Marketing

Nine is touting younger audiences on its total TV services, claiming one in three signed in viewers are millennials. It's gunning for more, per Director of 9Now and programming Hamish Turner, transforming content formats and programming efforts to keep the advertiser catnip incoming. Among its bets: Vertical video, shorter, personalised news formats, a willingness to embrace the intersection of data, product and tech – and more off-platform partnerships.

This year’s winner of the Australian Marketing Institute’s Certified Practising Marketer award, Paper + Spark’s Paul Everson, is in plenty of conversations right now, but reports a market afraid to commit to decisions as socio-economic uncertainty and short-termism persist. It’s not helping many marketers are either struggling to draw insights from data, or lack commercial nous to connect the dots to the business bottom line, he says – a big reason why skills development programs like Certified Practising Marketer are so critical to the industry. But with the core fundamentals of marketing as solid as ever – even with more channels and sophisticated terminology at our disposal – this experienced agency leader, marketing industry mentor and Uni lecturer is keen to see the industry embrace big M marketing with more confidence.

Australian accounting software powerhouse MYOB was a pioneer in the use of customer data platforms (CDPs) in Australia. Even a decade later, the technology is still delivering new and impressive benefits, and equipping the brand for a new stage of technology innovation: Personalisation at scale.

There were audible gasps when the Treasury Wine Estates board saw the first non-red Penfolds Grange gift box designed by creative collaborator, Japanese artist, Nigo, earmarked for the ever-younger luxury market. But as chief data and technology officer, Kate Whitney, points out, all the consumer insights, demand zone mapping, consumption occasion trends, moments and retail markers make it plain: Disrupting the wine category by building cultural credibility and meeting changing retail experience expectations is critical if Penfolds is to win against declining wine preferences. The former CMO joined Mad Paws CEO, Justus Hammer, plus FiftyFive5 head of cultural forecasting, Michelle Newton, to debate the facets of future retail and changing consumer views of value on a panel at the recent SXSW Sydney event.

It is a mistake to pit the priorities of online safety against those of online privacy, and many of the people who do so represent the interests of giant digital platforms that promote the idea of a decentralised open web, despite having enclosed and centralised control of that same global infrastructure. That was a key message from Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, lawyer and human rights activist Lizzie O'Shea, and UNSW Criminology Professor Michael Salter at SXSW last week. The "data extractive business models" of digital giants came under heavy fire and limiting those models was described as the best way to limit privacy and safety harms by removing the economic incentives that underpin "surveillance capitalism."

Greenhushing versus greenwashing: How companies tout their sustainability progress is increasingly a binary argument as they balance the risk of saying nothing at all with regulatory and consumer retribution for ego marketing or making claims they can’t evidentially back up. Which is why the AANA’s CEO Josh Faulks says its newly updated Environmental Claims Code was so important to get into the advertising industry’s hands sooner rather than later.

Clear career goals, an insatiable desire to lean in and learn new skills, and mentorship have all helped emerging marketing and business leaders from ANZ Bank and Move Bank to be recognised in this year’s this year’s Australian Marketing Institute's Marketing Excellence awards program. And their passion for marketing as both a growth engine and as a team sport could teach other brands a thing or two.

Personalised Plates Queensland (PPQ) has overhauled its data-driven approach to marketing on top of a new platform implementation built upon Tealium, Dotdigital and Craft CRM. It's part of a wider change which has also seen the creation of a digital experience team inside the group. And they are getting wins on the board with strong conversion rates and much higher visibility over the audience thanks to much more sophisticated approach to analytics.

Ill-conceived KPIs have led marketers down the murky path of less-than-informed consent. Now regulators are mobilising and it's time to ditch old-world data sets and processes, say those in the know from Qantas, Choice and ADMA. Clinging on to business as usual will prove highly risky, they warn, and tougher enforcement is coming sooner rather than later.

There's an urgency to dealing with the world's climate crisis, but can the ad industry drive actual change? At SXSW, 42North Consulting's Kiranpreet Kaur Dhillon and B Lab Australia's Andrew Davies shared why they don't believe the compulsion for claims is a good idea for brands anymore – and what they believe is the story necessary for advertisers and agencies to tell when it comes to climate.

Qantas' brand has taken a roasting in recent years. But thanks to artificial intelligence, it's no longer serving up dry chicken. Since taking the helm from Alan Joyce, new chief Vanessa Hudson has made customer experience key to the trust rebuild – and AI is playing an increasing role. Scott Wilkinson, executive manager, digital and direct customer experience, outlined three early CX use cases during a panel discussion at SXSW this week: Ticketing; giving customer agents additional firepower; and spotting and solving problems and complaints – e.g. paltry poultry – as they emerge rather than months later.

