Mi3 Audio Edition

Welcome to the first in our CMO Awards podcast series, powered by Mi3. This limited-episode series dives into the key topics and issues making up how marketing as a function, and its leaders, contribute to growth. To do this, we’re engaging in a select number of conversations with industry luminaries, CMO Awards judges, former CMO50 winners, current and former marketing and customer leaders and more as we lead into, then recognise the winners of our inaugural CMO Awards on 7 May. This podcast is brought to you by platinum CMO Awards 2025 sponsor, Adobe.   Kicking us off to talk about how marketing elevates its stature in the eyes of the CEO and board are three of this year’s CMO Awards judges: Former Westfield CMO and non-exec board director, John Batistich; former Audi chief marketing and customer officer and now non-exec director, Nikki Warburton; and executive and board recruitment partner and one-time Kimberly Clark CMO, Michele Phillips. All three have the unique ability to see it from both sides: As former marketers plying the trade, and now as non-executive board directors or in board and CEO-level recruitment.   Channel and audience fragmentation, too much data, relentless transformation across organisations, dour economic conditions, ever-more pressure to prove marketing’s worth, too much efficiency while trying to find more effectiveness and ever-higher demands for technology competence – these are just a few of the things CMOs are navigating. For many, it can feel like they don’t have enough control of what’s happening to their function while they look to execute their craft with excellence. And admitting something was less than a success feels like certain doom.    View it from the other side, however, and you get a rather different picture of what marketing needs to do to win respect. CEOs and Boards are needing to do more with less to find profitable growth, investor and financial markets are relentless, and business, cyber and market risk factors have multiplied. These execs want marketing leaders who can make hard and strategic choices, and judge them as much on what they choose to do as much as what they say no to. All while telling a realistic but progressive story of customer and market engagement.   This series is hosted by Nadia Cameron, associate publisher and editor of marketing at Mi3, plus program leader for the CMO Awards.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mim Haysom’s world-beating, Cannes-winning One House initiative at Suncorp in 2022 was a big bold bet on innovative, mould-breaking marketing that Suncorp’s executive leadership and board only saw days before a documentary on the initiative was set to broadcast on Nine. “The first time the board saw One House, I took them into the auditorium and played them the 26-minute documentary three nights before it was going live on Channel Nine,” says Suncorp’s Executive GM, Brand & Customer Experience. “The accountability for creativity stops with me … I set myself up that way from the get-go.” Haysom is also the person who tells the CFO she needs incremental money for performance media – and not to siphon it out of brand. “Insurance search terms [at peak cost of living crunch] were 50 per cent up year on year. They are about 35 per cent up now. With that there is opportunity to pump more money into search to capture demand. So, I've absolutely been doing that,” she says. “But what I've been doing is writing business cases to say … we don’t touch brand … because if you haven't got that awareness, consideration, if you're not building trust in your brand – especially in insurance – then people won't convert in the lower levels anyway.” Legendary adman Sir John Hegarty couldn’t agree more. “The trouble is we live in a bubble called commerce, and the people out there don't – they live in a world called ‘engage me, entertain me’,” he says. It’s a challenge Val Morgan Cinema’s Guy Burbidge has been wrestling with for cinema. There’s an "awful lot more measurement conversations” which Burbidge says is a "good thing ... but it’s an increasingly binary conversation about reach and cost and not the power of a [media] platform and creativity. “We've gone down too much science, arguably, with too many ones and zeros and cost and reach and algorithms. The next piece of work for us is talking to the creative community to understand how do you take advantage of those cultural moments created by movies and cinema as they come up.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A world first creative benchmarking study from System1 and JCDecaux has run stacks of Australian Out-of-Home ads through its globally-renowned effectiveness scoring system and drawn a stark conclusion: 70 per cent of outdoor ads fail to move the needle. Andrew Tindall, SVP – Global Partnerships at System1, goes even further: “No-one understands how Out-of-Home works,” he says, particularly the critical need to land the brand within two seconds. At face value, not a wholly positive headline for the medium. But System1 has come up with a formula that, its data strongly suggests, massively improves effectiveness. It’s not rocket science. For example, just placing your logo at the top of an Out-of-Home ad increases brand recognition four times versus a logo parked at the bottom. Likewise be consistent – entertaining and never boring – and keep messaging simple and positive to get much higher brand lift, and ultimately, sales. On that front, Tindall says there is a false divide between brand and performance campaigns: The long, i.e. brand, always drives the short, i.e. performance. The research with JCDecaux, “allows us to add a lot more nuance to what is a very non-nuanced industry” and underlines why brand and demand “need to be brought back a little bit closer together”. Brands nailing Out-of-Home effectiveness locally include Compare the Market with its Meerkats, Uber Eats with the Wiggles and Simon Cowell, Specsavers and Ocean Spray, per Tindall. Sephora’s latest campaign, he says, is one of the highest scoring Out-of-Home ads System1 has ever tested. The bottom line? “The single standout thing for me in this research is it confirms that creative is the make and break of how effective a campaign can be.” Tindall, plus JCDecaux’s Cris Smart and Scott Jenkins, unpack the research’s key findings – and the seven simple steps to massively boost Out-of-Home effectiveness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host: Andrew Birmingham, Editor - CX | Martech | Ecom Two years after a Mi3 published a comprehensive analysis of the customer data market in Australia, we revisited many of the brands we spoke with to assess their progress and measure their return. Companies that have persevered are realising strong returns and extending beyond their early use cases. But it has often been a hard road to hoe. There are integration and organisational challenges to overcome - and unexpected problems such as bill shock from unanticipated quarterly charges that can run into tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. As to the market, it’s more competitive than ever with the number of CDP vendors active in Australia rising significantly even though the volume of tenders has largely held the line, according to industry insiders. That means competition is heating up. There are three macro trends – the rise of composable CDPs - we’ll explain that later - and greater CIO control over data infrastructure amid a backdrop of three-year software renewals rolling over and the need to accurately assess ROI for a technology that is often hard to assign direct value against. Rich McFarland from Compare Club, Courtney Gerrits from the University of Tasmania, and Cam Strachan from Southern Cross Austereo dive deeply into the detail, discussing their experience with their own CDP implementations, describing the tangible benefits gained, such as improved customer acquisition costs, enhanced communication strategies, and increased operational efficiencies…there’s a few lessons they learned along the way to boot too.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rival radio networks are transplanting big talent from Sydney and trying to make it work in Melbourne. SCA Chief Content Officer, Dave Cameron, is taking the opposite strategy. Local talent that “speaks the language of the city” and gets the “fabric” of its suburbs is particularly crucial for breakfast audiences, he says. Plus, as platforms and content globalise, localism becomes a competitive advantage: “Anti-globalism will pay dividends for us … otherwise we’re playing the same game as everyone else.” Hence SCA launching six new shows, pairing fresh local talent with station “juggernauts” while focusing harder on radio’s core heartlands – like Western Sydney, where massive audiences and engagement are found. “That is where the bulk of radio listening, the bulk of audience data and surveys, is happening,” per Cameron. “It's not happening in Bondi.” SCA is laser-focused on growing audiences and revenues without blowing holes in the budget that could later prove problematic. Content economics are underpinned by sharpened appetite for advertiser integration – with those commercial discussions happening upfront and early. “We’ve never been more commercially savvy around that,” says Cameron. Seeking new audiences via greener talent and formats could risk dislocating “rusted-on” loyalists, Cameron acknowledges. “But we believe in the combinations we’ve put together,” he says. “If you're not investing in fresh thinking, talent and voices, your industry may become irrelevant.” Plus, there’s growing evidence to suggest a younger set is discovering the analogue dial – either through nostalgia, or as a reaction to algorithmic overreach. The next year will test SCA’s strategy, but Cameron’s confident audiences will hold and then grow. The alternative is to keep hoping the world doesn’t change, or emulate the metro lift and shift being attempted by rivals. Can that transplant strategy pay off, given time to bed-in? “That’s a $200 million question,” says Cameron. SCA is staking out a different numbers game.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nico Neumann is deep in the weeds on digital marketing attribution, market mix modelling [MMM] and incrementality testing – likewise the dangers of narrow audience targeting and junk user data - the latter a $20bn market in the US alone. The Melbourne Business School Associate Professor in 2019 published research proving that closing your eyes and randomly selecting male or female audience targets was more accurate than the data brokers and DSPs many advertisers buy from. Neumann claims a senior data broker admitted to him privately that they knew their data was crap, “but who cares? Marketers are buying this”. (Like Arielle Garcia, UM’s former US privacy lead who last year told Mi3 she had accessed her data profile from multiple third party brokers with laughable results, Neumann has downloaded his own, “and it’s hilarious”. You should do the same - we’ve got a URL in our Mi3 feature to test your profile segments). Neumann batted away claims his B2C audience studies were too broad and challenged widely held assumptions that niche segments and B2B were where precision targeting of online users actually works. Last year he ran tests with IT giant HP - a paper is coming - that sharply contests most B2B marketing plans and particularly so for tech sector practitioners. “No matter what we used, it was either equal to random targeting, or even worse,” says Neumann. First party data is better, per Neumann, but there are caveats, particularly around clean rooms and matches that can be bogus. He advises marketers to upload made up email addresses and see what they get back - hashed user 'match rates’ may not be what they seem. His advice: stick with the first and second party data you can trust, but even then, don’t assume targeting will deliver better bang for buck. “I would even take a step back and ask, do you need to target that narrowly? There are very few cases where it makes sense … Why do you even need to exclude people and increase the cost, instead of just letting the content or message do that?” Neumann sees the explosion of market mix modelling and measurement approaches as “a good thing”. But there are market rumblings that the big platforms pushing MMMs risk skewing towards inherent model biases. Either way, Neumann’s working on a project to compare how all the main MMMs hitting the market actually perform. He urges marketers to question all models – and his advice for those emerging from business schools is the same as for seasoned CMOs: Hone fundamentals that will last a lifetime; don’t overspecialise in trends and fads. “Ask hard questions – and just test stuff yourself.