The National Basketball League (NBL) has appointed SPEAK Communications and The Gifted Group as its official Public Relations and Talent agency partners for the 2024/25 season in Australia. The agencies have been charged with helping to elevate the NBL’s visibility, popularity, and engagement with a growing audience both domestically and internationally.
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Revlon paints the town – and Luna Park – red for International Lipstick Day
Revlon, Australia’s iconic lipstick brand, has celebrated International Lipstick Day with an array of marketing activities stretching from social media and influencer activations to animation technology that freshened up the face of Luna Park Sydney with red lippie.
Designing for data, how hyper-personalisation wins – and why an ‘uncomfortable’ in-house team beats ‘best of the best’ agencies: Intuit Mailchimp global CMO
Tough cost-of-living conditions have put brand trust on a par with free shipping and promotions with consumers, Mailchimp’s global CMO, Michelle Taite admits. Speaking to Mi3 at the martech vendor’s Sydney conference last week, the self-professed “design for data” marketing leader says finding a way to connect as a brand that simultaneously encourages data sharing is critical at a time where consumers are questioning concepts of value against decisions they’re making about their finances. And the only way to do that is through hyper-personalisation and B2B creative that “makes you feel uncomfortable”, she says. Which is why Taite and her team are bringing the vendor’s ‘Email is Dead’ exhibition, which ran at the London Design Museum last year, to Australia for the second edition of South by Southwest Sydney this October. More cost-effective than a TVC, she says, the exhibit attracted 25,000 attendees and 5.7 million social media impressions. It’s just one example of how Taite is striving to unite a creative B2B brand approach with first-party data acquisition enabling Mailchimp to harness insights it then uses to fuel hyper-personalised experiences, connection and commercial outcomes for marketers.
Canva acquires Aussie startup Leonardo.Ai, boosts visual AI capabilities
Aussie design platform Canva will acquire Leonardo.AI, a prominent generative AI content and research company and another one of Australia’s fastest-growing startups.
Influencer posts sway more young Aussies than TV ads, reveals new report
Over half of Australians aged 18 to 29 are more likely to try a new product based on an influencer’s post, according to a new report by IZEA in collaboration with influencer and content specialist agency Hoozu.
McDonald’s, Coke, UberEats, YouTube pile into gaming as PwC suggests in-game ad revenue has overtaken news media – and will double in four years
Australian brands will spend more than a billion dollars on advertising inside gaming environments this year, according to latest PwC figures, overtaking the combined advertising of digital and print media for the first time. By 2028, the firm suggests Australia’s in-game ad market will eat $2bn in local ad dollars. Engagement is massive – and younger audiences are spending more time gaming than on social media. Which provides an indication of how big the market will become.
P&G reports steady growth amid economic challenges, forecasts positive outlook for FY2025
The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) has reported flat fourth quarter sales but managed to chalk up a 2% increase to fiscal year 2024 results to US$84 billion.
TerryWhite Chemmart leverages Zitcha’s platform for new retail media network
TerryWhite Chemmart, one of Australia’s largest community pharmacy brands, has launched a dedicated retail media network, ‘TWC Connect’, powered by Zitcha’s unified retail media platform.
Zepic launches hyper-personalised customer engagement platform following $2.1m pre-seed round
ZEPIC customer experience software company, has launched a platform designed to enable hyper-personalised customer engagement.
B2B marketing fundamentals challenged: Bain-B2B Institute study consigns traditional lead gen, KPIs, metrics to bin as ‘hidden buyers’ missed, trillions lost
$18 trillion’s worth of B2B transactions take place annually. But “40-60 per cent of deals get stalled”, says B2B Institute founder Jann Martin Schwarz, because B2B marketers are focusing on the wrong things and the wrong people. They are missing the “hidden buyers” that don’t show up in individual-focused lead gen and those buyers – procurement, finance, legals, IT security, the c-suite – don’t care about features. They just care about managing risk. They make group decisions (earlier than B2B marketers realise) based on compromise and the “least worst” option. On average, they represent half of decision-making heft, and they get to veto who gets the contract. That’s one of the key insights from a major global study conducted with Bain across 500-plus enterprise B2B buyers.Across the study, “at every stage, familiarity and trust in a brand or vendor’s reputation was the casting vote,” says B2B Institute EMEA and LatAm lead Mimi Turner. Which means brand influences hidden buyers disproportionately, because it’s effectively “deal risk insurance”, per Schwarz.The study effectively quantifies why nobody ever got fired for buying IBM and underlines why B2B’s brand and performance teams need to align much more closely to hone brand messaging to hit hidden buyers – and stop focusing on leads and individuals. They argue the findings all but obliterate the model on which B2B marketing is founded – and requires a wholesale rethink of lead gen, measurement and strategy.Changing models means graft and pain, especially for the “rank and file KPI’d on reductionist metrics” acknowledges Schwarz. But if adopted, even moving the needle by 1 per cent will unlock $180bn of annual B2B deal-making upside – and early movers will get the biggest hit. Schwarz is willing to “stake my reputation” on brands that flip their models to reach hidden buyers will see “an immediate spike in activity” and “close deals faster”. A prospect, he says, no CEO or CFO will ever decline.