Mi3 Audio Edition

What happens when you put a marketing and consumer behaviour professor on the mics with a Chief Marketing Officer and the boss of a large media buying group to work out what might happen to media audiences and buyer behaviour as we tumble out of Covid and stumble into an economic downturn? The consumer mindset is inflationary, confidence is down, and wallets are likely to shrink considerably. There has been “revenge spending in spades” within entertainment, travel and food – but that may be about to grind to a halt. GroupM ANZ CEO Aimee Buchanan, Premium Content Alliance CMO Claire Williams and Jana Bowden, Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at Macquarie University, unpack the outlook for marketers, media owners and agencies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Those that have crossed the agency-brand divide – in either direction – say agencies can be a little narrow in their understanding of marketing’s full business remit but more often than not, agency experience delivers sharper and faster results. Kia marketing boss Dean Norbiato was “getting stale” before taking a pay-cut to head agency-side. But it brought fresh perspective to move the needle when going back brand-side with the carmaker. Tourism Australia CMO Susan Coghill started out handing agency briefs to Steve Jobs, and preparing to duck flying smoothies. She prefers to hire agency people for their dynamism and creative thinking. Nestle’s Anneliese Douglass thinks agencies tend to be braver than corporates, but taking ownership of P&L is a heavy responsibility. CMC Markets APAC marketing boss Liam Loan-Lack, a former lawyer, thinks the marketing world should follow legal precedent and drop the brand-agency division altogether. His advice to agency execs mulling the switch? Accept that the best and boldest ideas are often trumped by those easiest to sell internally – and forget about having more control. “It’s not easier, and if anything there is less control.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the midst of a cryptocurrency crash, Nine-owned Pedestrian Group, which has one of the largest 18-35 year-old audiences in the country, has launched its blockchain, Web3 and crypto publication, The Chainsaw. Pedestrian knows 20 per cent of its readers are already invested in crypto or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and has trawled the globe for its launch team, some from deep in the blockchain underground. The Chainsaw will cover the business and culture of Web3 – and Pedestrian CEO Matt Rowley says there’s ample advertiser opportunity. Financial and tech brands are circling. There’s also potential for the ‘holy grail’ of publishing – integrated microtransactions and commerce, as well as high value subscriptions. For the moment, Head of Editorial Sam Howard, back from Silicon Valley, is set on building The Chainsaw’s readership and community. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do Australia’s top marketers with B2B remits see ahead? Commbank’s Jo Boundy, Salesforce’s Leandro Perez and ServiceNow’s Caroline Raj debate how the talent crunch may be set to flip, why B2B marketing has the data and analytics skills B2C marketers want and how they’re resisting more demand generation activity as the economy slows - for now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

McDonald's’ Chief Customer Officer Chris Brown is less than two years into his first brand-side role after leading DDB New York and IPG’s R/GA and already he says his scope and understanding of marketing, customer and business impact have broadened dramatically. He took one of the country’s biggest marketing roles in late 2020 and has overseen a successful loyalty program launch and a new brand platform focusing on value, while maintaining the Australian business’s reputation as a global innovator – it created the McCafe brand back in 1993 and was the first market to do salads . Brown is working hard to shield Maccas from growing economic volatility, hoping to convince the two million-odd Aussie customers who walk through the doors of a franchise each day that it is a valued part of their lives, whatever else may be happening. Improving tech, new products and appealing to ‘flexitarians’ are on the agenda.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australia’s commercial radio players are diving into the advertising attention economy, building an in-depth study to understand attention levels in audio that, until now, have been lacking while audio visual media – TV and video – stole a lead. But how do you measure attention without eyeballs? “We get asked every single day how audio fits in,” Amplified Intelligence CEO Karen Nelson-Field says. Nelson-Field and Southern Cross Austereo’s Sales Insights lead Abi Wallis explain the research, due to land in October, which they say will lead audio being added into the attention planning and buying mix. The ultimate aim is tradeable audio attention.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s been a big few months for Danny Bass. The former Mediabrands, GroupM and News Corp exec resigned from Snap to focus on his Berry Hill Farm property, which then flooded – multiple times. Now, he’s joined Dentsu as CEO of Dentsu Media. Dentsu isn’t the beast it once was, having taken a turn towards tech and consulting services in the past few years. Bass unpacks the advantages and challenges facing the group, which is “and always will be” a media company, while exploring agency culture, remote working, talent shortages, the net zero push and the future of holdcos.