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Four Pillars Gin is now four times the size of the entire Australian premium gin category when it started in 2013. Much of the category’s explosive growth is down to three cofounders having a crack, while seeing off the cops, who thought they were making meth. Now under Lion’s ownership, itself part of Japanese drinks giant Kirin, two of the founders – ex-Olympian Cameron Mackenzie and PR man Stuart Gregor – have “gracefully” exited. But the third founding partner, former global strategy boss at IPG’s Jack Morton Worldwide, Matt Jones, is still in. He thinks Australia deserves a global spirits business spearheaded by botanical alchemy, experience, craft, influence and intimacy over mass “shotgun messaging”. Jones is also a reluctant martech convert, valuing old school customer experience and its intangibles over measuring clicks and other marketing metrics. He likewise places far greater value on flywheels than marketing funnels. While the direct-to-consumer growth hacking playbook that fuelled start-ups a decade ago is now a relic of its time, Jones thinks many of the Four Pillars lessons and tricks are repeatable today for those that distil the fundamentals. But there are some key differences. Here’s his take on what made the business succeed and where Four Pillars – and Lion’s expanding spirits business – goes next.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When experienced B2B marketer and former agency planner Taz Bareham decided to take on the title of 'Fractional CMO' three years ago, there were a handful of people on LinkedIn using the moniker. Fast forward to today, and the supply pipeline has grown to thousands, even outpacing solidly growing demand for these forms of executives. Why? Better work / life balance, avoiding burnout, a desire to stick with the craft of marketing instead of moving into non-exec or CEO roles, plus more opportunity to try another category and industry are just some of the reasons experienced marketers are being lured in. “I get back to go to back to the joy of being a CMO versus sinking under the pressure of being a CMO,” Bareham says. There are plenty of reasons for why businesses are turning to this emerging executive gig economy too. Cost efficiency is inevitably one, and Deloitte has noted companies can save up to 50 per cent by getting in fractional execs over full-time equivalents [FTE]. It’s also a way for scale-ups to access marketing and other senior leadership talent they otherwise couldn’t afford, and have the helping hand of specialist or generalist expertise they don’t have on the existing team. “In that tech space, where I focus, words like profitability and runway are now back in vogue after 10 years of kind of being in the wilderness,” says Zac King, founder of The Fractional Exec Community. “The ability to pick up a senior exec or senior marketer who's been there, done that, got the scars to prove it, and to do it in a really flexible and targeted way just makes sense.” Then there’s the flexibility – fractional execs can be a liquid workforce, something to turn on and off, to help build or support strategy and teams as an organisation matures, operationalise capability, go-to-market expertise and get to commercial impact quicker. It’s certainly how US-based founding partner of CMO Syndicate, Shayne de La Force, and his army of 21 CMOs across six countries operate. And in marketing specifically, complexity and breadth of remit can make it incredibly difficult to find a CMO who can do all you need. It’s why Tumbleturn launched its fractional CMO service in 2024. “What we found is the remit so broad, you have either very strong, strategic CMO, or generally, more often than not, a strong operational CMO,” says partner, Anthony Gregorio. “But rarely do you find that unicorn who is very comfortable playing in both spaces.” In this episode, hosted by Mi3’s Nadia Cameron, we take a deep dive into the real-life experience of being a fractional exec, what it means for the wider marketing fraternity, and how dominant fractional executive workforces will become. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The upside of market mix modelling (MMM) is it “certainly helps with credibility,” when proving marketing’s return on investment, per Optus consumer marketing boss Cam Luby. The downside is that it spits out a shedload of data. Hence Mutinex combining its real-time MMM platform with an AI-powered co-pilot called Hendren to hep marketers more easily interrogate and interpret the data with prompts – and shortcuts next best actions. Optus’ marketing team is already putting it to work. “The MMM gives us the opportunity to understand something we previously couldn’t; Hendren gives us the ability to understand that faster and make decisions quicker. It puts the data we have to better use,” says Luby. “It facilitates a really valuable discussion about the outputs that we should expect from marketing and puts it in terms that matters to the business. Our finance team … they're not really that interested in buying media. They're interested in the outcome for the business.” Using Mutinex’s MMM has enabled Optus’ marketing team to prove hypotheses and adjust channel allocation as a result, “and that's yielded increases for us,” says Luby. Michael Hill CMO, Jo Feeney, is about to plug in the Mutinex platform and will use the first model as a “performance review ... to make sure that every dollar we're spending is being spent in the right place, and it's actually paying back”. Plus, she aims to demonstrate that generating retail sales requires a little more than lower funnel performance tactics and offers. Likewise “myth busting” some misconceptions that may be held by management, such as “no-one watches TV anymore”. More broadly, Feeney wants to prove marketing’s P&L contribution over any perception of marketing as a cost centre. After that, Feeney’s keen to prove the value of Michael Hill’s rapidly growing loyalty scheme – now at 2.5m members – and the dollar value of its owned channels versus paid media. “I've got some early data, but to be able to put that through a model like this as well would be amazing.” Mutinex’s Will Marks says “repointing” Mutinex’s GrowthOS engine to do exactly that is top priority for 2025, alongside “supercharging our forecasting and optimisation capability so that we can help marketers get to different scenarios faster and easier” – and with deeper granularity on what’s really going on within channels.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australian law firm Maurice Blackburn is investigating a publisher class action against Google in a strikingly similar $8 billion lawsuit already underway in Canada – led by a tiny regional community publishing boss, Lisa Sygutek, who won’t be cowed. “Find your inner warrior, sign-up, go for it,” she urges Australian media owners. Miranda Nagy, the lawyer leading the Australian class action investigation, likewise calls on publishers large and small to join the proposed action. She’s aiming to secure “best possible” retrospective compensation. Maurice Blackburn has come to the same conclusion as the US Department of Justice, various European regulators, and a dozen US state attorneys general. They allege Google manipulated and gamed publishers and brands for years with secret deals and projects – some in collusion with Meta – that actively sought to disadvantage them while entrenching Google’s market dominance – taking billions of dollars away from publishers and fleecing advertisers in the process by charging far more than was either necessary or officially disclosed. The alleged ruses include things like ‘project Bernanke’, in which Google was essentially able to “to take a bigger spread between publishers and advertisers, which means both publishers are getting less money and advertisers are paying more,” according to Adil Abdulla, the lawyer leading the Canadian legal effort through Sotos Class Actions. Then there was ‘Jedi Blue’, in which Google is accused of colluding with Facebook to kill the free market publishers and the broader ad market had tried to build through header bidding, while ensuring Facebook got an ad auction advantage in return. Jason Kint, CEO of US peak publisher body Digital Content Next, says Jedi Blue’s impacts “are still playing out” and forecasts “a bloodbath of lawsuits being filed”. He thinks the Trump administration will go just as hard with “eight to 10 different code name projects” to go after. While many US publishers, advertisers and agencies had been “captured” by Google, Kint reckons that “halo is starting to come off”. He urges marketers and the supply chain locally to likewise reject being strong-armed. For publishers, Future Media founder Ricky Sutton echoes that call: “This is the first window in 20 years where we've got a chance to take back some of the things that we've lost. What we do is too valuable to be lost to one commercial company with a 25 year run in the sunlight.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The B2B world is a market where you don't call customers, customers call you - although it’s the opposite of widespread B2B marketing assumptions and practice today. A B2B awakening is underway as business marketers see increasing evidence that an under-investment in B2B brand work leads to a sea of sameness and mediocre results among buyers – across most industry sectors, many feel there is little supplier differentiation, limiting the likelihood you’ll receive that all-important first call. But if the phone does ring from a buyer, the latest round of research across Asia Pacific says you’re overwhelmingly likely to land the deal, irrespective of the sales teams prowess. Sameness leads to nothingness and a B2B marketing strategy that prioritises marketing qualified leads (MQLs) over all else comes with serious limitations, according to this week’s guests. Instead, the brand signals you send out “need to align with how modern customers research and purchase, particularly in complex B2B environments where decision making often involves multiple stakeholders,” says Sophie Neate, Global Head of Digital Marketing & Content for industrial giant ABB. When making the case internally for change, however, don’t underestimate the support from sales teams, says Lara Barnet, the Head of Marketing in Australia for the global technology-managed service provider Logicalis. “Sellers face that problem more than anyone else,” she says. “They’re on the front line, they're the ones picking up the phone and talking to customers. They face this all the time.” The broader growth in influence of buying committees necessarily lessens the influence of a single C-Suite decision maker, and that influence wanes further as the size of the buying committee scales along with the value of the opportunity. An MQL led approach also fails to recognise that customers, not sellers, control the product research agenda and most of those are invisible until they choose to turn public. By then, says the boss of B2B agency Green Hat, Stuart Jaffray, it’s likely too late - they have mostly made their decision.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SCA in March launched three big tech bets for its LiSTNR master app – a customer data platform (CDP), customer-specific data matching clean rooms and dynamic creative optimisation. The bets are paying off and SCA is no longer reliant on third party data sources. Execs say the platform and its 2.1m logged-in users already command over 40 per cent of all digital audio ad dollars, helping SCA’s $50m investment reach breakeven a year ahead of schedule. LiSTNR is now moving into the next phase of audience matching, granular targeting and attribution via its own first party data and ANZ spend data. Its first API-connection based on fuel price changes went so well – landing multiple briefs within weeks – that LiSTNR’s launching 20 more across five categories including finance, property, travel, weather and utilities. “Whatever the agency or brands want to work on, we're able to activate those APIs quite quickly,” per LiSTNR commercial boss Oliver Newton. It’s also launching ‘mood targeting’, i.e. contextual ads for brands based on what audiences are listening to, as well as audio retargeting. Next year LiSTNR will also be able to tell brands the carbon impact of their campaigns across SCA’s assets thanks to a partnership with emissions mapping platform, Scope3. Newton reckons CO2 measurement credentials will be table stakes as advertisers move into negotiation mode for 2025 – especially for larger firms newly mandated to report emissions data, of which advertising and marketing is an eye-wateringly large chunk. The advertiser adoption curve is steepening. In June, 20 per cent of LiSTNR campaigns made use of the Adtech Hub. By September that had jumped to 33 per cent. Next year LiSTNR aims for 45-50 per cent, according to head of SCAiQ Abi Wallis. She says brands are buying-in because they can target people based on where they are, what they are doing, and which brands they are buying. They can suppress existing customers and target only new potential customers based on their listening and spending habits, or likewise upsell and cross-sell to their existing customers, with sharper smarts and context, tailored dynamic creative, and with the spend and audience data enabling “a real world view of the impact” and ROI. LiSTNR’s new capabilities put it on a par with the big tech platforms, per Wallis and Newton, if not beyond – and the opportunity to harness the Adtech Hub is not limited to big brands. “Agency or direct … It’s there to be utilised by anyone looking to access digital audio,” says Newton.