A recent survey by Gartner has highlighted significant strategic dysfunction within the marketing functions of organisations. The survey revealed that 84% of CMOs report high levels of strategic dysfunction. This dysfunction is linked to a 36% lower likelihood of reporting strong business and marketing performance.
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Tourism Tasmania unveils fifth ‘Off Season’ campaign to entice winter enthusiasts
Tourism Tasmania has launched the fifth iteration of its Off Season campaign, aiming to encourage Australians to embrace winter and ‘become a winter person’.
‘A powerful unlock for the team’: How Freedom Furniture, Wesfarmers Health, REA Group CMOs are riding marketing’s capability crunch, and next for the Australian Marketing Institute’s skills assessment tool and Competency program
The accelerating slew of challenges and pressure coming at marketing teams mean many are fearful of admitting capability gaps – and the pace of change means those gaps are widening. But the CMOs of Freedom Furniture, Wesfarmers Health and REA Group are finding ways to bridge both aspects, arming their staff – and themselves – with a deeper grasp of specialisms like martech, AI and journey mapping while ensuring all core marketing foundations like strategy, brand, commercial acumen, insights and data-driven decision making are covered. And they are not worried about training staff up just to leave. As the Australian Marketing Institute debuts its skills assessment tool, 12 months after launching its marketing Competency Framework, Mi3 got an insight into new-look learning and development loops inside some of Australia’s most progressive marketing teams – and the very human traits instrumental to their success.
Bench strength: How Freedom Furniture, Wesfarmers Health, REA Group CMOs are keeping the crazy pace on team capability and next for the Australian Marketing Institute’s skills assessment and capability program
Amid all the hype, excitement and trepidation around digital, marketing automation, data utilisation and now AI coming into marketing, is the very real need to build team capability and empowerment to actually use the tools effectively – and in a way that delivers business outcomes. As Infosys global CMO, Sumit Virmani, told Mi3 recently: “As AI is a very new technology, it can be a big challenge for teams at large to embrace because they don’t know how to do it. Educating them in the process of embracing AI, on the tools, and actually making investments in your team to get them the comfort to experiment, is the responsibility of a marketing leadership team.”But it’s not just tech changing the shape of marketing execution. New channels and connectivity to customer – as well as higher expectations of said customer – are demanding marketers build a diverse range of brand, people and specialist skill sets. Then there’s the relentless scrutiny of marketing effectiveness and budgets requiring ever stronger commercial nous. Mi3 and the AMI’s Marketing & Customer Benchmarks FY2023 Outlook report last June of 105 Chief Marketing, Customer and Growth Officers highlighted the changes they’re preparing for – team structures and shifting KPI’s among them, with customer lifetime value metrics surging for many. All this makes it imperative marketing teams run continuous learning and capability development loops. Two CMOs striving for this are Freedom Furniture’s Jason Piggott and Wesfarmers Health’s Corrina Brazel. Quick to jump into the Australian Marketing Institute’s new skills assessment tool, 12 months after the launch of its Competency Framework, both see a need for more formalised learning programs that don’t just cover new specialist skills, but can also improve core marketing knowledge across their teams. While the AMI’s Competency Framework provides those foundations and learning structures, the assessment tool is about having productive, proactive conversations with teams while also holding up a mirror to your own strengths and weaknesses, both say. Per AMI CEO, Bronwyn Heys: “Modern marketers need to be bench ready. They need to be ready for anything – for the market, for the consumer.”No less keen to pursue learning rigour is REA Group, whose GM of audience and marketing, Sarah Myers, says has a “very feedback hungry culture” and commitment to deep, specialist skills. A one-size-fits-all program, however, hasn’t been the right option, nor has a pure marketing strain to capability development. Instead, the company has been building out an internal university that recognises certain skills as important across the business. Tune into this latest Mi3 podcast episode as we unpack the pros and cons of skills assessment, specialist versus generalist capability building, and how marketing leaders encourage continuous learning across their teams from the bottom up – while also not forgetting to skill up themselves.
Yahoo appoints Josh Line as Chief Marketing Officer to drive global strategy
Yahoo has announced the appointment of Josh Line as its new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). In his new role, Line will be responsible for leading Yahoo’s global marketing strategies, brand positioning, user acquisition, and customer engagement initiatives. He will report directly to Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone.
WARC forecasts US$20 billion downgrade in global ad spend growth for 2025-26 due to market volatility
WARC has released its Q1 forecast update for the global advertising spend outlook for 2025 and 2026, revealing global advertising spend growth forecasts have been reduced by US$19.8 billion (A$32bn), with growth now expected to reach 6.7% in 2025 and 6.3% in 2026.
KeepCup, Yo Chi partner to launch eco-friendly ‘Go Bowl’
Australian-owned reusable cup brand KeepCup is expanding its product line into the home living category with the introduction of Go Bowls in partnership with forzen yogurt chain Yo Chi.
AMP’s three-year marketing platform transformation shows what it really takes to make tech work for marketing – now watch out for the staff poaching
AMP is in year three of a multi-year marketing transformation and platform overhaul, and its marketers say they’re finally in charge of their own destiny. Wins include building customer journeys two-and-a-half times faster and getting emails out eight times quicker than before, leading to 93 per cent overall clickthrough rates, more than 75 of journeys being launched per month, and incremental gains in campaign ROI, says head of digital and customer, Bonnie Thorn. Yet the warts-and-all case study of what it takes to actually make automation and technology work for marketing is far removed from AI’s shiny promise taking centre stage elsewhere. Instead, AMP’s story is a reality check, an expose of the luridly unsexy stuff marketing teams face right now – including staff poaching and tech team wooing – to get to personalisation and better customer engagement.
Accor’s ALL Loyalty program surpasses 100 million members, 1 in 3 rooms booked by cardholders
Accor’s global loyalty and rewards program, ALL, has reached a significant milestone, amassing 100 million members worldwide. This achievement marks a doubling of its membership over the past five years, with an additional 11 million members joining in 2024 alone.
AGIG pulls LinkedIn post after greenwashing ruling on emissions claims
The Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG) has removed a LinkedIn post following a complaint lodged by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of Comms Declare. The post asserted that gas cooktops have lower annual emissions and energy costs compared to electric alternatives in Victoria.