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Social market researchers think the deepening cost of living crisis will play out very differently to Covid. But there are parallels with previous bust cycles. The “lipstick effect” comes into play, and certain categories – homeware, the everyday luxury of branded goods – will probably hold up. But home renovations could end up consisting of nicer taps than a whole bathroom suite. While the young, pensioners and the squeezed middle are talking about cutting back, a quarter of the population are comfortable, can play the system and will keep spending – and brands and retailers shouldn’t think about discounting to that cohort. For the broader population, brands and retailers need to communicate price hikes honestly and effectively – or lose community trust earned during Covid, fast. SCA’s Jasmine Beech, Roy Morgan’s Michele Levine and qualitative consumer researcher Neer Korn unpack what’s coming own the track – as far as anyone can tell.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nestle’s Milo brand is in danger of losing its status as an iconic brand in Australia, Brand Finance Managing Director Mark Crowe says, unpacking the leaders and laggards in the latest Top 100 most valuable brand rankings, where 66 brands rose and 22 fell. But brand value and strength are more than just 'soft metric' leaderboards – they’re being leveraged in hard financial terms by CFOs and CEOs in M&A negotiations and Crowe thinks marketers should be brought into those deals much earlier. A case in point, he says, is that analysts hungry for future cashflow indicators are driving demand for brand valuations. Meanwhile agencies and marketers have woken up to the fact they can demonstrate their direct impact on a brand by measuring the change over time – a major factor in NRMA landing the 2021 Grand Effie.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ten years into a data-analytics career, ANZ CMO Sweta Mehra pulled a u-turn and took a demotion to learn brand marketing from the ground up. She says it’s the smartest move she ever made, with marketers in narrow swim-lanes at risk of obsolescence. Mehra says ANZ’s push to bridge the skills gap within its own four walls via self-built Brand Academy and Marketing Masters programmes have shielded it from increasingly attritional talent wars while future-proofing the business – and she has a few tips for those wondering how to get ahead in marketing. Meanwhile, the bank’s martech stack overhaul and bid for personalisation at scale is starting to move the needle, with conversion rates heading north, and ‘nudge theory’ doubling saving rates. With economic headwinds incoming, Mehra expects pressure to pull different levers. But she thinks budgets, for now, are safe. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aussie expat Nicole Taylor jumped ship from managing international creative firms to lead LEGO’s in-house agency, which has 400 people around the world, a content factory, and powerful creative, digital and production capabilities. Now, she’s leading a review of the company’s agency roster – and is very positive about the strengths of indies. “I love the fact that they're not thinking of a P&L outcome,” she says. They just want the best thinking and ideas. LEGO is flying, posting record profits and sales in 2021 and outstripping major rivals Mattel and Hasbro. Taylor, who started in Sydney AGENCIES in the late 90s, says in-housing can work wonders – speed is key, and businesses are starting to recognise the benefit of having creativity close by. Creatives are now in high demand among corporates, who see financial incentives to different thinking.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australia is Toyota country and holds similar clout and market dominance across 17 key markets in Asia. But there were looming clouds on the horizon that Toyota’s APAC execs could see would pose a near-future challenge for the region’s leading carmaker. Toyota’s “humility” around innovation and the future of mobility risked being too conservative and out-voiced by more aggressive, louder rivals attempting to own these new greenfield areas - and Toyota knew its next generation customers were being lured. Here’s how Toyota’s APAC VP of Sales and Marketing, Jerome Louis, and an Australian firm, Houston, mapped and delivered a four-year program to unify, for the first time, 17 highly-autonomous countries, all with their own market positionings, brand strategies, taglines and imagery, with a sweeping and unified overhaul of Toyota’s brand positioning and architecture. It’s an instructive case study in not having a fixed plan at the get-go but letting each of the markets discover and create a new positioning and suite of brand assets together – “Move your world”. Here’s how it happened.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Digital out of home screens are the new retail catalogue, as the likes of Woolworths, Coles, Myer and JB HiFi place specific offers and sales depending on the weather, temperature and location. “It's basically a really flexible, tailored, measurable, targeted, third party guaranteed position,” QMS CEO John O’Neill says. Dan Murphy’s, for example, targets red wine messages for cold weather, white wine for hot and champagne for celebrations. “They do a really good job,” he adds. In the digital v static debate, O’Neill says digital reigns – it is the butterfly to static’s caterpillar. There’s a 63 per cent higher neuro impact factor with digital, QMS’ Chief Strategy Officer Christian Zavecz says. The OOH industry has agreed to verify 60 per cent of campaigns per hour, but QMS, two months from opening its City of Sydney contract to new clients, is staking its credentials on a 100 per cent guarantee. “We’ve gone out on a limb,” O’Neill says. “We think it’s really important.