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A decade after launching viewability metrics, the Media Ratings Council is moving to standardise attention metrics globally. That means buying media based on attention metrics will scale faster. But a world first out of home study into attention by QMS and Amplified Intelligence is already going global – and the findings for brands are huge. In short, out of home completely flips ratios around average active attention rates, with 85 per cent of sites studied getting at least 2.5 seconds – the baseline for memory encoding that grows brands. Some sites and formats get much more, and the rate of attention decay is slower than other media. The results have the likes of Suncorp and OMD media executives pumped, suggests QMS Chief Strategy Officer Christian Zavecz. He thinks all out of home players will benefit as a result, especially those ramping up programmatic trading of assets. That’s because the study, which mapped 1.3 million people passing large and small format outdoor ads, also finds that active attention (people looking directly at the ad) and passive attention (where the ad is in people’s peripheral vision) can be predicted by site, which means planners and buyers can reliably trade on it. Amplified Intelligence CEO, Dr Karen Nelson-Field, says the study will likely lead challenger brands to rethink out of home, because greater active attention does heavier lifting in terms of brand building, where smaller brands are traditionally disadvantaged by larger rivals whose codes and distinctive assets are already embedded in people’s brains. Bus shelters, per the study, are a particularly good bet, notching “about 7.4 seconds of active attention and about 14 seconds of passive,” per Nelson-Field. But getting the attention is only the first critical step. To drive sales, the creative and branding must cut through. “Anyone that tells you that attention and outcomes are linearly related is lying,” says Nelson-Field. “It’s the combination of the two: Media drives the opportunity for creative; creative takes it and gets the sale.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

TikTok marketing science chief Rory Dolan says performance media costs are soaring while conversions flatline. He has the data to prove it. After mapping TikTok platform activity with Tracksuit’s brand tracking data, Dolan has one key message – invest in brand to boost conversion and beat biddable auction inflation: “Advertisers with 60 per cent-plus awareness have a 2.86 times increase in their baseline conversion rate versus advertisers that are 20 per cent below,” he says, rendering brand versus performance arguments redundant, if not suicidal. Full funnel execution is king, says Dolan, because building future demand means easier, cheaper conversions at scale: “Brand is fundamentally a performance tactic.” Tracksuit co-founder James Hurman literally wrote the book on that principle. He penned Future Demand after one of his own DTC businesses, initially hockey-sticking via Facebook ads, experienced the performance media ‘Easter Island Effect’. Acquisition dried up, performance costs spiralled, the economics tanked. Without priming new customers, “brands use all of their resources, then they have nothing left, and then they die”, warns Hurman. The idea that brand campaigns have to be broad, multichannel and expensive is a myth, says TikTok’s Dolan. “Brand can be built by targeting subgroups of your target audience consistently over time. So this can actually be achieved with small amounts of investment.” The awareness sweet spot for small brands, per the research, is 37 per cent. “We see very strong business impacts as a result of that early on.” Even “big performance-focused advertisers” are hitting the same growth ceiling “which is very expensive to bypass by performance [spend]”, says Dolan. “These are businesses that maybe three years ago wouldn't have touched brand [investment] because of the inability to track their short-term ROI. They're now seeing the impact of that.” Dolan says TikTok’s research underlines that increasing performance spend will not build brand – but brand spend will boost both brand and performance outcomes. For those facing hard budget choices and sceptical CFOs, Dolan suggests leaving performance media to bots and spending more time and money on brand: “That seems to be the big sweet spot at the moment – automating the performance and focusing on driving these multipliers.” But first, get brand tracking sorted.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Six months ago conversational commerce wasn’t really on the radar of Deloitte Digital’s National Partner Lead Leon Doyle. Now Doyle is reorganising his entire content team around it – and believes it’s coming at the $200bn content industry like a freight train. AI-powered chatbots and the speed at which all major platforms are developing and deploying, particularly on messaging apps, are accelerating – ultimately they’re heading to full-funnel capabilities where in travel, for example, discovery to purchase is completed in a single conversational thread. Doyle says brands must prepare for far more content governance to clear “content debt” fast. I.e. start writing not only for humans, but commerce-enabling AI applications which will ingest forgotten, incorrect, outdated or even misleading corporate information and content lurking in digital corners that the bots will otherwise scrape to build their customer responses from. That means restructuring content architecture and taxonomies and focusing on “conversation design, not just content design”, says Doyle “This is what my team are doing. They're thinking about AI conversation strategy … rather than design just for one platform, they're actually thinking about how they structure content in modules for conversations across multiple modes - website, app, chat.” While Doyle cites a handful of brands including Commbank and Qantas aiming for early mover advantage locally, Deloitte Digital's Global Marketing and Commerce Lead, Nick Garrett, says conversational commerce is “exploding in every market”. He thinks the impact on content economics is seismic – with everything that existed pre-AI at risk of obsolescence. “If $200 billion is moving into play …. no client, no organisation, could not be looking at this at a forensic level.” As Doyle puts it: “If you're not thinking actively about your content debt, your content supply chain, start right now. Because the machines are here, they're learning from your content, and we need to be good teachers to them.” What does it mean for the broader content supply chain? Disruption for all but absolute tier one providers, per Garrett. “If your bread and butter was making [content at] scale and you’re dependent on bums and seats, a little bit of automation and a bit of offshore, you’re probably staring into a pretty uncomfortable place right now.” For pretty much everyone on the brand-side, it means content creation is moving into a risk management business. Doyle’s advice for CX’s next big overhaul? Keep it “simple, human and trustworthy”.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 big FMCG firms adhering to those rules were caught napping by more nimble differentiated start-ups. Reach “sufficiency”, or optimising media for reach, no longer works, he suggests, because all reach is not equal – and reach alone doesn’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 WPP. 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.” That’s partly because audience reach doesn’t account for their ability to be influenced - and different media, different categories and consumer types have varying degrees of impact in different moments. Reach, he says, is proving a misleading media proxy for business impact - the variances of consumer receptivity to switching is different by category. Personal care, for instance, has less consumer preparedness to trial alternatives once they’ve established their preference - they’re harder to “manipulate”, Thomas posits, but some media channel characteristics stand a better chance. TV versus influencers in lower funnel strategies will likely surprise many. Which has knock-on impacts on channel effectiveness and weighting. Thomaz says that’s good news for media owners – if they can stop selling on impressions and start selling on functionality. “For some categories, there might be a premium they can charge.” The need to reach all potential buyers in the category, he says, “has not changed in the least … Reach is important, and you still need that scale. However, you also need [to optimise to] the business outcome. But he still thinks it’s “really bad to waste your money on people who will never buy you”. In short: “If you're managing your company's marketing on simplistic and reductive laws, you might want to revisit those, because you're leaving money on the table or leaving yourself open to very simple counter-plays. It's dangerous.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind was “surprised” – read underwhelmed – by the first tranche of Privacy Act legislation laid before parliament last month. But she says the hard stuff is still coming after the election, which means businesses now diverting budgets away from compliance to other activities may regret it, especially as the regulator has sharper teeth. Kind says firms are failing under the current Privacy Act – and they are in the regulator’s crosshairs. Tracking pixels are under serious scrutiny across the piste, as are companies using data beyond what it was collected for and potentially passing it to third parties. In that vein, Kind has “existing concerns” about loyalty programs, customer data enrichment businesses and data broking: “It's something I'd like to look at again under the current framework,” she says, suggesting those operators “make sure that they're watertight”. Likewise firms targeting via geolocation: “We’re looking at a case at the moment … We have some real concerns about how it's being used.” Lookalikes, customer audiences, hashed emails and data clean rooms appear to be in the clear. But under the next wave of reforms “the changing definition of personal information could certainly have an impact,” she says, though for now it’s not clear-cut. In the meantime, Kind says there are four areas for businesses to laser in on – including small firms who will no longer be exempt from regulation. First, “know what data you hold and who you’re giving it to.” Second, “make sure you've got a retention and destruction regime in place – anything that’s old, you don’t need to hold it any more.” Next, get into the weeds on contracts with third party service providers and be sure to have a data breach response plan in place. “It's an area of vulnerability we're seeing a lot at the moment,” says Kind. In short: “Don't take your foot off the gas, because we're looking to take a more enforcement-based approach to regulation in the interim.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Part One: Seven companies now account for a third of the total value of the US S&P 500 – and the bulk of their collective trillions in market value happens to come from marketers and advertising. It’s a crazy number, but Terry Kawaja, the fast talking banker, considered by some the ‘godfather’ of adtech start-up investment, says another wave of advertising and marketing related tech spin offs are incoming that’s making him a little more bullish than the cooling of the past 18 months. Kawaja’s New York firm Luma Partners is behind the Lumascape spaghetti maps that try to make sense of the sprawling, connected pipes of the adtech industry. Kawaja thinks consolidation has to happen for the industry to shake the cowboys – “the environment is highly fragmented and that allows people to hide,” he says. That’s code for nefarious market behaviour which undermines adtech’s credibility - and Kawaja argues a clean digital ad system is more important now than ever if open web players are to compete with big tech, especially as he sees retail media quickly eating a third of open web ad dollars. But there’s little sign of that consolidation right now and Kawaja admits adtech is still notoriously opportunistic and has played a starring role in the creation of some of the problems the market is struggling to address with junk digital data, fake people and opaque trading practices that nobody seems able to solve. Regardless, Kawaja says another wave of tech investment is coming and for good measure and says Google’s pervasive global advertising trading system being broken up would have huge financial upside for Alphabet shareholders – and the industry at large. The US Department of Justice has been landing punches over the past three weeks in its current US Federal District Court adtech "monopoly” trial against Google. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paramount went early on both converged trading and a streaming ad tier in the US. Now it’s doing likewise in Australia and Lee Sears, Paramount’s international ad sales chief, thinks both plays will pay off for the media and entertainment conglomerate, its advertisers and crucially – viewers. Unlike some rivals, Paramount didn’t push subscribers automatically onto the streaming ad tier. Sears says it didn’t need to, because “we have a huge audience elsewhere, so don’t have to be reliant on just the SVOD ad tier”. He suggests forcing ads onto subscribers that signed up for an ad free service wouldn’t be right. Either way, the strategy appears to be paying off. Locally, sales chief Rod Prosser won’t divulge numbers, though analysts Telsyte estimate Paramount SVOD subscribers at 1.8m, with sign-ups outstripping its competitive set. Prosser said the reality is much higher than the Telsyte estimate and, confirmed “We are still the fastest growing [SVOD]”. Moreover, Sears suggests Paramount’s subscribers are actually using the service amid some “wild” numbers being touted in market, per OMG investment chief Kristiaan Kroon, “because it's not an add-on to something else, or it's not a byproduct of a bill that you're paying elsewhere within your household”. On converged trading across BVOD, SVOD, AVOD and FAST (linear TV’s set to follow locally in H2 next year), Sears says the approach is now driving a “major” chunk of revenue in the US and other global markets. He anticipates Australia will follow that playbook: “It is now part of everything we do … Converged trading, connecting everything together, is how we lead with our conversation. I think that’s the way everybody will try to lead conversations in the future, unless you only have a one-dimensional play.” Part of the converged approach is a “blended CPM”, i.e. a bundled price that factors in the different channels the ads run across. Prosser said how that pricing works has been the biggest question from agencies in recent weeks, alongside bringing linear TV into the converged mix.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Salesforce reckons it’s the end of the DIY AI era – and global CMO Ariel Kelman is tasked with addressing what his CEO, Marc Benioff said last week is Salesforce's biggest marketing challenge: convincing global markets to think less about Open AI, Microsoft copilots and other generative AI companies that require businesses to custom-bake the tech into their organisations to make it work – and more about the deployment of low code, no code, autonomous AI agents that can be built and tested and live within weeks, if not days. The difference is that Salesforce is pointing these agents directly at existing customer systems and data, rather than brands spending “literally tens of millions of dollars with cloud providers to train these models” from scratch. “There are lots of use cases where you do need to train and fine-tune your models. But absolutely not sales, service, marketing and commerce – the models are smart enough that they can go and grab information,” says Kelman. “It can just scale the work that our customers have already done.” It’s working for the likes of Saks, Gucci and Wiley – and some local firms like Fisher & Paykel and Queensland University of Technology are now likewise plugged into what Benioff reckons is “AI’s third wave”. Kelman says AI agents “blur the lines” between sales, service and marketing functionality – and coming next is a variant for sales lead development, where the agent will develop the leads until they are warm enough for a human to take over.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before launching its first-ever brand campaign, Virgin Velocity had to convince finance and commercial teams that investing in brand would drive long-term demand, re-engage its 10m members – and ultimately power growth. So it tapped Beatgrid, the same cross-media measurement platform used by Virgin Australia when relaunching its airline brand.Beatgrid’s audience measurement system uses a passive, single source panel – via an opt-in mobile phone-based app – that uses subtle audio pitch shifts to the ad creative to determine which channel the audience was exposed to. That means it can detect if an ad has been seen and how many times per user across different screens and channels – with total recall because it’s not relying on humans to remember what they saw, when and how accurately. It also enables an accurate read on cross-channel incremental reach.For Velocity’s GM of Member Engagement, Emma King, demonstrating the panel’s robustness via control groups meant she could prove incrementality and unlock the media budget. It’s also given Velocity and their media partner PHD, a sharper insight on which channels deliver the highest growth per campaign and cumulatively across campaigns – and where the best balance of effectiveness and efficiency lies.Beatgrid’s data also threw up some surprises. “In one example, we saw total TV drive a lift of 11 points. And when we tease out the impact of BVOD, we can see it drives an incremental result of three points above TV,” says PHD Head of Research, Lillian Zrim – counter to the narrative of declining audiences and effectiveness.Velocity’s King says Beatgrid’s data also enabled her to justify investing in other brand channels. “We saw television work really well with out-of-home to drive incremental KPI results. If you have a lot of overlap in reach, sometimes you’re thinking - maybe we don’t need to cover both; then you see results like this that say [if someone’s exposed to both channels], they’re going to get a much higher lift.”While King and Zrim acknowledge that nothing happens in a vacuum, “In April, our CEO confirmed that member growth trend was 35 per cent above the growth trend the previous year,” says King. “So that's an example of the kind of commercial impact that these kinds of campaigns can have.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The proposed ban on social media for teens has polarised industry and academia with warnings aplenty it could backfire. Ex-Facebook ANZ MD Liam Walsh argues rather than a ban, dumbing down the algorithms, forcing algorithmic transparency through regulation or removing them altogether – could actually be the solution if fears of the effects of algorithmically-generated dopamine addiction and attention-hogging dark patterns on teenage mental health are the primary problem.“If we took that out, how many problems do we have with social?” he says. Walsh warns society has no structures in place to deal with fallout that could land in nine months’ time when the Albanese government proposes a new age limit on social media use. “If you take away kids’ whole network, how they commune with others, that’s kind of a big deal.” Walsh doubts teens will “suddenly start hanging out in the park and helping old ladies paint the fence.”Erica Thomas, Principal at private girls school Kincoppal in Sydney's Rose Bay, agrees teenagers will “seek other things” to fill the void “and that is one concern” but warns there is no time to wait for a protracted legal battle with tech giants in attempts to curtail or open up the algorithms. She sees daily, first-hand, how badly action is required. Across a 30-year career in education, she says social media is “the most damaging influence I have ever seen”.Concentration levels are plummeting with teachers struggling to find a fix, girls are being conditioned to perfectionism from a young age, boys exposed to increasingly extreme violence, toxic influencers and highly sexualised images and bots of girls and young women – and in the last five years, “it’s got worse”.Brands have long championed ESG and purpose. But they’ve been strangely silent on the proposed ban. Katie Palmer-Rose, a social media marketer who has worked with the likes of L'Oreal, PepsiCo and Aldi and now runs influence agency Kindred, thinks many are waiting to see how it plays out. But she says they face a “moment in time where they tend to think very differently about how they show up in social media, how they build communities and connectedness in a digital world that doesn't live in social media,”Production company Finch’s Rob Galluzzo and Greg Attwells fully expect legal challenges from tech platforms – who they claim have told staff to “stonewall” 36 Months, the campaign they founded with Nova’s Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli to push for a social media ban for under 16s. Dumbing down algorithms won’t cut it, says Attwells. Keeping regulation about health, not tech, and moving fast is key, they suggest – with more backer brands about to be announced. The next phase is designing the massive educational and societal infrastructure required to fill the looming gap.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The latest analysis of SVOD growth rates from tech and telco analyst Telsyte proves one thing: fear of streaming services losing subscribers by pivoting to ads is overblown: They’re growing – though some more than others. MD Foad Fadaghi says ads, plus AI personalisation, integration and format innovation, will power the next growth cycle but streaming growth has peaked. Omnicom investment chief Kristiaan Kroon suggests Stan, Nine’s ad-free SVOD holdout, should heed that lesson because Nine has something globals like Netflix and others do not: “A really sophisticated, at scale, sales infrastructure, which means they could make really good money from an ad tier.” There’s more competition incoming from HBO and Disney. But Kroon reiterates that the best sales wins because unlike the US and UK, Australia’s premium end of town doesn’t operate on fully automated systems and open exchanges. “They are still very much handheld markets.” Who’s winning right now? “Amazon Prime and then Binge and Kayo. Why? They have come to market with scale, both have sales teams, both have sophisticated data infrastructure,” per Kroon. He thinks streamer ad tiers will eclipse his earlier predictions of $75-$100m take in 2024 with Amazon, Kayo and Binge taking most of the pie. Next year, he thinks SVOD ad tiers could beat $200m, but there’s debate about how big ad-streamers like Amazon and Netflix actually are. Fadaghi suggests 80 per cent Telstye’s estimated 4.8m Amazon Prime subscribers could technically receive ads. Kroon puts the active Prime user base around 2-2.5m, broadly on a par with Nine and Seven. There’s also an effectiveness debate, with data from Adgile suggesting streamers can’t yet match TV’s results. Kroon says the MMM-effectiveness-ROI debate has become “very finger pointy in recent months”, but agrees there’s a gap to close. Ultimately, he thinks local content integration could prove decisive in determining winners and losers – and for some of the globals, Australia may prove too small. “I don't see how we can support that many BVOD, SVOD [players] – and we haven't really even talked about YouTube and the amount of ads that are served on CTV now,” says Kroon. “There's only going to be a certain number that can be supported.” Fadaghi predicts the streamers will triple in size to 10m subscribers in the next four years, “with more than a third on ad tiers.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For anyone in ecom or performance marketing, this podcast is a must listen. Forget ROI and ROAS, think unit economics, says former investment banker (her last big deal was the Myer float) turned entrepreneur Carla Penn-Kahn. She was early into ecom and left Credit Suisse to launch four of her own –Kitchenware Australia, A Gift Worth Giving, Everten and Buy My Thing. But she sold her last venture last year when she realised it had hit peak profitability. With performance ad prices doubling in four years, and Amazon reaching full speed, the unit economics weren’t going to get any better. Penn-Kahn thinks direct-to-consumer trailblazers have likewise lost their mojo – and their moats – and face the same dilemma, because they can no longer sustainably scale through advertising and VCs are sharpening their bottom line focus as much as the top. Meanwhile, Amazon has just signed an exclusive deal with Australia Post to deliver on weekends. “I can’t see other brands like Myer and DJs getting Aus Post to do the same for them … which 100 per cent gives Amazon an edge in this market over Australian businesses.” Hence she’s cool on the outlook for many, but particularly the likes of The Iconic, Temple and Webster, Adore Beauty and Australian marketplaces like Woolworths-owned Catch, which last week put a $96m dent in Wesfarmers’ balance sheet. Loyalty programs and retail media offers a lifeline for some, per Penn-Kahn, but most DTC brands don’t have the latter option. But Amazon might not have it all it’s own way. She suggests Microsoft might be gearing up to buy Shopify (which in Australia lays claim to controlling 25 per cent of all ecom transactions). If it happens “they will own the space”, suggests Penn-Kahn. “You will be advertising on Bing through the Shopify network as an ecom brand and leveraging Microsoft's AI to build your website, build the content. It could be a full ecosystem roll up if it happens. It's very possible.