Travel is now surpassing pre-pandemic levels – even amid an economic crunch – and airports are looking to up their CX act with millions in Capex outlay to refine the terminal experience. JCDecaux has taken the wrappers off a new ‘connected journey’ media buying proposition across Australian airports for brands plus new program options that go beyond the screen. With the final arrival of Move 2.0, it’s not just the OOH provider’s CEO who sees a more compelling full-funnel narrative in his sights – agencies are welcoming on the flight to better outcomes for brands.

If you’re in a marketing team still attempting to crack how AI can be deployed safely, effectively, and efficiently with some scale and real ROI scenarios, saddle up to an industry peer in the next six months who’s road-testing the “no code” drag-and-drop templates and process-collapsing, easy-build, AI capability claims launched last month by Salesforce across its multiple cloud offers. The customer tech giant this week is on the Australian leg of its “World Tour” to 3000 delegates and such is the pitch - that it has simplified and revolutionised “applied AI” for businesses that have struggled so far to cut through their hallucinogenic concerns and deployment complexity - that all industry eyes and ears in the next six months should be on whether early users agree with the bold claims pasted on the Salesforce can.

Concern is mounting that firms are deprioritising data and privacy compliance after a weaker than anticipated first tranche of legislation. The worry is it’s eroding gains marketers had built with cross-functional peers and the board. The Privacy Commissioner, ADMA, Clayton Utz, Civic Data, Data Synergies and marketers on why taking the foot off the gas is a big mistake – and the grey areas that now require immediate attention.

In the last six months, Salesforce ANZ chief Frank Fillmann has met 70 Australian CEOs. They're facing pressure to move on AI from four sides, but he says leading with cost-out won’t relieve that pressure. Leading with experience will. That’s what Hipages is now doing, cutting tradie onboarding from an hour to 10 minutes. Likewise Fisher & Paykel is using autonomous agents to cull service enquiries by 30 per cent, freeing 3,300 hours a month. Which means cost out, employee experience in, and customer experience wins. The trade-off between cost efficiency and experience, reckons Fillmann, “is rapidly becoming a myth.”

There’s a brand and business renewal going on at Bega as it cements its position as a consumer goods business with an iconic house of brands and a market cap of $1.64 billion. Former marketer and now EGM of beverages, Darryn Wallace, reveals the restructure and brand repositioning, agency switch outs and commitment to elevating consumer insights that’s helping Bega become more than the sum of its acquired FMCG parts.

Stealth layoffs among marketing teams and media and agency groups since March were all signals for the crunch now hitting the advertising market with SMI reporting a 6.3 per cent decline in spending from the media agency sector and its largely blue chip and mid market clients. The restaurant sector led the retreat with a 24.2 per cent cut in spending in July – even the mighty McDonald’s and the powering KFC are said to be facing a material tightening in customer spend. But a digital ad decline of 10.6 per cent in August has been questioned by agency groups – a revised figure is expected.

Pinterest aims to put clear air between itself and rival platforms under pressure globally over mental health and algorithm-induced anxiety and the prospect of teen bans locally. It’s simultaneously making a play for more full-funnel ad dollars as performance media acquisition costs soar, doubling in the last four years and threatening unit economics, especially for ecom pureplays. The platform called out rivals at this week’s annual showcase, with global CEO Bill Ready talking up a “positive business model centred on emotional wellbeing rather than engagement via enragement”, and throwing down the gauntlet to Meta, Twitter and TikTok to use its third party-developed tools to gauge negative impacts on users. Local MD Melinda Petrunoff said it’s been private by default for under-16s for more than a year “before this was a discussion”, and advertisers are buying the positive vibe. Now it’s pushing performance and commerce capability – and the likes of Mecca, Pandora, Adidas and Walgreens are converts.

Google's fast-tracked legal battle with the Justice Department has ended faster than anticipated, just three weeks in, with Google putting up a remarkably weak fight, according to some observers. Tactical? Maybe. Whether it decides to appeal a guilty judgement – if given – will be telling. 