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cannes unplugged: Suncorp’s Mim Haysom, Yahoo’s Rachel Page, Thinkerbell’s Adam Ferrier and LinkedIn’s Matt Tindale on incoming headwinds, rebalancing ‘techification’, Ryan Reynolds and the push for 'pragmatic purpose' See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2003, the billionaire former owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al-Fayed, tasked Guy Cheston with building a media business for the department store. By 2015, the luxury store’s media worked so well it paid for everything else. “Initially, this media sales or the owned media division was really just a little tiny element of the trade marketing team,” he says. “Harrods had set up its own in-house media division, which was funding the entire marketing function of the store.” It went from £1m to £22m in a bit over a decade, and then went skyward. Not every brand is Harrods, but those that nail owned media can make serious cash. First step: Valuing what’s available.Jonathan Hopkins, Founding Partner of owned media consultancy Sonder, says the reaction tends to be: “‘Wow, I didn't realise we were sitting on a $150 million worth of own media’… Once it's given that dollar amount and valuation, it changes the way that the business views the channels,” he says. “When you’re talking about profit margins of 80 to 90 per cent, CEOs and CFOs are going to stand up and take notice.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Election and fundraising strategists for former US President Barack Obama accidentally invented the now booming “experimentation” industry which takes the ubiquitous A/B testing concept to new levels – and business is going large. Personalisation has got too much attention and corporate investment at the expense of experimentation, say Deloitte Digital Partner Nima Yassini and Coles’ Fallyn Lowe, Product Manager for Growth and Optimisation. They outline what’s next, including Google’s rapid rise to the top in experimentation software ahead of Adobe and Optimizely. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three leading global authorities on advertising effectiveness are worried enough about the efficacy of advertising and the impact it has on business results that they have joined forces to present new data and observations in Cannes next week on why a triple jeopardy threat is a clear and present danger to the global industry. They go so far as to call for an overhaul in how advertising award shows like Cannes reward what is deemed the world’s best work. Advertising effectiveness supremo Peter Field, attention economy pioneer Karen Nelson-Field and creativity maestro Orlando Wood warn that ad effectiveness, ESOV and mental availability created by advertising for a brand is crumbling. The ESOV principle – spending more than rivals to gain extra share of voice relative to market share to outplace competitor sales – no longer applies. Get the lowdown before it is presented to a global audience in Cannes next week. The trio argue there is a fix. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marketing is a dirty word for some – look no further than the ‘Scotty from Marketing’ jab. But Suncorp has spent three years building, quite literally, a powerful response to that. Its One House campaign last year and recent Resilience Road activation are entirely marketing-funded and led research projects that are changing the way Queenslanders build disaster-proof homes. And what’s more, the campaign is flowing through to Suncorp’s bottom line, driving a 38 per cent rise in enquiries and more than 100,000, four-minute-long website reads. As CMO Mim Haysom and Leo Burnett Chief Customer Officer Amanda Wheeler explain, there’s more to come.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When done well, OOH smashes it. Local brands have been lagging, but the smart ones are learning from the likes of Nike, driving a “creative revolution” in digital out of home, reckons Neil Ackland, oOh!media’s Chief Content, Marketing and Creative Officer. While tech like QR codes, 3D animation, location data and anamorphic screens can drive huge results, “There’s a difference between what is available that creatives can use and then what’s actually coming through the pipeline,” he says. Jetstar ran a QR code-based campaign in Melbourne and reached 6 million people with press coverage. Nike and Twitter are trying innovating creative – then sharing the campaigns on social to drive more engagement. Ackland says oOh! has launched a creative department, Poly, to reverse the lag. “We have to show brands through action how to deliver great out of home creative,” he says.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brands and agency holdcos are restructuring for efficiency. But WPP says it’s done with post-Sorrell surgery and out the other side, proving the former CEO wrong in the process. Its “open source” integrated set-up landed the $4bn global Coca Cola account and means other rival agencies and non-WPP partners can tap into WPP’s platform for Coke. It could prove a template for consolidation plays to come, per global CMO Laurent Ezekiel. WPP ANZ’s Rose Herceg is equally bullish on the holdco’s growth prospects after overhauling leadership and smashing an unwieldy list of business units into nine networks; she says both staff and clients are “loving” a story simple enough to articulate. Ezekiel meanwhile reckons the marketing industry is past “peak complexity”… until the “untapped” metaverse arrives. But he’s unapologetic for the daunting privacy challenges industry faces, and shrugs off concerns around Big Tech’s dominance, given the growth he suggests the platforms are driving. