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Domain CMO, Rebecca Darley, is bullish about the property marketplace’s commercial performance against its larger rival, REA Group, and she has the figures to back her up. While overall category audience growth hit 5 per cent according to Ipsos’ Spring 2023 figures, Domain more than doubled performance against its major competitor, chalking up 10.3 per cent audience growth versus its rival’s 4 per cent. Meanwhile its media business is up 30 per cent this financial year – and Darley’s targeting greater gains across utilities, finance and insurance. All of which adds directly to the bottom line for a marketer with an acute commercial focus. From building a proprietary market mix model and trebling internal data, tech and advertising team headcount, to driving dynamic AI-powered personalisation at scale, investing in a big brand platform, and emphasising internal capability, Darley believes she’s found the smarts that deliver results now resonating in the boardroom.

Ernst & Young Oceania chief economist, Cherelle Murphy, is predicting a year of two halves for sentiment and spending as consumers with a mortgage or rental agreement trudge through months more of tougher cost-of-living conditions before getting a minor reprieve through real wage growth and tax cuts. She’s not alone – latest Roy Morgan consumer confidence figures tell a similar story of the early parts of 2024. Yet while retailers continue discount heavily after the slowest year for retail sales growth in a generation, according to Deloitte Access Economics, market indicators suggest retailers think the worst is behind for shoppers. 

Amid heated conversation around Australia’s gender pay gap and women’s progress, Reckitt Benckiser brand, Nurofen, debuted its new campaign, ‘See my pain’ and first-ever Australian Gender Pain Gap Index Report. It reveals a 7 per cent gap existing between women and men nationally when it comes to pain diagnosis and management, and takes its cues from the debut of similar benchmark UK research kicked off by Nurofen last year. Beyond the supporting campaign, Nurofen is backing up its commitment to change by helping train 9,000-plus pharmacists on how to avoid unconscious bias when dealing with female consumers. It’s no commercial ploy to sell another packet of Zavance, says Reckitt marketing director health ANZ, Holly McCarthy, but a multi-year effort to wield brand power to progress action and advocacy against an all too real bias.

There’s ever-growing consumer concern around the way personal information is handled off the back of Australia’s high-profile data breaches at Optus, Medibank and Latitude as well as AI use, says former privacy and now information Commissioner, Angelene Falk – and brands should be worried. Prevention is better than cure when it comes to meeting consumer demands and forthcoming privacy legislative change, and Falk is urging businesses to ensure data breach plans are not gathering dust but are operationally ready. Where businesses also need to do better is around the human intersection with systems and information, Falk says. That’s especially the case with more AI on its way, consuming more and more data sets, often without the ethics of human oversight, from all edges of the internet.