Responsive rates upwards of 45 per cent against single digit email results, 100:1 ROI on spend, 37 per cent conversion rates on fast cart abandonment – the figures for why retailers say they’re increasingly leaning into SMS as a strategic alternative channel to email are stacking up. Even better: The money invested is not going into Google’s coffers and instead being used to build up the strength of their first-party data sets and insights. During the recent Attentive event in Sydney, marketing and business leaders from Lounge Lovers, Designstuff and Hey Bud spoke to Mi3 about the surprisingly full-funnel ways they’re now tapping SMS – many in increasingly personalised ways, but some even with the odd dose of spray and pray. But given the spam and email abuses of the past, will marketers be able to stop themselves from overusing SMS?

Ditching Athena’s ‘Love us and leave us’ proposition wasn’t an option for the digital-first home loan upstart’s marketing chief, Sarah Sproule. But it appears most of the other marketing, product and customer value propositions have shaken up as the business broadens out from its price-based roots and makes a play for a diversified mix of customers. So far its working – and Sproule says the focus and KPIs are now way deeper than cost per acquisition, with marketing "on the hook all the way through to final conversion, which is settlement". She's firmly in "get shit done" mode – and with brokers now a key channel, B2B is next.

KPMG is muscling up in its own brand and marketing masterplan in a bid to distance itself from PwC’s tax leak scandal, “create a bit of space between us and our competitors” and remind the market that the big four consulting groups “are not all the same”, according to Sudeep Gohil. Taking on the broadening remit for the firm as “partner in charge of brand and marketing”, Gohil remains a partner in KPMG’s Customer unit and was a former creative agency strategy director with US-based Wieden & Kennedy and ex-CEO at Droga5 ANZ before it died and was resurrected by Accenture Song in recent weeks after its rebrand of The Monkeys.

NIB and University of Tasmania are two Australian organisations that have begun squaring up to the sustainability reckoning coming to marketers, agency and media publishers as legislated climate reporting ratchets up a notch and Scope 3 emissions become front and centre. With media and marketing emissions estimated at a whopping 59 per cent of total group emissions at NIB, marketing this year adopted GroupM’s Project Alpha reporting tool to start accurately measuring and optimising campaigns with immediate double-digit reductions effect. At Uni of Tas meanwhile, 30 per cent-plus reductions just by tackling the low-hanging fruit of digital advertising optimisation – largely programmatic display and made for advertising sites. Meanwhile switching out clicks to conversion metrics not only won over the c-suite, it’s cementing the education provider’s global number one position for climate action with prospective students, and led to a 264 per cent increase in conversions in early campaign trials.

Merry Boots GM James Smith came into the business as finance chief with zero marketing experience. But he could see over-reliance on social media for growth risked backfiring – and the power of a listicle article in The New York Times spruiking its rainboots as some of the best around gave the brand confidence affiliate marketing wasn’t just a dirty word or about discounting. Today, partnerships account for over 10 per cent of revenue in the US and high single-digits in the UK – one-third of total revenue for the business – and have proven a critical way of building not only brand discovery but credibility outside Australia, says Smith. Even as it steps into cashback offers to win over younger demos, he’s insistent there isn’t a reduced-price boot yet in sight.

A dedicated, multi-channel marketing campaign to engage Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) consumers helped Stan firstly get one in 10 viewers tuning into its 2024 Paris Olympic coverage to watch one of eight dedicated international, in-language streaming channels. Even more importantly, the 2.5 million campaign impressions delivered via agency partner, CulturalPulse, which stirred up word-of-mouth, saw this figure grow to one in seven over the course of the tournament, helping generate a hefty 50 per cent uptick in sports subscribers during that time. For Stan CMO, Diana Ilinkovski, the results speak volumes around how the streaming service can continue to find growth by tapping Australia’s multicultural consumers not only around sports content, but broader entertainment programming. For CulturalPulse CEO, Reg Raghavan, it’s a strong example of an approach that recognised the distinctive collective versus individual attributes of multicultural communities, had a creative eye for the sports and athletic stars that resonate most (cue Greek NBA basketball stars), and demonstrated just how much brands need to invite – not just reach – CALD consumers to win them over. 

"Every company is a software company," as Watts S. Humphrey once famously observed, but this is probably not what he had in mind. As brands bid to wring every ounce of profit from every dollar earned through the efficiency of automated decision-making that understands customers better than they understand themselves, they now face a new and potentially costly risk – penalties in the millions of dollars, and a regulatory regime that makes it easier for the market policemen to write you a ticket. What's more, it's not fully clear how broad the definition of what constitutes automated decision-making will be – which puts almost everyone on notice. Privacy specialists Mi3 spoke with stressed there's much more work to be done than simply writing a new privacy policy. For starters, you have to adhere to it. That might mean costly and complicated business and system process changes that move at the speed of compliance – but in a market powered by the accelerant of generative AI.