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s the “hunger games” out there in the B2B talent wars. Software firm ServiceNow’s solution? In-house training. It’s the best way to get good analytics people, Head of Marketing Caroline Raj says. “Everybody is dipping into everybody’s pool at the moment,” she says. It has been a tough two years. Of the 140,000 marketing and advertising people in Australia, 20,000 have moved jobs in the past 20 months, per LinkedIn’s Prue Cox. Agency churn has increased by 50 per cent in the past year – off a high base. Average marketing tenure is now a mere 1.4 years. “That’s quite terrifying,” Telstra’s Kelly Tyson says. She’s not seeing that at the telco, which works hard on culture, but the talent pool is tight. The market for B2B savvy, IT and tech-literate marketers is running hot.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adam Ballesty spent most of his career building big brands at spirits business Diageo only to join retail-focused Domino’s in mid-2021, steering a team of 60 through the tail end of a global pandemic. The sector's pace is mind-boggling, he admits. Food aggregators like Uber Eats and Menulog account for the majority of Domino’s orders and were non-existent three years ago. The likes of McDonalds and KFC are powerful competition and are driving culture. Ballesty’s new agency team are hoping to take the QSR battle royale directly to them, while baking purpose as a key ingredient in the company. In the meantime, he's fielding calls from franchisees asking for the TV ad schedule so they can prepare for the inevitable demand spike.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

News Corp has reached the level of Big Tech, Client Product MD Pippa Leary says, uniting its famously independent business units – publishing, Foxtel and REA Group – to create a pool of 16-million audience IDs. A consumer could watch Kayo, browse News.com.au, look at property on RealEstate.com.au, and News Corp can link them all, Leary says. The “arms race” of just having big numbers is over. “Claiming a big number is one thing, but actually, if you don't have a lot of daily active users and you do not have high match rates, it's actually quite meaningless,” she says. Using 13 data partners, including crucial IDs and location data from Near, News reckons it can achieve high match rates with brands and – in stark contrast to Big Tech – share more of those insights with brands. “All of [those IDs] have consent attached to them to be shared and to be matched,” Suzie Cardwell, GM Client Product and Strategy, says. News is now pushing hard for one click transactions within content, including video.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Growth hacking was once a favourite term of the Silicon Valley crowd instead of marketing, fuelling the meteoric rise of early tech pioneers like PayPal, Tesla and Amazon. But there’s a fascinating blurring going on, where once successful growth hacks are starting to falter – “failing miserably”, in the words of one-time growth hacker and services marketing advisor Jonathan James. Instead, tech companies – think Canva – are turning to out of home, television, and other traditional media. In most verticals, there’s increased competition, meaning start-ups are rediscovering the need to have a “brand”. Traditional marketing smarts and brand talent are increasingly sought-after, and what’s old is becoming new again.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nine last month claimed massive active attention for BVOD ads playing on mobile devices, 72 per cent for a 30-second commercial, per Amplified Intelligence’s study. But Karen Nelson-Field’s data is in for Val Morgan – and it suggests cinema blows other channels out of the water for active attention, with zero decay across the entire ad. As attention metrics pick up major attention globally, Nelson-Field is just back from a World Federation of Advertisers conference, warning marketers not to let themselves get gamed by those touting cheap, “dirty” attention CPMs while brushing off naysayers briefing against the march of attention metrics. Locally, the likes of NAB want to bring attention data into econometric modelling; agencies are already using it to reweight channel spend and show marketers that their share of voice models could be way, way off.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Stephenson, global CMO of media agency Network PHD, thinks the marketing community has a weird and massive blindspot around gaming.  That may be because they are buried in admin rather than doing actual marketing. Per PHD’s latest research study, 1,700 marketers around the world say their biggest time allocation is spent on reporting, not strategy, innovation and idea development. Those unable to shake off administrative shackles risk being overtaken by a marketing function overhaul now fast approaching – at least according to the group’s new book, ‘SHIFT: a Marketing Rethink’.  