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With CMOs increasingly at home in the global corporate c-suite, marketing can expect to have much more influence and accountability, says a key Infosys executive. Part of the reason is AI, which means it's time to cozy up even more closely to the CIO. But as marketing leaders make hard technology choices that balance the power of centralised stacks with the growing flexibility of composable technology architectures (basically plug and play) Infosys believes there is a big opportunity to develop a marketing orchestration layer sitting inbetween powerful, easy-to-use desktop martech, and the complexity of the data analytics layer.

Sentiment among publishers is swinging away from the Albanese government backing-up its assertive tone six months ago to take action against Meta and ‘designate’ the social platform after it announced it would not renew circa $75m in funding deals to media companies under laws introduced by the Coalition government in 2021. 

It’s had to revise projected unit sales figures down from 7,000 annually because of the economic climate, Australia’s competitive, nuanced automotive market and changing EV regulations, and it’s faced early challenges with product reliability globally and a digital sales process locally. But the team behind Volkswagen-owned Cupra are sticking to their ambitions of becoming a design and performance-led brand either loved or hated by consumers – never just liked. Cupra’s global brand chief, Ignacio Prieto, EVP of sales, marketing and aftersales, Sven Schuwirth, and Australian director, Ben Wilks, share the inspiration and story behind the latest car brand on the Australian block, how they’re balancing brand distinctiveness and design with local flavour, commercial setbacks thus far and the tribal community and performance play they’re executing to win over a nuanced set of younger-than-average car buyers who still enjoy driving, not being driven.

More than 12 months after the publication of the Murphy report, the Albanese Government faces mounting pressure from all sides of politics to hand down a blanket ban on gambling advertising. A total ban could slash up to $300 million in annual advertising revenue from Australian media owners, with TV having the most to lose – already the anticipation of a crackdown on gambling ads in the wake of the Murphy report has seen $40 million dollars leak from Nine and Seven alone. While NDAs have kept official commentary to a minimum, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has spent the last week meeting with stakeholders to share the Fed's proposed reforms. So far, it seems a comprehensive ban won't be on the cards, with indications Government is willing to provide concessions to Australia's already struggling free-to-air broadcasters in a time of "diabolical trouble" per Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten. Yet it seems that no one is happy with what's on the table so far. 

Chief economists at NAB and AMP have flagged Australia’s low unemployment rate as critical to current consumer confidence while low economic growth hovers above recessionary levels. The threat of incoming job cuts have them worried – and their data suggests those betting on tax cuts to refuel spending may be taking a big risk. 

When Leisa Bacon came into the ABC a decade ago to unify audiences and marketing teams under one umbrella, she faced a chorus of detractors saying it wouldn’t work. Fast forward 10 years and the model has not only been sustained, it’s enabled Australia’s public broadcaster to celebrate becoming number one for digital news (12.6m over News’ 12.4m in June 2024), FTA BVOD (OzTam data), plus broadcast TV reach (35.6 per cent weekly). Ipsos 2023 figures showed nearly eight in 10 consumers trust in the ABC. While the first to admit she’s not had to weather the brutal commercial pressures of her media peers, Bacon has had to cope with the same fragmentation of media channels and audiences, and find a way to not only unify the ABC’s audience and brand approach, but increasingly prove the efficiency of her marketing efforts. How? By talking about audience growth, not marketing. Which has precise parallels with the ongoing customer-marketing consolidation in the commercial world.

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) is more than 18 months into a digital transformation that has radically streamlined the assessment of skilled technology migrants - a key role for the organisation that has managed the process for the Commonwealth Government for two decades, courtesy of two contracts that also contribute significantly to its revenues. The end result is applications are much more likely to have the assessment ready when they are submitted, and wait times for applicants have been cut from typically four to five months to two weeks. The association has also built a much more fraud-resistant process and eliminated a massive cyber honey pot into the bargain, as it no longer needs to hold sensitive passport data from new applicants on its systems.

Havas is out to close the loop on end-to-end, and it's ramping up its M&A strategy to get there. The French Holdco has racked up 60 acquisitions in the last 12 months, with Melbourne's Hotglue being the latest. The creative production and media hotshop will merge with Havas Media Melbourne, and in doing so will double the group's presence in the market. It's a play for scale on both sides of the deal, but it was Hotglue's integrated capabilities that really caught the eye of Havas Media boss Virginia Hyland. She says the integrated model is here to stay, with stretched marketers seeking an agency that can do it all under the one roof. And now, she's looking to build on that with the agency's next acquisition. 

Andy Maxwell and Ralph van Dijk are out to undo the norms of podcast media planning, and they're going in hard against the standards set at the big end of town. The duo last month hard-launched EarMax Media, a podcast-only media shop that promises to deliver meticulous podcast strategies via direct trade with publishers big and small. The plan is to turn around conceptions that podcast advertising just doesn't work for some clients - a sentiment van Dijk says is courtesy of “scattergun media plans and grating, lowest common denominator creative” that has left some marketers burnt. Maxwell says a lack of knowledge on the sell-side hasn't helped things either, but with time and plenty of "due diligence", he's confident EarMax can remind advertisers of podcast's super power: Targeting engaged audiences in the context of their passions.