News

Frank Body CMO Jess Hatzis has stepped down from the marketing job 11 years after helping found the skin products business with four mates in Melbourne. More than 30 million product sales and 179 countries on from first launching with a coffee scrub, she’s one of three co-founders pulling back from day-to-day and moving into advisory and board-only roles. It’s a decision that comes three years after Frank Body sold a stake to Chinese equity firm, EverYi Capital which reportedly pegged its market value at $100m. It also comes amidst one of the bleakest times for retail – but Hatzis insists a purpose-led brand can navigate the storm even without its co-founders running the ship.

Streamer inventory is flooding an already weak ad market. Marketers have signalled an FY25 surge in lower funnel performance investment. Hence former OzTam CEO Doug Peiffer and Foxtel Media boss Mark Frain moving at speed to create TV and streaming measurement that ultimately crosses into hard sales and true ROI. Frain thinks getting everything into Kantar can solve the challenge of getting brands to plug-in sales data – and maybe the OzTam rival Video Futures Collectives will likewise lift the template. Peiffer thinks panels like OzTam still have a future – and hints that he may build his own. But in tandem, “you’ve got to leverage big data, otherwise you’re just going to get bounce and zeros and disappointment.”

World Economic Forum-backed GARM and Ad Net Zero last month launched a Global Media Sustainability Framework that's poised to align global ad industry players in measuring carbon emissions. Per Scope3 founder Brian O'Kelley, it's "the most important piece of progress" towards decarbonising advertising to date – but adds to the to do list for IAB Australia, which along with AANA and the MFA, is gearing up for an October launch for a local Ad Net Zero initiative. CEO Gai Le Roy is talking up late mover advantage, following the UK, US, Europe and New Zealand, but urgency is amping as AI threatens to wreak havoc on carbon-curbing efforts. 

Every parent understands the "pester power" of children when it comes to toy shopping. But social media and other digital channels have amplified the littlest voices over the last decade. However, marketing to children requires heightened levels of responsibility, something Belinda Gruebner, CMO at Moose Toys, and a nine-year veteran of the brands, is very conscious of. It's one of the challenges, along with big disruption to traditional media channels and rising retail media opportunities, she and her team are managing as they map out a major technology overhaul.

Wesfarmers-owned Kmart has massively increased its consent-based addressable customer set, and built a model that has powered 20x improvement in engagements. It's a capability uplift – courtesy of a new tech platform built on Tealium's customer data platform (CDP) and the Braze Customer Experience platform – that pumped sales while driving experimentation that helped quantify the impact of personalised versus non personalised content. It also answered the vexed question of whether category upsell or category expansion was the best strategy to pursue. Now, Kmart is eyeing generative AI to drive even more effectiveness from its content play.

Building McCain’s brand presence in Australia and New Zealand across an ever-growing range of potatoes, vegetables, pizzas, appetizers and ready-meals is the key priority for its local managing director, Lyn Radford. But what consumers want next is in her sights. As the former Chobani boss works to refresh the privately-owned FMCG’s strategy eight months into her tenure – all while supporting declining guest counts in QSR channels – she’s also brought onboard the first local marketing director of growth, Olivia Dickinson, to help plan the future. Dickinson's not the only former colleague doing it again at McCain.

In market with Prime ads, Amazon is so far delivering on a promise to convert its 5m subscriber base, according to buyers. Paramount+ is likewise live but is building from scratch – and it's not yet sharing ads audience numbers. Alongside Netflix and Binge, the four streamers come with "very different" strategies per OMG investment chief Kristiaan Kroon. Ampere Analysis boss Guy Bisson said it's too soon to say who will come out on top – though Amazon's ecom through-line could swing full-funnel bucks. Either way SVOD is quickly coming for TV's ad spoils. But Bisson predicts Meta and Google will also take a hit.

The job market for marketers has come full circle: talent is no longer in the driver’s seat; employers have regained the upper hand. Meanwhile, remits are so complex and commercial, and recruitment so conservative, it’s a tough ask for those looking to switch categories or who don’t have a solid grasp of the commercials and full 4Ps of marketing, say Hourigan International’s Stuart Tucker and Perceptor’s Mark O’Connor. The good news is salaries are holding and employers are keen to keep hiring strategic and creative marketers – if they can prove their value. But for the top roles, the competition is unusually fierce – and there's more senior talent heading back from overseas.

Airtasker boss Tim Fung is making a play for excess share of voice to drive brand awareness as “shy” brands pull back amid tough conditions. Its media-for-equity style deals with oOh!media and ARN give it $11m to spend and Fung said while the tech community, programmed to think “Youtube, Meta and Google are superior”, is still “apprehensive” about going above the line, he has no such qualms after a similar deal with Seven helped power 20x growth. Plus, the digital platforms are “incredibly crowded” with “less trustworthy” smaller brands piling into cheap ads. OOH and audio don’t have that problem, Fung suggested, and he’s planning a spring brand offensive. While some media bosses question equity deals due to cashflow impacts, ARN’s Angus Leech said there’s always an exception – and thinks the Airtasker case study will ultimately prove that out.