissance of a sector once seen by some as a dead horse? Here’s his plan.

Creativity versus logic, Salesforce versus Adobe, consulting versus agencies, customer experience versus communications and consulting's reputation for cut and run on strategy-only were all themes up for discussion with Deloitte Digital's Australian boss Esan Tabrizi, in his first wide-ranging interview since leading the firm. Marketers and most agency groups, he says, lost a decade of capability and power to new corporate roles like Chief Digital and Customer Officers because they overlooked the tech and customer boom and focused too narrowly on advertising and communications when both were needed. But after nearly 15 years as Deloitte Digital, the firm is going full circle to embrace the left and right brain; rational, lower-risk business advisory is being coupled with a creative thinking culture – and much of the talent for this creative mission is coming from traditional advertising networks who couldn't get their old companies to broaden their services. Perhaps most interestingly, current CMOs and business generally have much to learn from government on CX and personalisation for citizens, says Tabrizi...who would have thought?

The circa $100m global tech event queen is back and smiling - after three years of covid-forced virtual experimentation, about 40,000 people flooded San Francisco last week, each paying US$2,000 to attend what is the world's biggest tech vendor event, the Salesforce-staged Dreamforce conference. Another 100,000 worldwide streamed in as global marketing, service, sales and customer pilgrims enthusiastically embraced tech evangelism by the high priests of B2B. Still,there are material changes underway - Salesforce is deliberately morphing into the Disneyland of tech, business branding and product with an armada of animated characters leading each of its products to build emotion and "distinctive assets", a radical departure from much of the historical, rational underpinnings of demand-generation tactics in B2B sales, marketing and events. Salesforce EVP Global Brand Marketing, Colin Fleming and former YouTube marketer and LinkedIn Global VP, Marketing Solutions Jim Habig joined up in San Francisco for this Mi3 doubleheader where like Fleming, Habig is also rewriting the B2B marketing rule book for more emotion and real people – not rational automations.Between them they're overhauling measurement, spurning "vanity metrics", reducing content by 30% and "preparing a funeral" for one of the biggest and lasting furphies in digital marketing – last-click and last-touch attribution. Finally.

The revolution in content and production that is sweeping through Hollywood studios and streaming services is hitting marketing – the surging content volumes brands need to create across multiple channels and screens is up at least 2,000 per cent in the past five years,reckons Richard Glasson, global CEO of WPP's booming production group, Hogarth. Reckitt Benckiser, for instance, has flagged a target of 80 per cent virtual production in 2023. As marketer budgets come under increasing pressure globally, Hogarth is betting its chips on artificial intelligence, automated content and virtual production, tipping Woolworths, Woolmark, Suncorp and Bayer as winners among its client stable. Glasson says virtual production cuts costs – he wouldn’t say by how much – and will rapidly become “the default way of producing work” in both Hollywood, advertising and broader brand-generated content, as CMOs manage demands across more channels to reach an increasingly fragmented consumer base. How does a marketer begin to think about the metaverse or Web3 with no extra budget, for example? A mix of smart creatives, automation, offshoring and “modular” production is a solution, says Hogarth Australia CEO Justin Ricketts. A recent campaign creating a blazing inferno and New York apartment in a single day in a Melbourne studio shows how it’s done.

Three weeks ago, Mi3 published a story covering Professor Byron Sharp's keynote address to the Mi3-LinkedIn B2B Next summit in Sydney. The story went global, sparking fierce debate and creating waves of pushback from advocates of Peter Field and Les Binet’s 60:40 rule and broader effectiveness work, and from proponents of attention metrics, including the likes of Amplified Intelligence in Australia and UK-based Lumen. Some commentators suggest Mi3 was intentionally stirring trouble. Given the intense interest around the provocative comments from one of the world's leading marketing academics, we decided to publish the audio of Prof. Sharp’s entire keynote untouched, unedited, and let the global community decide for itself. However, we did not obtain permission from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and have had to remove the audio. So below we've wrapped together some of the counter-arguments from the likes of Karen Nelson-Field, Mark Ritson, Mike Follett, James Hurman and Jon Waite.

Those that have crossed the agency-brand divide say agencies can be a little narrow in their understanding of marketing’s full business remit but more often than not, agency experience delivers sharper and faster results. Kia marketing boss Dean Norbiato, Nestlé's Anneliese Douglass, Tourism Australia's Susan Coghill and CMC Markets' Liam Loan-Lack unpack how agency experience has shaped their thinking and growth strategies – but warn brand-side is anything but an easier ride. 

In the midst of a cryptocurrency crash, Nine-owned Pedestrian Group, which has one of the largest 18-35 year-old audiences in the country with 4 million users, has launched its blockchain, Web3 and crypto publication, The Chainsaw, taking cues from Vice. Pedestrian knows 20 per cent of its readers are already invested in crypto or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and has trawled the globe for its launch team, some from deep in the blockchain underground. The Chainsaw will cover the business and culture of Web3 – and Pedestrian CEO Matt Rowley says there’s ample advertiser opportunity. Financial and tech brands are circling. There’s also potential for the ‘holy grail’ of publishing – integrated microtransactions and commerce, as well as high value subscriptions. For the moment, Head of Editorial Sam Howard, back from Silicon Valley, is set on building The Chainsaw’s readership and community. 

McDonald's’ Chief Customer Officer Chris Brown is less than two years into his first brand-side role after leading DDB New York and IPG’s R/GA and already he says his scope and understanding of marketing, customers and business impact have broadened dramatically. He took one of the country’s biggest marketing roles in late 2020 and has overseen a successful loyalty program launch and a new brand platform focusing on value, while maintaining the Australian business’s reputation as a global innovator – it created the McCafe brand back in 1993 and was the first market to do salads. Brown is mindful of rising economic volatility, hoping to convince two million-odd Aussie customers who walk through the doors of a franchise each day that it is a valued part of their lives, whatever else may be happening. Improving tech, new products and appealing to ‘flexitarians’ are on the agenda.