In the short-term, it forecasts that key marketing and media roles will span influencer programmatic teams, game commerce, clean room development teams and decision scientists through to ‘layer designers’, VR world designers and ‘brain-computer interface developers’ in the mid- to long-term. Within 20 years we could see ‘quantum simulation developers’ “simulating the entire media universe” for brands. But for now, Stephenson thinks those rushing headlong into the metaverse and Web3.0 are barrelling into the trough of disappointment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a fundamental flaw in how advertisers approach the concept of “platform audience reach”, ThinkPremiumDigital says, and the argument goes like this: advertisers care about audiences, but despite large user numbers – the audiences aren’t always paying attention. And yet, a platform’s reach often dictates a brand’s investment level. “Somebody on the platform doesn’t mean they saw an ad,” ThinkPremiumDigital General Manager Venessa Hunt says. MediaScience’s CEO Dr Duane Varan looked into this, finding it took five hours of social video to reach one minute of effective audience exposure. Conversely, it took just 12 minutes for premium video. “You cannot assume all exposures are equal,” Dr Varan says. MediaCom’s Client Partner, Lynsey Mogridge, says clients are open to this, they’re already planning on sales, not just reach or CPMs. Foxtel Media Director of Customer Engagement, Toby Dewar, says this research “talks to the old tradition, which is: context matters.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Skills and capabilities across digital marketing, CX, data and analytics have flatlined in Australia over the last three years according to a study of more than 200 marketers. If the data is right, brands are delusional about the skills they have versus what they need, while half the market has either been stripped of CX responsibility, or never had it to start with. Fresh from a decade in the UK, Coles GM of Brand, Digital and Design Sam McLeod thinks Australia is way behind the data-to-insight curve. Willem Paling has just left Woolies X and Cartology and says marketing must present itself as greater than the ads or promotional function if it is to regain the CX remit. Teresa Sperti, whose firm Arktic Fox is behind the Marketing State of Play study, thinks ANZ’s marketing team and Kate Young have set the standard when it comes to equipping teams with the skills now sorely required. But there’s a big chunk of the market that needs a plan, pronto. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The hottest topic in the digital market, Salesforce’s Jo Gaines reckons, is loyalty. And she has two words for brands not delivering personalisation, killer experiences, and a rewarding value exchange: ‘Watch out’. “They really expect you to know all of that,” she says. Competitors are likely circling. Beauty giant MECCA is nailing it, and there are smaller businesses emerging that are looking at partnerships to deliver similar experiences. Likewise, Gaines says, purpose-driven organisations are seeing fundamentally better returns, and the work by big corporates during disasters isn’t going unnoticed. “People are going to Woolies and Coles, they're going to Bunnings, they're relying on companies like Cotton On,” she says. “They are front and centre in the community. They are holding the community together.” These are some of the latest shopping trends in 2022.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Digital audio is growing at about 35 per cent year-on-year, and is now north of $150 million, Southern Cross Austereo’s Chief Sales Officer, Brian Gallagher, reckons. And as digital audio grows, so too are the learnings. For one, smart speakers make up 20 to 30 per cent of the total audience, and those people are listening for hours at a time. Two in every three dollars spent with SCA are buying direct insertions – just one third are programmatic ads. And agencies are still splitting audio and digital teams. There’s more growth ahead, Gallagher says. “At this stage of the history of the development of audio, there are absolutely no excuses for not having some form of audio product with you at every stage of your day,” he says. Jonathan Mandel, SCA’s Head of Digital Sales and Ops, says the network’s LiSTNR app has passed all expectations gaining trust and consumer opt in on Apple iOS devices.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Some have labelled as futile the “WaitingOnZuck" news freeze mounted by 40 independent Australian publishers three weeks ago to protest Facebook and Google’s dismissive and arrogant treatment of smaller, independent media publishers under the Federal Government’s globally acclaimed Media Bargaining Code legislation. But a street fight engineered by independent media, and intervention by the philanthropic foundation of billionaire Fortescue Metals founder, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, to lead a collective bargaining agreement forcing Big Tech to reverse dismissive, stalling tactics, may just have shifted the winds…and delivered blue chip brands a lesson in what to do when their audiences, and tech stack, are all but monopolised by global platforms.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NIB is reinventing itself, looking to reach young types not necessarily into health insurance – rather than the 45 per cent of Australians who already have a policy. It ran 20 different messages, influenced by location, targeting gyms and supermarkets on programmatic digital out of home screens with Val Morgan Outdoor. “Rather than focusing on advertising that talks to a joining offer, it was more about who NIB is as a brand,” Marketing Manager Mitch Leman says. That meant reminders to eat healthily, walk further, or exercise longer. It took time but was worth it. With Yahoo location data, VMO’s facial analytics, postcode-level third party data, it hit a “sweet spot of programmatic”, MediaCom’s Nick Thomas says – and he didn’t even work on the campaign. Yahoo’s Andrew Gilbert, Essence’s Katie Rooney and VMO Managing Director Paul Butler unpack NIB’s campaign – and why it’s delivering healthier returns.