Despite the digital revolution, magazines continue to hold their ground in Australia. According to the Roy Morgan Australian Readership report for the 12 months to September 2024, over 14 million Australians aged 14 and above (65.6% of the population) still engage with magazines, either in print or online via the web or an app.
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CommBank data predicts holiday sales boost for small businesses
New data from CommBank suggests a promising holiday season for small businesses, with an expected sales boost off the back of a bumper Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional period as well as rush by consumers to engage in fun experiences including cinema, books, amusement parks and novelties.
Guzman y Gomez, CostCo, Aldi, Kmart, Chemist Warehouse, Coles, Woolworths add $13.4bn growth as crunched consumers eat through pain; retail media paying off, economy turning – Circana
FMCG has been a bright spark in a dour retail environment over the last two years as consumers doubled down on value and discounts per market research firm Circana. At-home affordable indulgence, self-care and some essentials aspiration have also been key to keeping consumers spending. It’s led a seemingly disparate group of brands – the likes of Dairy Milk to Guzman y Gomez and Manicare Glam – to over-index and grow share in their respective categories. But get ready for a recalibration: green shoots are finally sprouting, according to the group’s analysts and ASB’s Nick Tuffley, and brands should prepare to re-oil the growth engines. Meanwhile Circana data highlights the FMCG winners – and losers – of the last two years.
The Monkeys’ $4m take on Chalmers’ Future Made in Australia has landed – consumer research says Australians won’t buy it
The Government has gone all out to make its $22.7bn Future Made In Australia plan land with a splash. On paper a $45m campaign budget – with $4m for The Monkeys – should be a recipe for success. The challenge is getting voters to give a toss about a vision of future prosperity years away from today’s long-running wallet squeeze and spiralling bills. Whether Australians are willing to pay more to support beefed-up local industries over cheaper imported alternatives will determine the policy’s success or failure. Consumer researchers say it comes down to collective willingness to put the bigger picture over our own back pocket. The data says it’s highly unlikely – and the odds of an ad campaign moving the needle are pretty long.
Perth Festival unveils new branding and summer campaign via Hypnosis
Perth Festival, Western Australia’s premier arts festival, has refreshed its brand and launched a new brand and summer campaign via Hypnosis.
Anxiety index: Destination NSW CMO, News.com.au Editor and Australian psychologist unpack the macro trends driving consumer behaviour
The cost-of-living might be grabbing the headlines but according to panellists at the latest Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) and ThinkNewsBrands Marketing Perspectives Series event, it’s uncertainty and anxiety that’s driving the way consumers behave and make decisions. The bad news is it can send consumers into echo chambers in an attempt to find connection. The good news is it can also drive us to pragmatic action and the desire for authentic, genuine engagement.
Maurice Blackburn flags Australian publisher class action against Google for alleged bid rigging, Meta collusion; $8bn Canadian publisher lawsuit paves way
Australian law firm Maurice Blackburn is investigating a publisher class action against Google in a strikingly similar $8 billion lawsuit already underway in Canada – led by a tiny regional community publishing boss, Lisa Sygutek, who won’t be cowed. “Find your inner warrior, sign-up, go for it,” she urges Australian media owners.Miranda Nagy, the lawyer leading the Australian class action investigation, likewise calls on publishers large and small to join the proposed action. She’s aiming to secure “best possible” retrospective compensation.Maurice Blackburn has come to the same conclusion as the US Department of Justice, various European regulators, and a dozen US state attorneys general. They allege Google manipulated and gamed publishers and brands for years with secret deals and projects – some in collusion with Meta – that actively sought to disadvantage them while entrenching Google’s market dominance – taking billions of dollars away from publishers and fleecing advertisers in the process by charging far more than was either necessary or officially disclosed.The alleged ruses include things like ‘project Bernanke’, in which Google was essentially able to “to take a bigger spread between publishers and advertisers, which means both publishers are getting less money and advertisers are paying more,” according to Adil Abdulla, the lawyer leading the Canadian legal effort through Sotos Class Actions. Then there was ‘Jedi Blue’, in which Google is accused of colluding with Facebook to kill the free market publishers and the broader ad market had tried to build through header bidding, while ensuring Facebook got an ad auction advantage in return.Jason Kint, CEO of US peak publisher body Digital Content Next, says Jedi Blue’s impacts “are still playing out” and forecasts “a bloodbath of lawsuits being filed”. He thinks the Trump administration will go just as hard with “eight to 10 different code name projects” to go after. While many US publishers, advertisers and agencies had been “captured” by Google, Kint reckons that “halo is starting to come off”. He urges marketers and the supply chain locally to likewise reject being strong-armed.For publishers, Future Media founder Ricky Sutton echoes that call: “This is the first window in 20 years where we’ve got a chance to take back some of the things that we’ve lost. What we do is too valuable to be lost to one commercial company with a 25 year run in the sunlight.”
Vale Lisa Ronson: Former Medibank, Coles, Tourism Australia CMO dies
Shock and sadness is flowing across multiple industries and from hundreds of colleagues after high-profile and widely regarded chief marketing officer, Lisa Ronson was killed in a farm accident this weekend involving an ATV (all terrain vehicle).
Bunnings seeks review of Privacy Act breach finding over facial recognition tech trial
Bunnings, the Australian household hardware chain, has been found guilty of breaching the Privacy Act by the Privacy Commissioner for its use of facial recognition technology in a trial across 63 stores nationally. The system, implemented via CCTV, captured the faces of every person who entered 63 Bunnings stores in Victoria and New South Wales between November 2018 and November 2021.
Bin it to win it: TerraCycle boss unpacks how recycling drives customer acquisition, higher footfall, bigger baskets for Walmart, BiC, Big W – trick is aligning KPIs to P&L
Fifty per cent of consumers participating in Walmart’s car seat recycling program were net new customers for the retailer. BiC’s writing instruments and Royal Canin’s pet food packaging recycling programs opened up access and engagement with hard-to-reach but critical stakeholders. That’s the kind of demonstrable customer and sales value TerraCycle CEO and founder, Tom Szaky, says more marketing teams could be capturing if they leaned into waste management and recycling as less of a regulatory sustainability activity and more of a brand and business growth opportunity.