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Chobani is incubating a major culture change amid a shake-up of roles and priorities at the yoghurt brand after a multipack of recent senior exits. The return of a dedicated GM of marketing focused on boosting brand awareness and perceptions, along with a new-look GM of science and innovation role plus heavy emphasis on channel expansion are cornerstones of new MD Scott Hadley's strategic overhaul as he plots a path to sustainable growth. Following departures of GM of growth, Olivia Dickinson, and GM of demand, Julia Clark, plus others, Hadley is restructuring for effectiveness and efficiency. The aim of the game is profit that enables purpose – while improving product accessibility.

In the chair for two months, Leo Burnett Australia boss Clare Pickens is working on a plan to reinvigorate the agency's own brand as well as build those of its clients. She claims the broader network is ahead of holdco rivals when it comes to consolidating structures and back-ends – as well as AI capability in action – and aims to leverage that concentrated firepower within the in-market reposition. While other agency bosses privately admit that AI and automation efficiencies will crimp headcount, Pickens is not so sure.

By focusing on sponsorship, team building, technology and prioritisation, overlaid with a governance structure based around the customer, NAB has been able to accelerate rollout of real-time decisioning. It helped NAB had the building blocks for marketing capability already in place. And now, by plugging its new Pega Content Decisioning Hub into current ways of working, the big four bank has built channel scale fast. Jess Cuthberston, Executive, Customer Decisioning and Data Science, and Lisa Marchant, NAB's Head of Customer Decisioning, explain.

The operational wins from a transformation of Western Sydney University’s contact centre platform digitisation and platform overhaul were swiftly apparent. Up to 30-minute productivity gains per agent daily, a 90 per cent improvement in voice abandonment rates, a 65 per cent lift in average speed of answer, and an ability to finally connect 12 standalone centres onto one, seamless platform.

But it’s the longer-term innovations to student experience orchestration and personalisation, next-generation channel choices and startup services an omnichannel, AI-powered platform brings that have everyone from IT and digital to the chancellor and line-of-business arguably most excited at WSU.

UPDATE: The deal didn't happen. Per SCA this morning: "Following review with ACM and consultation with major shareholders, SCA has decided not to pursue ACM’s proposal." As sweeping layoffs and a restructure emerged yesterday at Network Seven, Southern Cross Austereo’s board met to assess an ambitious proposal to merge the radio and TV broadcaster with regional publisher Australian Community Media (ACM), once worth $2.7bn when Fairfax, now owned by Nine, acquired the then Rural Press group in 2006. By 2019 its new owner, Nine, sold the business for $125m to former Domain CEO Antony Catalano and Melbourne billionaire investor Alex Waislitz. They now want to merge the two businesses to form a $750m diversified regional media powerhouse of equivalent metropolitan scope to Nine’s TV, digital, newsmedia and audio assets. The two execs, who now have accumulated circa 13 per cent of SCA shares, envisage a “next generation” media company which created marketplaces for products and services it owns, using the audiences it attracts to sell stuff beyond ads to advertisers – like farm finance, fertiliser, fencing and a regional jobs marketplace taking on Seek.  

It was a pilot loyalty play expected to attract 2,000 blood donors that became a 90,000-strong advocacy army happy to make a humble brag about their charitable efforts – and it's literally moving the needle. With 130,000 members now signed up since the official program launch in May, the savvy marketing initiative is now on track to deliver a 5 per cent uplift in blood collections overall in 2024. Australian Red Cross Lifeblood’s gift program was an unprecedented move for the government-funded agency requiring nuanced health and safety manoeuvring from its CMO, Jeremy Weiss. But it was a no-brainer to maximise return on his marketing investment – Weiss says it’s coming in at half the cost of incremental collections achieved through typical paid digital channels. The former Origin Energy, Latitude Financial Services and Telstra marketer unpacks how mobilising blood donors to be “walking billboards” is just one of the ways he’s applying consumer marketing smarts to meet Australia’s growing blood supply needs.

Marketers and agencies are ever stretched – and it's damaging relationships. But ex-Hearts & Science MD turned industry consultant Wendy Gower thinks equalising the balance of power drives commercial upside via better briefs, honest feedback and genuine collaboration. She's devised a workshop program to make it happen. Real estate firm Stockland reckons its working – as does its agency boss.

Seven has axed between 100-150 staff including three senior executives and overhauled its operating model in a bid to optimise its troubled television business and improve the transition to digital. The cull, which left many "blindsided", comes as Australia's media majors face massive pressure as ad revenues plunge and cash deals with platforms dry-up.

Publicis has all but locked in Australia's biggest carmaker, taking on Toyota's retail creative work with Dentsu Creative losing the long-term business. It is understood Saatchi & Saatchi will bring an AI strategy for creative and beyond already being deployed on the Toyota retail business in the US - one executive familiar with the move said Publicis promised "workhorse-style retail executions" across video, image and copy at scale via automation.