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. 

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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. 

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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.”

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$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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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