The first recipient of the Australian Marketing Institute’s newly named emerging marketing leaders award, Maddie Jahnke, got the gong for demonstrating bravery as a career consistency, delivering results that don’t just come in campaign form but move the category forward, and a passion for capability building. In this exclusive interview with Mi3 as she settles into the new role as Pernod Ricard global brand director for tequila based in Mexico City, this obstacles-are-opportunities-marketer shares her ethos, bosses that gave her the guts to get uncomfortable, favourite pieces of work and why a P&L made her even sharper creatively.
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Pernod Ricard brand marketer takes out inaugural Lisa Ronson Award, Professor Byron Sharp honoured at Australian Marketing Institute Excellence Awards 2025
Pernod Ricard brand leader, Maddie Jahnke has been honoured with the inaugural Lisa Ronson Next Generation Marketing Leader Award, Flintfox International’s Cath Brands with Chief Marketing Officer of the Year, and Professor Byron Sharp’s efforts to bring evidence-based marketing to life was put up in lights at this year’s Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) Excellence Awards.
Telstra reports fourth consecutive year of underlying growth, 31% lift in profits
Telstra Group has reported its fourth consecutive year of underlying growth as revenues inched up 0.9% over the last 12 months to $23.12 billion, profits jumped 31% to $2.34bn, and group and episode Net Promoter Scores improved.
Baby Bunting reports record sales and profit growth in FY25
Baby Bunting Group Limited has announced its financial results for the fiscal year ending 29 June 2025, revealing significant growth in both sales and profit. The Group’s Pro Forma Net Profit After Tax (NPAT) reached $12.1 million, marking a 228% increase from the previous year’s $3.7 million. Statutory NPAT saw an even more substantial rise, up 462% to $9.5 million from $1.7 million in FY24.
Australia’s wellness economy surges to $US126.7 billion, ranks fourth in APAC
The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) has unveiled its inaugural report on Australia’s wellness economy, revealing significant growth and sector performance. The report highlights that Australia’s wellness economy expanded at an annual rate of 7.5% from 2019 to 2023, reaching a total value of US$126.7 billion in 2023. Notably, the economy experienced a 10.9% growth between 2022 and 2023.
YoPRO teams up with Turia Pitt for Sydney Marathon ‘Every Runner Has a Reason’ campaign
YoPRO has teamed up with endurance athlete Turia Pitt on a new ‘Every Runner Has a Reason’ campaign. It’s been launched in anticipation of the 2025 TCS Sydney Marathon, which is set to be Australia’s first marathon major and the largest running event in the country.
Friends are the big influence on Gen Z shopping habits, beauty tips in Australia, latest Snapchat research shows
Two-thirds of Gen Z consumers says their friends are playing a crucial role in influencing their shopping choices and nearly six in 10 look to friends for beauty inspiration over and above influencers, according to a new Snapchat report.
Harvey Norman dresses staff in first uniform redesign in three decades
Harvey Norman has introduced a new custom-designed uniform collection in collaboration with Total Image Group (TIG). This marks the first significant redesign of uniforms for Harvey Norman and Domayne in 30 years.
Efficiency without empathy: Forrester’s Martin Gill warns that good-enough CX isn’t good enough to ensure customer loyalty
Telstra CMO Brent Smart warned in 2019 that martech and CX was becoming “hygiene” and vanilla and offered little competitive advantage. The ANZ team at consumer CRM platform Klaviyo this year commissioned ad effectiveness advisor and co-founder of brand tracking start-up Tracksuit, James Hurman, to analyse 1.7 million online shoppers from multiple ANZ ecom players to discover emotion and CX were a core competitive advantage – if indeed the experience did trigger a positive emotional response. Now research firm Forrester is on the case – AI and automation have made service quick and cheap, it says, but oddly cold. Forrester says customer ease is on the rise but emotional engagement is down. The risk is “good-enough” looks efficient on paper but loses on loyalty. The fix: wire AI into human workflows, redesign journeys for trust, and make empathy measurable – and if Smart and Hurman’s work for Klaviyo is right – make the experience emotional to lock in loyalty. .
Lendi Group’s Project Aurora bets big on agentic AI-led mortgage market; CEO says “agents managing humans” is coming, but as coaches, not bosses
Mortgage broking is not the sort of business where revolutions are expected. Yet David Hyman, Lendi Group CEO is rapidly building one. With Project Aurora, his firm plans to replace much of the mortgage grind with agentic AI. That will see digital brokers that work around the clock, humans managing agents, and even agents managing their human counterparts, at least as coaches. The aim is not to cull jobs, but to rewire them: people for trust and complexity, machines for speed and scale. Meanwhile, Chief Technology Officer, Devesh Maheshwari sees the absence of any mature scaffolding in the current agentic AI ecosystem as an opportunity. It forces the team to design for resilience from day one, and creates room for innovators to set the bar for how Agentic AI should operate securely, transparently, and at enterprise scale. By mid-2026, if their plan works, the home loan could become less a paper chase and more a precision-engineered service, one where the busiest worker in the room isn’t human.