Deep Dive

Deep Dive 11 Nov 2024 - 8 min read

AMI CPD: 1

B2B’s hard new playbook: Don’t bet everything on chasing marketing qualified leads – most buyers call you... and have already made their choice

By Andrew Birmingham - Martech | Ecom | CX Editor

Some B2B firms are realising Byron Sharp was right on distinctive assets versus differentiation all along. A slew of recent research underlines that buying committees are increasingly buying on brand, not product features – and they've usually made up their minds before the first marketing qualified lead (MQL) lands with sales, rendering MQLs increasingly redundant. IT firm Logicalis ran the numbers on its own campaigns and found only 21 per cent of its potential customers were even aware of it – and that a single percentage point awareness gain would drive massive revenue growth. Moreover, six in ten of its potential customers couldn't recall a single ad from any of its competitors in the last 12 months – presenting a major opportunity to start optimising to awareness and driving conversion via bolder comms. "Funnily enough, I didn't find much resistance," says head of marketing, Lara Barnett. ABB global digital marketing and content chief Sophie Neate says the engineering giant has dropped MQLs as a KPI altogether and is now getting more joy out of other metrics while creating and personalising content across a much broader range of buying committee stakeholders. Stuart Jaffray, MD of B2B specialist agency Green Hat, urges brands to go all out on distinctive brand assets, brand awareness, mental availability and recall. Plus, forget the answers you wrote in your last ten RFPs and instead look at the questions – and develop content around them. Then the buyers will come to you.

Deep Dive 22 Oct 2024 - 8 min read

AMI CPD: 1

Machine to machine CX and conversational commerce ‘explosion’ set to trigger up to $200bn in global brand content contracts – Deloitte Digital

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

Machine-to-machine CX and an explosion of conversational commerce is set to bring $200bn of brand content contracts into play, forcing a total rethink for corporates, content firms and creators of all creeds for how they structure and deliver content for bots to read, process and action commerce and broader customer experience. Deloitte Digital is already retooling its entire content team to do just that. National Lead Partner Leon Doyle and global marketing and commerce boss Nick Garrett say brand-owned content and marketing is taking a swing to risk management and governance and brands must clear "content debt" fast or gamble on commerce-enabling AI applications scraping and ingesting forgotten, incorrect, outdated or even misleading corporate information and content lurking in digital corners. Garrett says conversational commerce is “exploding in every market” globally and thinks the impact on content economics is seismic – with everything that existed pre-AI at risk of obsolescence. That reality is likely also driving the next classic re-invention of consulting services and advisory practices.

Deep Dive 15 Oct 2024 - 12 min read

AMI CPD: 1

‘Really mediocre outcomes’: Oxford Uni professor says Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass’ marketing science rules no longer hold – 1,000 campaigns, 1 million customer journeys as evidence

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

Associate Professor Felipe Thomaz, of University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, suggests Professor Byron Sharp’s best known book, How Brands Grow, is a misnomer – it’s actually about how big brands keep big marketshare, not how they got there. He also says it’s based on flaws within Andrew Ehrenberg’s earlier work, primarily static markets and a requirement not to differentiate. Thomaz suggests that’s why FMCG firms adhering to those rules were caught napping by more nimble differentiated start-ups. Optimising media for reach alone no longer works, he suggests, because all reach is not equal – and used bluntly won't deliver business outcomes. “There is a missing dimension,” per Thomaz. He’s out to prove it with a peer-reviewed paper that analyses 1,000 campaigns and a million customer journeys via Kantar and Wavemaker. The upshot? “None of it holds … I'm seeing that 1 per cent of campaigns are actually getting exceptional money, while the vast majority are choosing to get some really mediocre outcomes.” But there's potential upside for marketers, media agencies – and media owners – that grasp the category-specific implications.

Deep Dive Library

Deep Dive 26 Apr 2021 - 7 min read

$8.7tn reasons 'purpose' will drive profit, and why brands that fail to adapt will die: Volvo, The Guardian and former Danone CEO urge marketers to wake up

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

Volvo is out of petrol and oil engines and about to launch vegan leather; The Guardian is banking on progressive-leaning audiences for ad growth from purpose-led brands and former Danone China and US CEO Lorna Davis predicts 50% of Big Four audit firm revenues will be from Environment and Social Governance (ESG) compliance. Purpose remains polarising - here’s the update for brandland.

