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...
Feb 17, 2022•42 min•Season 1Ep. 184
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 float...
Feb 14, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 183
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 ...
Feb 10, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 182
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...
Feb 07, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 181
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...
Feb 04, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 180
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 System...
Jan 31, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 179
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...
Jan 24, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 178
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, spo...
Nov 29, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 177
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-signatu...
Nov 25, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 176
In 2018 Australian carmakers were collectively rattled. The consumer and competition regulator, the ACCC, dropped a bombshell on the auto industry in the form of the biggest mandatory product recall ever in Australia – 4.1 million faulty and potentially deadly Takata airbags in more than 3 million vehicles had to be replaced. The problem? Car owners were apathetic and entirely disinterested. Here’s how 23 car brands joined forces to head-off hefty ACCC penalties and deployed a media strategy tha...
Nov 22, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 175
Yahoo’s new owners in Apollo Funds Management are backing Yahoo to the max – and the business is bolting. One of the earliest internet platforms is an entirely different beast today but what is Yahoo? Better question: ‘What isn’t Yahoo?’ US giant Verizon sold the company to Apollo for $5 billion earlier this year and it’s been unleashed. Yahoo’s a search company, a digital publisher, a creative agency, a demand- and a sell-side platform used by at least 20 local publishers, an email service used...
Nov 18, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 174
NRMA Insurance was “tanking” before IAG CMO Brent Smart returned from New York and appointed Accenture’s The Monkeys, without a pitch, in an early Australian textbook execution of Les Binet and Peter Field’s work around the business impact of investing long-term in brand. Smart went further but was unwavering from the get-go – as were The Monkeys - about returning to “HELP" in late 2017, according to a redacted entry submission to the Effies seen by Mi3. A series of brand-led campaigns, spearhea...
Nov 15, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 173
Most Australian mid-size businesses and up in Australia have hired very smart consultants, developed new business strategies and growth plans … and then seen most or all of the work shelved. “It’s about 90 per cent opportunity, 10 per cent frustration,” says Tightrope’s Managing Director Stijn De Vriendt, the former Strategy Director at Accenture Strategy. Tightrope is RyanCap’s new boutique strategy consultancy, which has a sweet spot positioned just below the big end of consulting and strategy...
Nov 11, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 172
Advertising legends Faie Davis and Sarah Barclay, creators of iconic ads from Yellow Pages’ “Not Happy Jan” to Singapore Airlines’ Singapore Girl have been inducted into the AWARD Advertising Hall of Fame. They’re the first two women ever to have made the list, even an agency – The Campaign Palace – was inducted before a woman made the hallowed halls. Joining them on the podium is Warren Brown, co-founder of BMF, crafter of brilliant ideas and raconteur extraordinaire – even with 20 per cent of ...
Nov 08, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 171
When the Big Bash League started on Network 10 in 2013, it was, well, not very big. But its audience skyrocketed by 370 per cent in the first year alone. “We know how to take a sport, bring it into the free to air landscape and grow it even bigger,” says Nick Bower, Sport Sales Director from 10 ViacomCBS. The network plans to do more of the same with the A-Leagues, and is adding the first ad slots to new streaming service Paramount+ to entice advertisers. “The only way to get access to that incr...
Nov 04, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 170
The definition of what counts as personal information is set to change in Australia – with online identifiers even down to geolocation under review, alongside use of loyalty and credit card data – while the very definition of consumer consent is being primed for change by privacy lawmakers and enforcers. The upshot is that the fundamentals that have underpinned digital advertising’s tracking and targeting capabilities may be culled or significantly curtailed – and data privacy experts think Aust...
Nov 01, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 169
In the middle of a global pandemic, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age watched lifestyle content numbers boom. They dropped the quantity and boosted the quality of non-news content, embraced newsletters, and it paid off in spades. “The top of the homepage can be so grim,” Executive Editor Tory Maguire says. “But if we present [other content] properly to our audience, they’re really engaging with it.” The Australia’s editor, Michelle Gunn, saw the same. “People yearned for lifestyle content, r...
Oct 28, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 168
Marketers have been smashed by the pandemic – but have emerged more powerful, with much bigger, broader remits, according to The Marketing Academy CEO, Sherilyn Shackell. The Academy has spoken with thousands of marketers over the last 18 months and finds greater numbers are becoming board members and CEOs. But they must now carry even greater weight under broader demands and silo-busting skillset requirements. Agencies, however, are struggling to stem severe blood loss. Leaders must step up – b...
Oct 25, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 167
The marketing and media world are rushing to get to market first with engagement metrics – or at least talk about them. But how is that playing out on the ground, and are brands ready? “Before you can go to market and thump the table and expect clients to buy to engagement, you need to be really clear about … the proof that engagement can deliver better results for brands,” says Foxtel Media’s Customer Engagement Director, Toby Dewar. Westpac brand, media and ad chief Jenny Melhuish says the ban...
