Today on Next Gen Builders, Francois welcomes Brent Smart, the CMO at Australian Telco giant, Telstra. Their conversation focuses on the power of brand as Brent has been the leading charge behind Telstra’s new brand platform. 

Throughout the episode, Brent argues for connecting your marketing efforts to the real world. When trying to evaluate how Telstra appeared to consumers, his team ran surveys asking Australians to draw, not write, what they thought of the organization. Similarly, he consistently advocates for running live experiments to validate your approaches in real time. 

The episode also explores how Brent aligns teams around a unified brand vision with tools created in house, such as “Telstra’s Creative Dial,” to help measure and guide creative output. He stresses the value of a distinct brand voice and explains why starting with a small, focused team helps nurture new ideas.

Drawing on his transition from agency life to leading Telstra’s marketing, Brent offers a fresh perspective on keeping creativity alive in a corporate setting. His commitment to hands-on idea generation and real-world testing over pre-market research makes this episode essential for anyone seeking meaningful brand transformation.

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Guest Bio

A leading global marketer and a passionate speaker on creativity, brand and culture, Brent Smart is Chief Marketing Officer of Australia's second most valuable brand, Telstra.

Previously, Brent spent five years as CMO of Australian insurance giant IAG, where his work on NRMA Insurance took it from 36th strongest brand in Australia to 5th, winning 3 Gold effectiveness awards and the coveted Grand Effie in 2021. Mark Ritson wrote that “NRMA is not just a fantastic Australian case study, it could be taught at Harvard or Stanford and positions Brent Smart as the most accomplished CMO in Australia and one of the best in the world”.

Before becoming a marketer, Brent spent 20 years in the advertising business, leading New Zealand Agency of the Decade Colenso BBDO and rising to CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi New York, winning many Cannes Lions and other global creative awards.

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Guest Quote

“ Brand is a multiplier for performance marketing. When the brand is strong, the performance marketing actually works better. We've seen our short term ROIs actually go up, not go down. The brand doesn't just help with this quarter's numbers, it helps with next quarter’s and beyond. And once you give it time to start building, you can start showing that not just the brand metrics are healthy, also our short term performance metrics are healthy. But you need time. It's not gonna show in the first quarter. You gotta wait.” – Brent Smart

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Time Stamps  

00:00 Episode Start

2:00 The power of brand

05:10 Evaluating your brand

08:35 Finding your brand voice

12:10 Building conviction within your organization

15:05 Start experimenting in the real world

17:40 Leading by doing

19:45 Taxi or Bus Meeting

22:00 What does a good pitch feel like?

27:35  Discipline liberates creativity

30:00 Can you teach taste?

34:20 Brent's journey to CMO

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Links

• Connect with Brent Smart on LinkedIn
• Check out Telstra
• Connect with Francois Ajenstat on LinkedIn
• Check out Amplitude