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The effectiveness “revolution” is colliding with the AI-spawned efficiency uprising and it’s leaping the early consensus AI use cases in marketing around automating personalised content and communications. So much so Mark Ritson choked on his Wellfleet oysters when Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg told him they were leaving top jobs at the LinkedIn-backed thinktank, the B2B Institute. Then they told him why. Ritson promptly joined their venture, along with what Weinberg calls “the advisory board to end all advisory boards”. Thus the synthetically-enhanced AI marketing outfit Evidenza was born. The founders argue their new piece of “synthetic customer” tech, which starts with creating AI copies of target customers, can create an annual marketing strategy, category entry points, messaging and positioning at a fraction of the cost of traditional market research and in a fraction of the time it takes for a marketing team to do the same. They claim it completes major research projects in minutes – and have proven their digitally synthetic customers match real customer responses it took some of the world’s biggest brands long cycles to gather. “It can imitate essentially anyone by gathering and synthesizing massive amounts of data,” per Weinberg, including almost impossible-to-reach professionals, like airline chiefs, or the bosses of mining companies. Which is exactly what Evidenza did in a head-to-head test with EY Americas CMO Toni Clayton-Hine’s actual survey data – and “reached 95 per cent of the same conclusions,” per Weinberg. EY “has been a fantastic client ever since.” But as well as synthesizing customers, the system also synthesizes marketing strategy and science: Imagine on one side a synthetic combination of Mark Ritson, Professor Byron Sharp teamed with ad effectiveness maestros Peter Field and Les Binet. Then on the other side, hundreds of synthetic CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs, CMOs and each of those functions linked to the nuances of different industries and categories. Put them all into an AI blender, and you get what Lombardo and Weinberg think is an efficiency revolution in marketing fused with the effectiveness revolution from the marketing academics. The upshot for marketers? “A finance-friendly marketing plan that used to take months now takes maybe minutes, but more likely, a day,” per Weinberg. According to Lombardo that’s good news even for traditional market researchers. “Everyone is going to get better. Average is over.” So what’s left for the humans? The synthetic duo say the smart stuff - experience, strategic frameworks and brand and category nuance, for instance - that makes the machines do better. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marketing mix modelling (MMM) only works if brands grant their agencies access to critical business data – and many don’t in a perplexing and decades-long challenge. But equally, agencies can be guilty of slowing media pricing and audience data into their client MMM models, rounding out the two-way data conundrum. It’s ironic given all the talk of partnerships and outcome-based incentives, per Mutinex APAC CEO, Mat Baxter. Bupa and Atomic 212°, says Baxter, are standout examples of genuine client-agency transparency – and it’s powering not just “marginal gain theory” in which lots of small, incremental components are optimised to drive growth, but hard, 28 per cent ROI gains in specific incidences. Bupa plugged into the platform in 2022 and performance lead Angas Hill says without a free flow of business data to Atomic 212° – sales, revenue, pricing and competitiveness data included - “there's not much point in standing up an MMM model.” Bupa does and now the CFO sees the MMM outputs as “the most trusted source we have in terms of attribution and forecasting”. Bupa uses those monthly ROI insights to shape the quarterly media plan – with Atomic 212° already plugged-in across what’s working and what’s not at a business level. “It’s just speeding up that whole process,” says Hill. “We are seeing long-term growth in our effectiveness for what is essentially flat media budgets.” Plus, he says, on-off testing via MMM, e.g. testing one region and channel against another, “is where we are seeing much more drastic changes.” Atomic 212°’s Tom Sheppard underlines broader benefits from using MMM outputs to inform trading strategy: “If we understand what the ROI is, we can negotiate. If [as a result] we can decrease that cost base of certain channels, all of a sudden we can automatically improve the return that the client is getting,” per Sheppard. “The MMM is fantastic at telling us what's worked in the past and to give us the next best decision,” he adds. Now he says Atomic 212° and Bupa are adding new inputs and channels “to get even better signals – so as a result, everyone wins.” Next step is making automatic media transaction feeds via API the norm, per Baxter. “That is the future of where we are going.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Part Two: After last week's instalment with S4 Capital's founder and former WPP boss, Sir Martin Sorrell – in which he explained why the market cap of his next generation marketing services firm had plummeted from £5 billion to £300 million in the past three years – he's back for part two. We cover the consolidation of the $700 billion global digital ad market down to a handful of global tech media players. Is that dangerous for brands and the broader marketing supply chain? Maybe, but Sir Martin thinks they're only going to get bigger. Plus, we go deeper into AI and mass personalisation – Netflix style – along with the dodgy, inaccurate, but thriving online user data trade that was revealed a month or so ago by UM's former chief privacy officer, Arielle Garcia (which is now Mi3’s top podcast and story so far this year). For the record, Sorrell agrees with Garcia: “Garbage in, garbage out ... There are some murky parts of the market, but that's our role to expose that, not to be a part of it.” Either way, he thinks the platforms will only get closer to marketers at the expense of intermediaries – and there is little agencies can do to stop it. Plus, he says OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who reckons AI will displace 95 per cent of advertising jobs, is “directionally right”. The timeframe? “Three years,” per Sorrell. “It’s going to be uncomfortable.” Conversely, Sorrell says the big platforms won’t be shrinking any time soon. On a GDP basis, “these are countries, they are not companies anymore.” He thinks that means regulation, unless co-ordinated globally, is ultimately powerless.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most attribution analysis by digital marketing and analytics teams is too narrow to base marketing investment decisions on – and it’s leading to a chronic over-investment in paid search and under-investment in digital video according to Analytic Partners. The firm conducted a major study to unravel the gaps between digital attribution reporting for brands and market mix modelling – and there's a big difference between the two. Analytic Partners MD, Paul Sinkinson said on average, 59 per cent of the data is missing, and it can be “as high as 80 per cent”, yet attribution models mask this, because they pick up “the clicky stuff”, i.e. last click – but miss swathes of what’s happening in between, particularly within-app activity. Privacy changes and iOS-driven signal loss mean the gaps are getting bigger, making it much harder to run even a half-decent attribution model, which “is driving you to allocate activity to the wrong channels, purely because of how much data is missing,” says Sinkinson. “And it's the unequalness of those losses that then made us really concerned.” Social, the study found, is massively under-represented in those attribution models, which try to cram everything into a seven or 30-day window, favouring short-term hits above all else. Per Sinkinson: “Display – 364 per cent overvalued in an attribution model. Search – 336 per cent overvalued in an attribution model. Social – 44 per cent under measured in terms of the ROI and an attribution model. Video – 30 per cent underrepresented from an ROI perspective. So that means that we're starting to put our money into the wrong channels.” The upshot – which applies globally – is that “35 cents is wasted from every dollar invested, because you’re allocating on siloed metrics.” Those findings landed with Meta, which commissioned Analytic Partners to produce a white paper on the key research findings – and the platform’s ANZ marketing science lead, Carl McLean, says there are “very real implications” for marketing spend, especially in a soft market. How big is the problem? “It’s widespread,” per McLean. “A lot of the time it’s because there is a sense that there isn’t a better alternative.” There is – it just requires a bit more work. But the rewards are massive.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Part One: It's been three years since Sir Martin Sorrell was last on the Mi3 podcast - he declared then a mea culpa of sorts that he didn't - and couldn't - transform WPP, the giant marketing services holding company he founded in the 1970s, fast enough because it was listed. At the time (2021), Sir Martin’s next generation digital holding company, S4Capital, was firing with a market cap of circa £5 billion (AUD $9.6bn), just three years after a street fight with WPP’s board saw him exit and start the new business. He was bleak on the future of his old British firm at the time along with WPP’s French and US-based global holding company rivals. But since then, S4Capital’s market cap has plunged more than 90 per cent to £300 million (AUD $582m) as the tech sector, representing upwards of 45 per cent of S4’s revenues, slashed their own marketing budgets globally. But there’s more to it – the basics actually, like pricing S4Capital’s business services appropriately to clients. Sir Martin almost acknowledges some rookie errors at S4 in managing the business, which operates as .Monks today globally in-market across technology and content. Aside from his typically robust macro views, Sir Martin also appears to have developed a new and begrudging respect in building S4Capital for businesses that can break down business silos - and lashings of enthusiasm to hire people “who are sharers”, he says. “If ever I was to write a book, which I will never do, about our business, clients and agencies, I would say the biggest impediment is the political structure, or the structure of the companies - they are organised basically into silos,” he told Mi3 last week during a visit to Australia. “Good people tend to put their arms around things. There are exceptional people who are good, who are sharers. Those are the jewels…find good people who are good by definition, but also who share, and we do have them inside our company, but to be frank there are not as many as there should be.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Six weeks ago Mel Hopkins was rolled out of Seven amid a clinical round of cuts that added further fuel to the narrative that TV is in trouble as audiences bleed and revenue follows suit. But Hopkins, who as Optus CMO dumped the lion’s share of her media budget into Meta and Google, remains convinced TV is undervalued and undersold, says BVOD metrics and reporting are as good as anything the platforms can provide, and that the global streamers are likewise racing to “manage out cost”. Revenue challenges should therefore not be conflated with audiences, which Hopkins and Nine CMO Liana Dubois insist remain healthy – Dubois said TV reached 24.2m Australians last month. While media buyers last year said 2022 had marked “the biggest audience decline in the history of TV” and correctly forecast a 10 per cent revenue hit for linear TV as a result, Dubois said industry needs to get its terminology straight – literally – because TV delivered over the internet can still be linear TV. However it is delivered and consumed, “television today is reaching the same amount of people that it did 10 years ago,” per Dubois – and those numbers “are holding”. She warns marketers pulling out of TV for digital platforms and their dashboards are “dangerously” risking marketing effectiveness and should instead look beyond the shallow metrics – and narrative – they are being fed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