Deep Dive 19 Apr 2021 - 6 min read

‘Agencies are not banks’ warns Initiative global Chair Mat Baxter as Westpac, Arnott’s marketers link pitch problems to bad tender briefs and process; poor engagement with procurement

By Paul McIntyre - Executive Editor

“Ditch the pitch” protagonist Mat Baxter has warned agency reviews are getting worse here and globally, citing P&G’s media payment terms as an example. Many companies, though, “abuse the pitch process”. Baxter’s comments were in response to Australia’s peak advertiser and media agency industry bodies’ roll-out of a “world first” initiative to create industry-endorsed agency tender and pitching guidelines - dubbed “Project Baxter”. Arnott’s CMO Jenni Dill, Westpac Head of Group Brand, Advertising and Media Jenny Melhuish, non-executive director and MFA board member Megan Brownlow and Mediabrands CEO Mark Coad talk frankly about the fix. Essentially, it’s on marketers to clean it up.

Deep Dive 14 Apr 2021 - 8 min read

Where’s the juggernaut? Amazon’s booming US $15bn online ad business is just $22m in Australia – here’s why

By Sam Buckingham-Jones - Senior Writer

Amazon hasn’t quite steamrolled into the Australian e-commerce market like many predicted and its advertising business here is even less stellar – so far. In the US it’s stormed to 10% of the digital ad market but it’s tracking in Australia at less than one quarter of one percent.

Deep Dive 13 Apr 2021 - 5 min read

CMO Couch, Part One: Suncorp’s Mim Haysom, Aus Post’s Amber Collins on their personal media diet, preferred brands, favourite products and CX - as consumers

By Sam Buckingham-Jones and Paul McIntyre

Ask Amber Collins or Mim Haysom to name the best new product or service that’s won them over as a customer or consumer - not a marketer - and it’s podcasts. Ask Mim Haysom about loyalty programs and she admits she’s “a marketer’s worst nightmare”. What do marketers choose and buy as consumers and why? Listen to the podcast and read here for the good oil.

Deep Dive 23 Mar 2021 - 6 min read

Woman and machine: Mecca founder Jo Horgan on headlining Dreamforce after reinventing beauty through hybrid CX – and why she's bullish on high street retail

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

Not even a global pandemic could stop Mecca's followers making the pilgrimage to its new flagship store at Sydney's Gowings building. The numbers are as if Covid never happened. Founder Jo Horgan says she's going to launch more physical stores while reinventing online beauty retail via a hybrid approach to customer experience that is powered more by people than machines. Then she wants to headline Salesforce's Dreamforce conference. You wouldn't bet against it.

Deep Dive 17 Mar 2021 - 8 min read

Cookie crunch spells end of 'lazy digital marketing': The Iconic, Tourism Australia and ADMA unpack post-privacy landscape

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

The Iconic's CMO Alexander Meyer says the e-commerce darling realised "it's not enough to harvest purchase intent based on signals from people. You actually have to develop audiences,” as it shapes-up for a post-cookie digital marketing blueprint. Tourism Australia is working on its own unified ID as it goes cookieless while ADMA's regulatory lead Sarla Fernando says it's cookies that have awakened marketers to a wave of regulatory threats that will have an even deeper impact than Google's looming cull. Here's the next tour de force on what marketing must ready for.

Deep Dive 9 Mar 2021 - 5 min read

Why brands, ad holding companies - and whisper it, Facebook - are moving on an attention metric (beyond 1.7 seconds)

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

Advertiser interest in the attention economy is surging around the world and even Facebook is moving beyond its long-held position that two seconds or less of advertising exposure is enough to make a lasting impact on memory. New ad formats, in fact, are likely coming from Facebook designed to expand and keep user attention beyond a blip. An international beta trial of a new attention metric across channels and screen types from Australia's Professor Karen Nelson-Field has attracted hundreds of agency groups, media companies and advertisers around the world. Here's what happens now.

Deep Dive 2 Mar 2021 - 5 min read

Finding NEOs: How 4.7m Australians will drive a two-speed recovery, and implications for CX, segmentation and targeting

By Paul McIntyre & Brendan Coyne

Marketers risk alienating 4.7 million high value customers by taking a traditional approach to customer segmentation, personalisation, targeting and customer experience. A panel of social scientists, marketers and ad agency bosses think that’s a recipe for failure – because the new economic order, or NEO customer type, is already powering a two-speed recovery.

Deep Dive 23 Feb 2021 - 6 min read

'A lack of unity?': TV sector pushes back industry innovation plan; agency frustrations peak as VOZ dilemma drags on

By Josh McDonnell - Senior Writer

The TV industry is facing another mammoth reset after countless delays to its measurement system VOZ and a quiet scrapping of its unified trading platform BuyTV. Network sales bosses have also just pulled the pin on a panel tomorrow outlining a new “TV23” blueprint at the Future of TV Advertising forum. Agencies, advertisers and industry execs are pondering whether TV can do what it needs to - together.