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first detailed attention data from a major media group is out with Nine releasing findings of its attention study with Professor Karen Nelson-Field’s Amplified Intelligence. For a 30-second spot on linear television, the average person pays just 11 seconds of “Active Attention”, or 37 per cent of the ad. BVOD on connected TVs and mobile phones score higher on active attention but when added to “Passive Attention”, linear television vastly outperforms most of its rivals, say Nine’s Liana Dubois and Jonathan Fox. So what to do with this conundrum? Hatched Media's Head of Planning, Andrew Pascoe, who has gone all in on attention, says the opportunity is nuanced but massive. To boot, "attention CPMs", currently being used by many agency groups, are deeply troubled, the trio warn.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mi3’s most read story of 2021 unpacked the critical role of mental availability in business metrics, as well as its impact on ESOV, or extra share of advertising voice. Now Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Professors Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk and John Dawes, the people behind ‘mental availability’, have produced a paper with the B2B Institute that should have far-reaching implications for marketing and advertising practice. From flipping the marketing funnel sideways to scotching “delusions” that retention and loyalty trump acquisition – and a new performance-enhancing twist on Binet & Field’s 60:40 brand to performance rule (it should be 95:5) – the rules unpacked in How B2B Brands Grow equally apply in B2C marketing, says co-author, Jenni Romaniuk. Jon Lombardo, Global Research Lead at The B2B Institute hopes the science emboldens brands to stop making “drab and dull” performance ads and stop worrying about offending customers. The truth, he says, is few people care about brands at all: “It’s all upside. The job is always to build mental availability.” LinkedIn’s ANZ and SEA Enterprise boss Prue Cox says the likes of Westpac and DocuSign are nailing it.  Read the original 'mental availability' story here: https://www.mi-3.com.au/28-06-2021/mental-availability-critical-brand-growth-and-extra-share-voice-says-aca-reportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former McDonald’s CMO Jenni Dill joined the old but iconic Arnott’s in the same role 18 months ago after US private equity firm KKR paid $3.2 billion for the business from Campbell's. Rather than stripping out costs in pursuit of rapid profit, the new owners are investing to build Arnott’s return as a contemporary Australian iconic brand. The growth plans are ambitious and, in the case of a sell-out of Tim Tam perfume, unconventional – but this year will see Dill and her team put the foot down an accelerate an all new Arnott’s. A booming retailer media sector, by the way, is promising for Arnott’s growth but Dill remains pragmatic on its potential. For now, it’s sitting at circa 10 per cent of the biscuit maker’s budget. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Influence, influencers, creator economy and ‘systems thinking’… Standby for some new buzzwords like people-based influence and privacy-friendly zero party data, as the global influencer market is set to top $16bn this year. But the influence industry is still unhinged, poorly managed and needs integrated measurement to help marketing teams understand business impact. And for different reasons, corporate strategy, market research and agency strategy planning are facing structural overhauls that a new venture, The Influence Group, is banking its new model on. Here’s why. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No-one in the advertising supply chain is immune to the challenge of how to work in the post-Covid world. NAB’s Thomas Dobson, Mindshare’s outgoing CEO Katie Rigg Smith and Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain have had to manage this New Work Order. Is it “in the room, not Zoom”? Full flexibility? A mixture of both? Rigg Smith says the pandemic created an expectation that everyone was at their computer, working, morning till night. “You don’t build trust over email,” she says. Frain says half the workforce came back from the summer holidays exhausted from Covid isolation or illness. Likewise, remote working isn’t easy on culture. “The old adage was, ‘get in your chair and start learning the job’,” he says. “Pretty hard if you’re sitting in your living room”. NAB’s Thomas Dobson says future workplaces will come down to trust. “You underestimate how much trust is there, especially when you’re talking about millions of dollars’ worth of media investment that has to pay off.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

$6.5bn fund manager Australian Ethical, ‘clean fast food’ firm Guzman y Gomez, Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s, Lion’s Stone & Wood, The Body Shop and parts of Danone are all Bcorps. They are all driving growth through commitments to social and environmental good – and are all laser-focused on the sustainability and purpose credentials of those they do business with. That includes media owners and agencies. In a few weeks, a new media carbon calculator developed by Benedictus Media sister company Net Zero Media – in beta and set to launch ahead of those being touted by the likes of GroupM – will shine a light on which publishers or media channels will deliver lowest carbon footprint per campaign. Bosses of Australia’s three certified Bcorp indie agencies, Benedictus, Alchemy One and Optimising, say those clients can then reweight spend – and may even make shorter ads – in a bid to lessen environmental impact. And they think it’s just the tip of the iceberg.