$18 trillion’s worth of B2B transactions take place annually. But “40-60 per cent of deals get stalled”, says B2B Institute founder Jann Martin Schwarz, because B2B marketers are focusing on the wrong things and the wrong people. They are missing the “hidden buyers” that don’t show up in individual-focused lead gen and those buyers – procurement, finance, legals, IT security, the c-suite – don’t care about features. They just care about managing risk. They make group decisions (earlier than B2B marketers realise) based on compromise and the “least worst” option. On average, they represent half of decision-making heft, and they get to veto who gets the contract. That’s one of the key insights from a major global study conducted with Bain across 500-plus enterprise B2B buyers. Across the study, “at every stage, familiarity and trust in a brand or vendor's reputation was the casting vote,” says B2B Institute EMEA and LatAm marketing lead Mimi Turner. Which means brand influences hidden buyers disproportionately, because it’s effectively “deal risk insurance”, per Schwarz. The study effectively quantifies why nobody ever got fired for buying IBM and underlines why B2B’s brand and performance teams need to align much more closely to hone brand messaging to hit hidden buyers – and stop focusing on leads and individuals. They argue the findings all but obliterate the model on which B2B marketing is founded – and requires a wholesale rethink of lead gen, measurement and strategy. Changing models means graft and pain, especially for the “rank and file KPI’d on reductionist metrics” acknowledges Schwarz. But if adopted, even moving the needle by 1 per cent will unlock $180bn of annual B2B deal-making upside – and early movers will get the biggest hit. Schwarz is willing to “stake my reputation” on brands that flip their models to reach hidden buyers will see “an immediate spike in activity” and “close deals faster”. A prospect, he says, no CEO or CFO will ever decline.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former PepsiCo, Kimberly-Clark, Interbrand and Westfield [now Scentre Group] marketer John Batistich transitioned to company board roles ahead of most – he’s now a non-executive director (NED) and advisor to seven boards, including the listed buy now pay later firm Zip Co, Muffin Break Bakeries and Jamaica Blue Cafes’ parent company FoodCo, Melbourne unicorn Moose Toys and Sydney-founded fashion label Ksubi International. Batistich has a helicopter view of what boards want from marketing functions, where the gaps remain – and crucially, what marketing can do to close them. In short, “become the expert on customer” because marketing is still seen as a cost centre; focus on “brilliant basics”, build better partnerships, and start working on capability models, because marketing’s capability gap is widening and Batistich sees major skills deficiencies – especially around personalisation for lifetime value. The range of his advisory roles also gives Batistich a broader economic worldview than most. He sees a cocktail of uncertainty facing brands over the next months – some of the firms he works with are already re-engineering supply chains in the likely event of a Trump victory and incoming tariffs. But he sees opportunity for some: Cosmetics, pharmacy and beauty are powering and are likely to be those investing harder in FY25. Marketplaces, department stores and fashion are feeling sustained pressure from more efficient, demand-led global platforms like Temu and Shein plus the pullback of financially-crunched younger generations that used to be marketing’s Holy Grail – but now appear less prized than wealthy retirees. Batistich also warns on AI – “both a significant threat to humanity, but also a huge productivity opportunity”. He’s the board member of a firm harnessing conversational design AI for the latter. Either way, it’s another rapidly developing field now crossing deep into marketer-customer remits – and boards are clamouring for intel. Amid all the short-term pressure, Batistich urges marketers to think longer–term. “Unlike the US election, ageism is alive and well in marketing,” he says. “You do need to have a plan, because that reality is going to hit you in the face on an idle Tuesday in your early 50s, when the organisation is seeking a succession plan or change.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A deep, senior marketer study and report by Mi3, The Australian Marketing Institute (AMI), Qualtrics and Tumbleturn finds hard evidence across 105 top marketers responsible for $3bn-plus of budgets of an emergent three-speed marketing economy and upended KPIs and priorities. There are big question marks in key sectors such as retail around the effectiveness of personalisation efforts: Just 15 per cent think their CX is performing, though telcos are confident they’re smashing it. There’s also a major swing to performance media as CMOs seek instant results. The good news is that after decades of being perceived as the colouring-in department, 83 per cent of marketers say that has now shifted, with boards and CEOs perceiving marketing as a critical growth driver – though B2B marketers are far less certain. Problem is, marketer remits are exploding and the FY 25 Marketing & Customer Benchmarks report, polling top marketers across all B2C and B2B sectors, finds the majority feeling ill-equipped to tackle what’s rapidly coming at them. Plus they now have heightened responsibility for customer – with customer lifetime value or CLV eclipsing all other KPIs across the sample as a future indicator – thrust upon them. But CMOs, customer chiefs and marketing directors across the piste are trying to offload duties to free-up bandwidth. Getting lead agencies to manage the partner roster – with an average of 10 agencies per brand across the survey – alongside consolidation is a rising trend, as is hybrid in-housing. Large brands meanwhile forecast project work will eclipse retainer arrangements, with even small brands suggesting it will be at least half of their requirements. Then there’s the question of AI and just how marketers are using it. Content creation and productivity – which comes with positive and negative connotations for headcount – top the pile. AMI’s Bronwyn Heys, Tumbleturn’s Jen Davidson, Qualtrics’ Ivana Sekanic and Akcelo’s Aden Hepburn unpack the findings and implications for marketers, agencies and the broader supply chain heading into FY25 and beyond. Download the report – here – to accompany the nuanced expert view.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

RyanCap CEO Simon Ryan says 50 per cent of clients are “shifting a lot more money into search, digital and online video” as they scramble for immediate results and short-term sales going into FY25. Stubbornly high interest rates and crunched consumers mean major brand spending is likely off the cards for the foreseeable. “Any marketer going into a C-suite or a boardroom and pushing a big brand campaign in what is a harder market would be very gutsy,” per Ryan. “Brand is absolutely crucial. However, what is working now is an absolute customer focus.” Problem is, marketers, especially those in ecom, are under pressure to do more with less – but actually are getting less for more, especially in search as Shein, Temu and others drive up ad prices. “You’re seeing bid prices go up,” says Ryan. “When you've got overseas competitors coming into the Australian market, that means that you're either going to be outbid or you've got to outbid them … It's going to be a real challenge for some people”. Meanwhile ecom’s maturity means growth rates are coming down fast, creating a “pressure cooker” for marketers – and they are paring back martech spend as a result, seeking immediate wins over expensive longer-term builds. But RyanCap, after a cash plus equity deal with Paris-headquartered, UK private equity-backed Labelium, does have money to spend – and Ryan’s hunting acquisitions. Content and creative shops could be first off the blocks – maybe. “If you look at the growth channels, and you look at where clients are spending money, that will give you a view as to how we will accelerate our strategy.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s little contention today that the pro-consumer privacy lobby is winning the war over industry on privacy reform - they’re informed on industry techniques, loaded with compelling consumer research and aligned entirely on the need for a clampdown on the collection and use of an individual’s online data trail. Former NSW Deputy Privacy Commissioner and Salinger Privacy boss Anna Johnston and Choice Consumer Data Advocate, Kate Bower unpack what and why they expect a series of hard, industry-challenging privacy reforms to land in parliament next month - that’s less than six weeks away. Just how deeply the $25bn-plus marketing supply chain and tens of thousands of practitioners will be impacted will become clear as the reforms are tabled in Federal Parliament. Johnston and Bower think the updated Act will go harder than anywhere in the world. Hashed emails will be classified as personal information. Trading of geolocation data will be out. Trading of loyalty scheme data – the stuff that powers retail media and a vast targeting-attribution industry – will require companies to prove they have lawful consent to do so and they won’t be able to deny services to those that say no. But consent, says Johnston, is a very fragile thing – and companies might actually be best off concentrating on one of the legislation’s central tenets: Fair and reasonable use of data. In other words, says Choice’s Bower, does what you are doing with customer’s data pass “the privacy pub test?” If it does, meeting a very high consent threshold doesn’t apply. Right now, most are badly flunking the test. Johnston has a checklist for brands that likely have a 12-month compliance window to get houses in order. But ultimately, she says $50m fines are now in play and that “some product lines and business processes will have to stop … and frankly, that is the point of the reforms.” Cleanrooms, she suggests, may come under intense scrutiny.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just how accurate is the user data being traded by advertisers, agencies and data firms in the $700bn global digital advertising system? The former Chief Privacy Officer of UM in the US, Arielle Garcia, is exasperated - it’s garbage she says and to prove it Garcia recently accessed her profile from an ad tech vendor and found she was in “500 different audience segments across seven different data brokers, and what I saw was just a bunch of contradictory, useless, garbage data.” I.e. she was both a man and a woman, worked in food service, agriculture, a defense contractor, an engineer and was simultaneously below the poverty threshold and classified as high income. “They're selling this garbage data back and forth to one another,” she says, allowing for a host of data “premiums” to be applied by various intermediaries in the process of executing digital advertising campaigns. “Marketers have been tricked into believing that precision and personalisation equals performance,” she says. "There's so much that's wrong with that, and the inaccuracy of the data is only one piece of that fallacy.” Meanwhile, she says big agency groups have lost their way. “It’s not just principle media models (aka arbitrage) that are problematic, but the fact most of them are incentivised to hit targets by the likes of Google and it distorts the market - “it's literally about their objectivity,” she says. Agencies are not the only ones. “Google has captured the trade associations … they buy their way into every room.” If trade associations are saying “nothing to see here … of course that’s going to lull marketers into a false sense of security,” she says. Garcia argues Google’s manoeuvres with PMax – it’s AI-powered “just trust us” media placement product for it’s owned media assets like YouTube – “gives Google the ability to opaquely use their black box algorithms to move money wherever they want”, which could prove handy ahead of impending antitrust trials. Meanwhile, AI Overviews in search will “massacre traffic” for publishers. She says publishers must stop forcing people to log in and refocus on quality. For marketers, Garcia urges a “reorientation around people” and “prioritising quality over the illusion of precision.” How? “Demand transparency … there cannot be a market for black box products”, she says. Plus hold agencies accountable. “No one messes with the client that audits.” For everybody else in industry, Garcia has one ask – work out if YouTube is “covertly tracking people.” How? “Let's find out what X-Goog-Visitor-Id is.” Nobody seems to know. But that may change. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hyundai is the first brand - with some bravery - to have signed on to the 36 Months campaign to lift the minimum age for social media accounts from 13 to 16, launched by Nova Radio’s Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli and Rob Galluzzo, the boss of production company Finch. 36 months is the time a teen will reclaim from social media between 13 and 16 years. Galluzzo is “100 per cent certain” more brands will follow Hyundai to help create and fund the programs that rebuild a physical social network for teens that isn’t manipulated by the anxiety-inducing algorithms that have made young teenagers the product. Which creates the perfect platform for brands to walk all the talk about ‘purpose’ and ‘showing up in the right way’. “A brand can go to its board, and ask ‘how do we want to show up for these kids, these families, the community?’ If they don't have an answer to that, they probably need to have a pretty big discussion about what they stand for as companies,” per Galluzzo. As of last Friday, Wippa and Galluzzo had landed 90,000 signatures, more than enough to have the petition head to Canberra. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already endorsed the campaign, stating “what we want is our youngest Australians spending more time outside, playing sport, engaging with each other in a normal way, and less time online”. State and territory premiers have also backed the move – and Wippa thinks the upcoming election creates an opportunity for legislation sooner rather than later. “There’s some easy votes to be picked up from parents if you made this an election promise,” he says. Now 36 Months is building out three crucial pillars to use the time reclaimed from the platforms to better prepare young Australians for physical and digital life ahead. Here’s Wippa and Galluzzo on where next, and how brands can help repair the fractured civics they have inadvertently funded.