Deep Dive

After 20 years offshore leading marketing at Mars, Wrigley and Coke, Anubha Sahasrabuddhe, Consumer & Brand Director at Lion, is back in Australia. While some brands and sectors have metamorphosised into marketing leaders during that time, others have gone backwards, Lion, in some cases, included. She says the 70s wants its stereotypes back and aims to unchain beer to do good – and make good ads. She's channeling New Zealand to recapture Australia's mojo and land with the untapped multicultural masses... and may just take Lion beyond beer.

Consultants have warned of a backlash against the likes of Adobe and Salesforce after over-complex martech integrations have disappointed. But digital agencies execs suggest the onus is on agencies themselves to make the big stacks work – brands need to take a longer term view and not ditch their investments prematurely.

Ampol is back from the dead and should deliver the brand case study of the decade - for better or worse. The iconic, retro-cool Australian brand lay dormant for 26 years but in April kicked off one of the biggest brand revivals in 20 years as it races to beat US giant Chevron after a bust-up over the Australian rights to Caltex it held until last year. Ampol is banking once again on Australian roots over foreign brands for a competitive advantage – in 1936 Ampol was created to counter price gouging from off-shore oil companies. But there's millions of younger customers for which Ampol is mere vapour. Four months in and the Australian thing is working, say Chief Brand Officer Jenny O'Regan, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Anthony Gregorio and Mike Spirkovski and iProspect’s Jason Smith. Here's the latest for an Australian fuel company in the race of its life – literally – against global giants.  

As brands, publishers and the digital supply chain grapple with first party data and ways to transact customer and audience data without compromising data, privacy and incoming regulation that will govern both, there is a real risk of repeating the same mistakes. At worst, some 'black box' data and ID solutions risk regulatory non-compliance and pollution of entire data pools, warns Nick Jordan, founder of New York-based data streaming platform Narrative I/O. The former Adobe and Yahoo exec thinks the current crop of alternatives probably won't cut it, but brands and publishers must make a choice – provided they fully understand their data strategy may ultimately be an entirely new business. But he's not convinced that Google will sunset cookies altogether, nor that Apple is entirely altruistic.

Marketing used to be the biggest driver of sales. Today, consumer behaviour is increasingly influenced by trust – which is corporate affairs’ turf. Meanwhile, as environmental and social governance (ESG) becomes a top corporate agenda item, Australian firms are realising just how far behind the world they have fallen. They need smart corporate affairs and comms talent to guide them through major change – problem is, expertise is thin on the ground and Australia's closed borders are exacerbating the crunch. All this as the power shifts from employer to employee: workers want purpose, meaning and flexibility before they will even think about taking the growing number of jobs on offer. Executive search specialist Anna Whitlam, Commtract’s Vanessa Liell and Australian Pork’s Andrew ‘Billy’ Baxter say firms that do not quickly adapt “will just miss out…. And we are already seeing that.”

Sweta Mehra has wasted little time since swapping P&G for ANZ. In four years, the CMO has overhauled marketing, creating a 'federated' approach with units responsible for business results and winning budget-defending executive allies. Now she’s pushing harder into personalisation, building a new market mix modelling approach, driving deep cost efficiencies through in-housing and championing a major upskilling programme, all while rewiring the tech stack to unlock nine digit revenue gains. Now she’s looking for more – can she make customers “fall in love” with ANZ?

Femvertising has failed and marketing is still sexist, the British authors of a new book, Brandsplaining, tell Mi3. Former advertising execs Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts say while the overt sexism of the Mad Men era is gone, a new sneaky sexism under the guise of Femvertising and Fempowerment has landed. Cunningham and Roberts explain Brandsplaining and how brands like Dove, Always and Nike have challenged stereotypes and championed women but are still telling women who they should be, not listening to what they actually want. Here's what women want - from brands.

A new breed of marketing cloud providers is putting serious pressure on the likes of Adobe and Salesforce as brands and publishers seek a sharper competitive edge. Many are now working to unbundle full stacks they were sold in the first wave of automation, and get a grip on what they actually need – people as much as tech. Shadowboxer's Konrad Spilva and Stephen Graham, 10 ViacomCBS' Josh Slighting, Amaysim's Karin Kalda and The Lumery's Raj Kumar map out the new cloud landscape and why smart, fast and simple is the future.