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With the largest social media following in the world as a tourism destination – 17 million – an international advertising blitz in the wings and the expansion offshore of a new customer experience (CX) and post-cookie ID platform trial, Tourism Australia’s CMO Susan Coghill and team have a billion dollar fight on their hands. How do you attract tourists, competing against governments the world over throwing everything at kickstarting decimated tourist economies – and travellers eschewing long-haul flights? TA has a potential head start on first party data-driven CX designed to pass muster in a post-privacy, post-cookie world but it’s got to build and convert intent first. There’s $60 billion at stake for the Australian economy, and hundreds of thousands of livelihoods in every state counting on Tourism Australia to pull every lever at its disposal. The early indications are positive. CMO Susan Coghill unpacks the early roadmap.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the six months since VOZ launched, giving a look at unduplicated viewers on linear TV, online streaming and catch-up services, dozens of agencies and hundreds of brands have started using its data – but the networks say there’s still a way to go (and myths to be busted). Nine’s Richard Hunwick says “streaming choosers” are a new category of streaming-only viewer, which ThinkTV CEO Kim Portrate says includes the light viewer – like young people and women. Seven’s Craig Johnson says a lot of marketers are still buying TV in silos, and some agencies are using their own data, which lacks the competitive tension of the three major broadcasters keeping VOZ unbiased. There are seams of gold, too. Five of the top 15 BVOD programs last year were on demand first or exclusives like Love Island UK or Survivor South Africa, 10 ViacomCBS’s Gareth Tomlin says. ThinkTV and OzTam say TV blows YouTube out of the attention water.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GroupM’s new CEO Aimee Buchanan spent ten years at OMD, trading on a transparency ticket and throwing stones at the approaches taken by GroupM and other “enemy” holdcos. New Essence CEO Pat Crowley was the ultimate under-the-radar operator. As one industry observer has it, “Pat played by Covid rules before Covid existed”. But he led Ikon’s CommBank account for 17 years, and the Sydney agency for half a dozen – and says grown-up kids mean it’s time to step up to steer Essence through the turbulence of a triple whammy agency merger. The two make the perfect odd couple, eerily aligned on transparency, what’s under the trading hood, diversity and decarbonisation of media supply chains – coming soon – and executing the new operating framework for the holdco, its people and business units locally. Buchanan says she even has license to make changes at the expense of profit targets. But she’s not known for missing them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One year ago, SCA leapt into the unknown with a streaming platform that bundled radio, audio, podcasts, and live streaming and a signed-in audience. How has it gone? Well, every day over the past year, more than 1,300 people have signed up and signed into the LiSTNR app. CEO Grant Blackley and Chief Sales Officer Brian Gallagher say it has already smashed expectations – and the momentum is still building. There are 500,000 signed in users now, and there have been 14 million streams over the past 11 months. “We’ve got the same kind of audiences as Spotify in the ad-funded space,” says Gallagher. Monetisation always lags uptake, Blackley says, but the “J-curve” they predicted a few months ago is steepening fast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It used to be that P&G and Unilever would almost guarantee a long and possibly illustrious marketing career as the gold standard for applied marketing after university. P&G, in particular, was currency on any CV. So perhaps no surprise ANZ CMO Sweta Mehra – who joined the bank from P&G – has overseen a multi-million dollar investment to develop an in-housed capability program for 300 of her marketers. Mehra wants them match fit for an up-ended marketing world in five years, not floating in their own bubble with narrow, outdated skillsets. But building those smarts involves deep thinking about what skills are needed and ANZ’s program lead, Kate Young, says empathy, creativity and storytelling will be crucial as AI replaces campaign managers and the rest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2022 is off to a rocky start: A supply chain crunch, a talent shortage, and campaign measurement challenges are just a few issues on the agenda. But BMW’s new GM for Marketing Alex McLean says it’s a great time to start – demand has never been so much higher than supply. Digital attribution is a growing challenge, Origin’s Sara Varnell says, and the big measurement companies haven’t cracked it yet, but she’s working with Atomic 212° on an AI-fuelled platform to keep track of valuable conversion data. Atomic212°’s National Managing Director, Rory Heffernan, says clients are facing targets based on historical figures that they can’t replicate. Asier Carazo and Sarah O’Leary, both from Atomic212°, say the days of annual planning are gone and brands being brave is key to success.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Men are scared and lost in the push for gender equality – they don’t even know if it’s okay to hold the door open any more. As a result, men are disengaging from the gender quality debate, progress is stuttering and women are worried. Hence a month ahead of International Women’s Day, an alliance of Australian publishers, agencies and brands are calling on men to “be the change-makers”. Otherwise women are “just talking to themselves” as their would-be allies – men - muzzle themselves for fear of saying the wrong thing. 