Oct 21, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 166
Professor Mark Ritson was right all along: “90 per cent of marketers fail to brief agencies effectively, and their failures begin with a total lack of strategy.” The headline findings of the Better Briefs Project and its research spanning 1,700 marketers and agencies make for grim reading. Marketers don’t even realise their briefs are mostly duds, yet agencies are “screaming for objectives”, according to report co-creators, strategists Pieter-Paul von Weiler and Matt Davies. Unless things improv...
Oct 18, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 165
How a marketer’s budget is set is often doomed to fail, Pet Circle CMO Jon Wild says. Typically, it stems from a business’s growth target. “There’s an arbitrary increase to marketing spend and you’re told to go hit the target. Typically, you fall short in the first quarter, and it’s death by a thousand cuts for the remainder of the year.” That method is “set up for failure”, he says. Rather, growth should be function of the whole company – with marketing being one factor – working towards those ...
Oct 18, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 164
10 ViacomCBS will headline its 2022 Upfronts by touting its credentials as a more diverse, full-service broadcaster with room to grow and a big hitting content slate straight out of the gates. I’m a Celebrity starts on January 3, with Survivor and MasterChef hot on its heels. After that, “you’re into that pattern of big franchises all year,” says Chief Content Officer Beverley McGarvey. “It’s about consistency, maintaining big brands, but also adding some fresh content and fresh shows.” The netw...
Oct 14, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 163
Dell tops US$94 billion in revenues, but it had been in a perpetual street fight on pricing for years and was losing margin with brand health metrics flatlining. With a new premium push it went large on brand, inviting Australia’s publishers to pitch their ideas. Around 150 publishers turned up, the response blowing away marketing boss Arjun Dueskar. Opting to go with 10ViacomCBS and MediaCom, the results have been “phenomenal” with double-digit growth continuing quarter on quarter since the sta...
Oct 11, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 162
The QR code was once the daggy tech no-one wanted - but it’s now back, and even David “Kochie” Koch’s 87-year-old mother is using them. Five years of e-commerce development has been squeezed into the past 18 months, and Aussies haven’t been able to spend their money in lockdowns. “The economy is going to come out with a vengeance,” Koch, the host of Seven’s Sunrise and Pinstripe Media chair, says. People have money and they want to spend it. Forward bookings with Seven are “extraordinary”, Chief...
Oct 07, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 161
The second and final episode in our two-part series breaks down five of the six recommendations in the ACCC report to the Federal government on the Digital Advertising Services inquiry – the first recommendation was covered in Part 1 yesterday. On the mics again today for the follow up are Peter Leonard, Professor of Practice at UNSW Business School, advisor at law firm Gilbert + Tobin and principal of Data Strategies; Gai Le Roy, CEO at the IAB; Dan Stinton, Managing Director at The Guardian Au...
Oct 05, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 160
Avoid reading another 200 page ACCC probe with this two-part series on the regulator’s final recommendations to the Federal Government from the Digital Advertising Services Inquiry. Google is squarely in the spotlight but as our panel of industry experts warn, what the ACCC is doing to Google is an early signal for broader industry. In today’s heavyweight line-up: Peter Leonard, Professor of Practice at UNSW Business School, advisor at law firm Gilbert + Tobin and Principal at Data Strategies; D...
Oct 04, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 159
Consider a few stats: The Discovery Channel, Turbo, TLC and Animal Planet are having their best ratings years – ever. Back catalogue episodes are booming: Video on-demand consumption of Friends is up 103 per cent. Fifty-six per cent of people have watched more food and cooking shows, and 70 per cent of them said they would keep watching more post-lockdowns. New viewing habits are here to stay. Brands with environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals can tap into this by targeting ads to thos...
Sep 30, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 158
When Covid hit, BWS went all out to help local suppliers, which already battered by floods and bush fires, faced risk of extinction. BWS ditched its pre-Covid plan and campaign went all out for localism, launching a competition for independent brewers, distillers and winemakers to get stocked across its 1,400 stores, creating a marketing template for local suppliers to lift and getting locals to vote for the brands stores would stock. The new plan “smashed it,” according to Head of Marketing Van...
Sep 27, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 157
John Wild, the Chief Marketing Officer for Pet Circle, invites his CFO to creative pitches and hires analysts with better data coding skills than the finance team. Why? So they can understand his job and buy into the creative messaging. “It’s incumbent on you to make [CFOs] your friend,” he says. “Make marketing look and smell very much like a financial output. Suddenly, when it comes to cutting costs, you’re not cutting costs, you’re cutting growth, you’re cutting customers, you’re cutting reve...
Sep 23, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 156
SiteMinder is likely the biggest Australian tech company you’ve never heard of. The $1.1billion hotel booking system unicorn is headed for an IPO – so that will likely change. But what must also shift is Australia’s attitude to B2B marketing as the boring, rational sibling to B2C, says CMO Mark Renshaw. It’s where the smart money is headed, Renshaw reckons, and can teach FMCG marketers everything they need to know about going direct-to-consumer. Meanwhile, the former Leo Burnett Chief Digital Of...
Sep 20, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 155