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A year ago Ariel Kelman boomeranged back to Salesforce after a decade helming global marketing for the likes of Amazon Web Services and Oracle. As global President and CMO of the $200bn+ customer tech giant, he’s wasted little time shaking things up – and Kelman’s view that Salesforce had “lost our focus on sales pipeline and on marketing really being a vehicle for driving business results” now appears prescient. Last week Salesforce’s stock price crashed circa 20 per cent after missing revenue guidance for the first time in decades. Ironically, most analysts still have a ‘buy rating’ on the stock – citing a “very healthy” pipeline and backing its new AI tools to power renewed growth. Kelman has driven a forensic effort unpacking marketing’s contribution to sales – from a brand investment perspective and more tactical, performance-based campaigns. He’s also reset KPIs and marketing metrics and re-engineered the firm’s attribution model – not for the fainthearted, given “you can provoke very angry religious fights” amongst attribution’s fractured tribes. Either way, Salesforce has ditched last touch for a “deep learning” model that blends and weights sales’ and marketing’s contribution to pipeline growth and revenue.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A year ago programmatic sales were just 2 per cent of QMS’ business. By the year-end, says Head of Programmatic, Laura Wall, it will be double digits. She says the market is starting to move, and latest SMI data, with pDOOH up 100 per cent in Q1, underlines that trend. Kinesso’s Chief Media Activations Officer, Michael Whiteside, thinks even that rise is “undercooked”. He sees programmatic out of home – or pDOOH – making up 20 per cent of the market within two years. That’s partly because advertisers are seeking increased efficiency and trying to stretch budgets; partly because programmatic buying brings in a new cohort of advertisers that might have been priced out of traditional out of home; and partly because pDOOH delivers both brand and demand. But Whiteside thinks there needs to be a better understanding of the value that programmatic out of home brings. CPMs, he says, are not the only factor – and advertisers with weak attribution models cannot correctly value the flexibility and targeting afforded by pDOOH – especially if they are comparing it to other programmatic media. Understanding out of home’s nuance from a planning and buying perspective remains imperative – and it cannot be lumped in with broader programmatic channels. Hence QMS’ teams selling on a “total out of home basis”. Creating sales silos, says Wall, played out badly in publishing’s early programmatic days. Either way, some of Essencemediacom’s early adopter clients are now pushing 100 per cent of OOH budgets into programmatic, says Group Director Katherine ‘KP’ Pochroj, who suggests “remnant inventory … is simply not a thing any more”. Entertainment and ecom brands, she says, are making major gains from mapping stores and high value audiences through mobile data – and are able to directly attribute sales increases to their programmatic buys. But better measurement, says Pochroj, is required to keep pDOOH’s momentum moving. Kinesso’s Whiteside thinks the launch of MOVE 2.0 will provide sharper answers – and “highlight the value of each panel”.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s not sexy but like AI, it’s going to affect your job – and your company. Another salvo in the fast approaching privacy regime set for tabling in parliament in August was fired last week by the ACCC around how personal information is collected and used by data firms – Experian, Nielsen, Publicis-owned Epsilon and Woolworths-owned Quantium were among those flagged by the competition regulator last week in its eighth interim report as part of the multi year Digital Platforms Inquiry. And to be blunt, any professional working in ecom, marketing, customer experience, digital advertising and data and analytics is going to have a rude shock for what they can do now versus what is likely in a year or perhaps a bit longer. But UNSW Business School’s Professor of Practice, Peter Leonard, says last week’s release by the ACCC of its Data Products and Services interim report makes “every firm in this economy a data firm.” And in the short-term, that’s not good news for most companies because their data readiness and maturity is not matched by the “fundamental change” which will force everyone to “rethink their understanding” of what even defines personal information” according to ADMA’s Director of Legal and Advocacy, Sarla Fernando. Leonard and Fernando are joined by Capital Brief’s Legal and Regulatory Affairs Correspondent, Laurel Henning and Civic Data’s founder, Chris Brinkworth. And for a tantalising teaser, Future Media’s Ricky Sutton lays out the changes Google is making to its search engine which is already seeing organic referral traffic to publishers abroad drop 40 per cent – brands, he says, are facing similar declines. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

News Corp’s first party tech build is now at point where the publisher will match spend from customers using its new platform and run it in parallel with a standard cookie-based approach to prove it delivers much bigger reach and more sales. Via a “privacy compliant” approach using its first party data and data matching via the likes of Google, LiveRamp, Adobe, InfoSum and AdFixus alongside its more commerce-focused websites, News can find buyers who are ready to buy specific products. Hence calling the new stack Intent Connect. Director of Commercial Data, Video & Product, Paul Blackburn, says one “large supermarket” – flip a coin – has increased spend “3,000 per cent” after trialling Intent Connect. GM of Digital Revenue, Mark Brownie, cites tests with “a major insurance company” that used News’ “self-learning, self-optimising segments” to boost acquisition by 199 per cent versus cookies. “We’re not talking about vanity media metrics, we’re talking about hard sales,” per Blackburn. Plus, log-level attribution benchmarking, says National Head of Digital, Jess Gilby, “shows 197 per cent increase in reported reach, which is huge, and 10 per cent higher conversion rates - and we're just getting started”. Those reach gains are because News’ can now measure across browsers that have already killed off cookies – basically the other half of the internet. Meanwhile, offsite targeting is growing rapidly after News launched vertical video products – AKA shorts – basically the same formats as social media, which means buyers can use the same ads across both social and News’ sites to extend reach without having to do everything twice. Buyers are buying in. “Our total video stream number is around the 4 billion mark – and 3 billion of those are happening outside of our owned and operated environments,” says Brownie. Plus, it’s going hyper local – using the log-ins from 100 local mastheads to enable stores to “upload lists of their outlets and automatically generated audiences based on that data,“ says Brownie. “That's really powerful from a pure addressability standpoint, but it also tells a retailer a tonne of stuff about their existing or future customers in those areas, and the nuances between the different locations.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In most B2B businesses lead generation, or individual qualified "lead gen” more accurately, is at the core of business marketing - certainly for the tech sector. The merits of focusing on groups of buyers influential in a large corporate purchase over an individual executive is not new, but what is has a veteranB2B marketing analyst warning that almost every sector in B2B is still “focused on completely the wrong thing”. And the required shift that Kerry Cunningham, a former Forrester Principal Analyst now at US-based 6Sense, says is needed from B2B marketers has the backing of the Global VP and Head of Marketing at engineering giant ABB, Jo Woo, who agrees “traditional lead metrics are outdated”. B2B marketers must ditch their “obsession with counting leads”, she says, justas sales teams too must rethink their approach. For Andrew Haussegger, CEO at specialist B2B agency Green Hat, part of the fix is to “free the content”. That is, stop putting content behind a gate in order to capture leads – because brands need to influence a much broader set of people much earlier. Here’s the conversation that puts the hard data on lead generation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The likes of CommBank, Westpac, Suncorp, McDonald’s and KFC are showing the rest of the market how to do women’s sports beyond just slapping on a logo – and it’s paying off in spades, according to GroupM Chief Investment Officer Mel Hey and Foxtel Media Head of Sport NSW, Caitlin O’Meara. But while existing men’s code sponsors are migrating spend into women’s sport, the broader market remains behind the curve – despite significant growth in both female and male audiences. According to O’Meara, audience numbers for AFL W and NRL W last year climbed 28 per cent and 43 per cent respectively when measured via Kantar versus OzTam’s panel (which “probably wasn’t a true representation,” per O’Meara). The average audience for NRL W is now 55,000 she adds, with the higher audience figure helping women’s codes attract greater sponsor funding as a result. Interestingly, consumption of the women’s codes on Foxtel is more linear than streamed – up to 60 per cent linear versus an average of 25 per cent in men’s sport. “There is still a big opportunity for more brands to get involved,” says O’Meara, especially as the women’s codes are adding more rounds each season. She says it’s still a relatively low-cost entry point for brands increasingly keen to be part of cultural moments that sport provides – and bring those stories to life, from the top teams down to the grass roots, building mutual brand, code and audience growth along the way. For brands now weighing up women’s sport sponsorship, Hey says they could do worse than lift the templates built by the likes of CommBank, Westpac and Suncorp. “They have to make sure they're showing up with authenticity and going beyond just taking a sponsorship and a logo. They should be looking at how they can actually integrate and grow the sport and the players within the sport beyond just the game.” Hey sees a shift now underway as brands aim for new growth opportunities outside more “cluttered” environments – and suggests women’s sport is one of the safer bets amid current market flux. “From a pure numbers perspective, sport actually provides consistency and reach. It's actually the one area, whether you’re talking linear or streaming, that provides a consistent and engaged audience.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This conversation is about getting marketers, agencies, media and tech to become more like chartered accountants – in a good way. That is, have letters after their name that mark them out to employers, peers and recruiters as the most horizontally skilled and relevant in the business – and be required to continue learning every year to keep them. Which is precisely why Mi3 and the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) have partnered. Log-in and read Mi3’s articles and earn continuous professional development (CPD) points that count towards retaining the AMI’s Certified Practising Marketer (CPM) status. CPMs need 100 points every year to keep their status. So get reading. But first, listen to why chartered status, continuous learning and breadth of skills are critical for marketers and those in the supply chain that want to a) remain relevant and b) progress to the top and beyond. Menulog CMO Simon Cheng is using the AMI framework of 25 competencies to create “horizontal” marketers. “Don’t be afraid to swim in other lanes, and become best mates with the CFO” is his advice to marketers – and amass financial acumen much earlier in your career. For AFL marketing boss, Anthony Voyage, harnessing the framework is all about “marketing fitness” and gaining incremental advantage through it. Chelsea Wymer knows exactly the value of chartered status – because she’s CMO at Chartered Accounts Australia and New Zealand, which accredits 136,000 chartered accountants. Her advice? “Take control of your own learning” – and sign up with the AMI: “It really does tell the organisations we work for that we're more than just ‘the colouring in department’; that we're experts with serious tech and digital skills – and commercial acumen.” AMI CEO Bronwyn Heys says businesses need “bench-ready talent” if they are to promote from within – which requires more horizontal and “more adaptable” talent given accelerating flux. Hence developing the AMI’s 25 competencies with counterparts in the UK, Europe and the US. But she says there is one constant: “If you do not have commercial acumen as a marketer, you are going to fail.” AMI Board Chair Andrew Thornton says recruiters are exasperated at the lack of “broader, non-marketing expertise” in those applying for CMO roles. “It is really hindering where they are going,” he suggests. If recruiters are telling you what’s closing off your job options… it’s probably worth listening.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