10 ViacomCBS sales boss Rod Prosser is on board; Impact.com CEO Adam Furness openly admits to getting things wrong in the past – costing him his job at Southern Cross Austereo – and says forty-something white men like him “are the problem” and need to become part of the solution. Now industry gender initiative, Fck The Cupcakes, wants more men – and brands – to do the right thing, and are holding the door open for blokes to enter the room.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Quantifying marketing return on investment, or MROI, has long been hit and miss. But now marketers are using cloud-powered dynamic econometric models to show CEOs and CFOs their marketing investments are driving business results – and to spell out the declines that would occur if they were to cut marketing budgets. Meanwhile, as digital marketers’ ability to track people using cookies and online identifiers is removed by platforms and regulators, the ability to perform faster media mix modelling (MMM) is rapidly climbing the CMO agenda. Which is why Mutiny’s WarChest platform is being deployed by the likes of Samsung, Bank of Queensland Group and CUB. The brands are making more informed marketing investments as a result – and shifting how they think about customer acquisition. Bank Of Queensland Group’s Melody Townsend, Samsung’s Carl Bunn and CUB’s Megan Quinn unpack how MROI is moving the needle.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The battleground for multi-billion dollar defence contracts building high-speed weapons, armoured vehicles and submarines was once a classified world. But over the past decade, something curious has happened: Defence contractors increasingly need to build brand campaigns and need to reach very public audiences to do so. Two very big and expensive projects over the past decade – the now shelved French submarines contract and the ‘future frigates’ project – illustrate the change. Former BAE Systems exec and Chandran Thinc founder Chandran Vigneswaran and Tory Shepherd, a journalist at The Guardian, explore how recent bids have lured top marketers, and leveraged social media, journalists and mainstream ads to reach the right audiences.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Few have been as deeply involved as a marketing practitioner through the digital marketing boom of the past 20 years as Alexander Meyer, the former CMO at pureplay retailer The Iconic. But the targeting tools digital marketers have been using are fast hitting walls  – think cookies and the mass harvesting of user intent signals. Data and tech are just standard tools today - the biggest business differentiator, says Meyer, is a swing back to creativity. Meyer, born in Communist East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, has moved to Canada to take up a role at The Bay, the new digital-first retail play by The Hudson’s Bay Company. Digital “pureplays won the battle”, Meyer says, but “omni retailers will win the war”. This is the most exciting retail tech platform in the world right now, he reckons. He also says marketing can 'save the world' - but it needs radically new DNA.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You probably know Noma in Copenhagen is officially the world’s best restaurant. What you probably didn't know is that its Chief Operating Officer is an Australian called Ben Liebmann, the media guy who brought the acclaimed Noma pop up restaurant to Sydney's Barangaroo six years ago with Tourism Australia. You also probably wouldn't know that Liebmann was handpicked by Elizabeth Murdoch a decade ago to create Shine 360, the commercial arm of her production business, to run rights management, sponsorship, brand integration and consumer products. Shine's Master Chef ended up becoming a $700 million beast from sponsorship deals, consumer products such as pots and pans, book sales events and the rest. At Noma, Liebmann is working with the real master chef in Noma founder René Redzepi, who is eschewing the well-worn path of licensed restaurants or Gordon Ramsay style entertainment shows. Instead, they have built a different kind of media unit, with shows now being picked-up by a global streaming giant. And it may be that Liebmann is heading back to Australia permanently to expand the business. Suffice to say Mi3 listeners are in for a veritable feast of creativity, growth and a hunger for more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s been a dramatic shift in B2B marketing over the past 18 months. B2B marketers have slowly clocked on that they over-invested in performance marketing tactics and hadn’t seen the long-term growth they expected. For tech hardware firms, global supply chain issues have meant they’ve had no choice but to try brand – there’s little to sell. “We’re definitely seeing this swing away from your heavy focus on that lower funnel activity,” says LinkedIn’s Prue Cox. DocuSign, a cloud-based e-signature platform, is a case in point. It boomed through Covid and has just launched a brand campaign with influencers like Boost Juice’s Janine Allis and former Nine host Jules Lund. CMO Andrea Dixon says DocuSign had to pivot from B2B to “business to everyone” – virtually overnight. Meanwhile, Zenith Media CEO Nickie Scriven reckons there’s a real opportunity for B2B firms to lift their cut-through on lead gen. “I get at least 20 (emails) a day and I just delete every single one of them,” she says.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.