‘Virtual professor’ Mark Ritson says advertisers should be allocating circa 11 per cent of media budgets to total audio. Problem is, the market’s not buying Ritson’s line. Audio’s dollar share is sitting just over half of that and static, despite broadcast audiences increasing 6 per cent since Covid and time spent on total audio surging 49 per cent. SCA thinks media planners may be behind the curve – and aims to change that by hammering home both the audience growth message and the fact it now has the tech firepower and user data to compete with the likes of Meta, Amazon and Google on performance-led conversion. Via audio platform LiSTNR, approaching 2 million logged-in users, SCA is armed with personalisation smarts and first party data matching via data cleanrooms that enable highly efficient and effective audience targeting via dynamic creative messaging. That means it can deliver both sharper behavioural and contextual targeting as well as broadcast reach – and some major QSR and cosmetics brands are piling in for a deeper read on where key audiences are, and what they are consuming. But you need to cover both bases, per National Head of Audio Sales Luke Minto, because SCA uses the tech stack in its own marketing efforts – and watched conversion plummet 30 per cent when broad reach was wound down for targeted performance alone. While advertisers need a deeper understanding of what audio can now deliver, Head of Digital Ad Product and Operations, Kim Loasby, says her key message to advertisers is “you don’t have to be an expert.” SCA will walk buyers though the layers. Loasby says SCA has just done that for a certain mattress brand – where buyers are in market every five years at best. By ingesting the brand’s data, SCA found its high value customers “significantly over-indexed in listening to Abbie Chatfield … So then we could definitively say ‘people who are lookalikes to your highest value customers are likely to be entertained by this piece of content’.” It worked. “They immediately pushed some more data.” Other brands, she says, are using SCA’s new data capabilities and dynamic creative optimisation to re-engage lapsed buyers while suppressing others – making the budget go further. “So we are seeing our ad tech pay dividends for brands already.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The stampede by companies into CX, with massive associated investments into martech, specialists teams and organisational overhauls, is having little impact on customer experience scores – and big banks, telcos, and car brands are at best benchmarked as average, despite investing billions collectively. CSBA Managing Director, Paul van Veenendaal, has seven years of CX performance data from 12,000 annual assessments across 200 Australian firms and it’s a sobering read for those firms heralding their commitment to connecting up and improving the experience across all customer contact points. In short, all that tech investment is simply not hooked up to customer contact centres – and NPS scores, which many leadership teams have linked to performance and bonuses, are “being gamed”, he warns, for better but hollow CX benchmarks. No big brands feature in the top 10 of CSBA’s CX rankings, and only one, a superannuation company, makes the top 20. Chatbots aren’t up to scratch yet, says van Veenendaal, and companies have “pretty much parked” speech analytics. Meanwhile despite heavy investment in digital transformation, call centre volumes have not declined over the last seven years – and those call centres are focused on the wrong outcomes and metrics, he says. Hence underwhelming CX scores across CSBA’s rankings. But some sectors are nailing it: Universities and colleges, utility companies and local authorities – the latter at least partially due to the policies of a one-time adman and former Victorian Premier. Here’s where van Veenendaal thinks it’s all going wrong – and how to fix it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tourism NT has always scored its biggest wins targeting the over 50s. Problem is, every other brand has twigged they’re the only one still spending. Cutting through is harder because other tourism bodies are going large on media to carve out their own slice. Plus, it’s already tricky for tourism operators to differentiate. Atomic 212°’s Asier Carazo plays a game of “hide the logo” with Tourism NT’s team every time he visits Darwin, showing other tourism body ads without their branding, and usually catches them out. “I can’t deny that we all get tripped occasionally,” admits Tourism NT marketing boss Tony Quarmby. “Unless you have the Opera House in your shot or Uluru … then it's really only the cityscapes that are going to make any difference. And to most consumers, a city is a city.” Problem is, most of the over 50s have “done” Uluru – so how to convince them that the NT is more than the iconic rock? At the same time, over 50s mindsets have shifted. They are far more safety conscious than even two years ago, says Quarmby, more anxious and more price focused – and that flux is ongoing. So Tourism NT needs to hit consumers with relevant, personalised content that speaks to those shifting mindsets, calms consumer nerves and gets them spending. Meanwhile, for the under 50s market, Quarmby needs to sell the NT as an experience and adventure that rivals overseas travel – without the expense of leaving the country. Hence Tourism NT going through a massive media, martech and process overhaul. At the heart sits a customer data platform, or CDP, to enable deeper understanding of key demo mindsets and more effective “real-time” personalised comms. Plus, it should help media budgets go further – i.e. by supressing ads to less relevant prospects, “and making sure we are seeking new people,” per Atomic’s Ashleigh Carter. Quarmby expects the new stack and approach to “make a big difference” in about six months time. In the meantime, he’s backing Atomic to deliver best bang for buck with smarter tactical campaigns to keep visitors incoming. He cites NT’s hijacking of the Adelaide AFL Gather Round last month, reaching millions with Uluru-themed billboards and then retargeting them with discount vouchers – delivering “370 per cent plus in ROI” – as the kind of approach it needs to take. Atomic’s Carazo thinks brands need to embrace the current chaotic environment and accept having to work harder on media campaigns to move the needle. “More craft, more high-touch media activity is definitely going to pay off,” he says. “Set and forget” won’t cut it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s so much happening on the regulatory front it’s dizzying, so Mi3 called in the experts for an update - and it’s proven rather revealing: Despite intensive lobbying from loyalty scheme operators and beyond, Australia’s sweeping privacy law overhaul remains on course to land this year – with massive implications for just about every business. “It's now clear that we will see a substantial broadening of what is regulated as personal information,” according to Data Synergies Principal, Peter Leonard. “That will include use of online tracking codes and techniques such as fingerprinting, which enable the targeting of individual consumers – and I think we will see that regulation encompassing not only online targeted advertising, but also targeting of content.” Which gives publishers something to ponder – especially those making major martech investments, says Civic Data’s Chris Brinkworth. Across all sectors, Brinkworth warns companies are leaking data on a wholesale basis “in a way that contravenes current Australian Privacy Principles let alone future Australian Privacy Principles”. The broadening of personal information definitions will also govern use of CX data within martech stacks, effectively limiting what banks and retailers, for example, can do with customer data unless they can explain it to “someone of below average intelligence,” per Leonard - and provided it passes a test of ‘fair and reasonable’ use. If not, prepare to fall foul of the Privacy Act, face class action lawsuits and massive fines. The Feds, warns Leonard, are getting firmer on their position, and industry is not being heard “at the same level that privacy advocates and a number of the consumer organisations are being heard in Canberra”. Meanwhile, the ACCC’s probe of data brokers is expected back from Treasury as early as this week, with fallout likely for Australia’s marketing supply chain. “We’re all talking about Meta and Google hoovering up data, but I think the biggest operator in terms of data brokerage in Australia is Woolworths’ Quantium,” per Laurel Henning, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Correspondent at Capital Brief. But across the pond, Google now faces genuinely existential challenges, says Future Media’s Ricky Sutton, as the US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission “have both said that what they're seeking is a breakup of Google. So there are big changes ahead.” Governments, he says, have decided enough is enough, big tech is about to cop it – and the impacts will market-wide.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Uber’s ads business is starting to scale and its New York-based boss Michael Akkerman says Australia – one of its best performing markets, with a rapidly growing sales operation – will see the next wave of new formats first. He’s touting retail media meets “mobility media” and a collapsed funnel “brand-formance” model - brand and performance marketing in a single execution. A younger, richer set exposed to an Uber Ride brand ad is driving hard sales via Uber Eats with verified "closed loop” attribution. Akkerman was in Sydney last week wooing “hundreds” of agency execs and rattling off big numbers. Coke’s gamified ads in the ride business got a tonne of new customers and orders via Eats. Absolute Vodka got a 28 per cent sales increase, HSBC likewise a major uplift – and they are coming back for more. Akkerman says the delineation of brand and performance is a false construct. The purpose of brand is ultimately to drive longer-term sales, but put a call to action – a performance element on a brand ad – and a percentage of people will immediately go and buy. People don’t think ‘brand versus demand’, he says, only marketers. But Akkerman reckons that is shifting rapidly in a fast fulfilment world. Just don’t ask Uber for “cheap eyeballs” and rock-bottom rates: “We can seek affordability … but to me it is about return on ad spend.” Whether procurement departments agree remains to be seen. But Akkerman suggests advertisers get what they pay for. He’s claiming Uber ads deliver much higher click through rates, circa 3 per cent versus the “0.000x per cent” brands would be “lucky” to get on other platforms, and is fraud free, because “bots don’t hail cars”. Meanwhile it’s privacy compliant – because everyone has signed up and linked their credit cards. Plus advertisers are connected with “actual humans, not digital representations.” Hence why Uber’s bullish on hitting a billion dollar ad business very soon – if it hasn’t already.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marketing effectiveness is getting worse. Dan Krigstein, Director of think tank The Growth Distillery and Ogilvy Chief Strategy Officer and Innovation Lead, Toby Harrison, have spent the last six months working out why – and building a framework they are now bringing to market in a bid to reverse the effectiveness slump. Their findings literally flip industry-wide assumptions on their head – and expose deep misunderstanding on the power of influence (not influencers) in decision-making. If you take nothing else out of this podcast, it’s that our brains are overloaded, the signals that help us make decisions are missing and “active cynicism” is the baseline. “A world of doubt creates a chasm which influence can fill,” says Harrison. But most brands are missing that trick, mistakenly thinking that consumers trust brands and their message. We don’t. We trust those with whom we have affinity – our influences – much more. For that reason, as Harrison puts it: “People down the pub are doing a way better job in merchandising brands than any of us have been.” Crucially, say Krigstein and Harrison, the assumption that optimal effectiveness is achieved by hitting people in their restive, least-distracted state is entirely wrong. Hit us when our brains are most stressed, they suggest. “If you can take an affinity-lead message at a time where cognitive load is highest, it's actually most potent,” per Krigstein. But don’t hit people with more information. “The Midas touch in this is to remove the difficulty that already exists and give a simple, easy, definitive processing answer – because we cannot rationalise this stuff anymore,” says Harrison. “There has never been a richer or better opportunity for brands to actually start providing the type of influence that people are seeking to help them make the decisions that they need to. And that is a tremendously exciting opportunity.” Welcome to the world of real influence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.