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Brands with high cultural relevance grow six times more than brands with low cultural relevance, according to Kantar data. But that same data shows the volume of Australian brands achieving meaningful difference has literally halved over the last decade – with at least half of marketers creating work that’s literally too dull to make any difference. Meanwhile the pace of cultural change is causing a rolling polycrisis – and most brands aren’t keeping up. That has significant implications for pricing power and knock-on effects for marketing budgets, per Kantar managing partner, Mark Kennedy. He believes we’re confronting an era of brand building like no other. Problem is, Australia is over-indexing on performance or lower funnel marketing versus the rest of the world. Kantar’s data suggests brands that shift from a 70:30 performance to brand ratio to 50:50 will get a 10 per cent lift in sales. But the advertising also has to be good – Kantar’s data shows at least half is wasted.

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.

In the experience economy, reputation is currency, and Tesla’s balance sheet is being revalued in real time. In 2024, Tesla was riding high. Customers were evangelical. Revenue roared. Forrester ranked it alongside Toyota in customer and brand experience. A year later, its Brand Experience Score is in freefall,  not because the product failed, but because non-buyers did something worse than complain. They stopped caring. In the space of 12 months, Tesla’s brand perception among non-customers collapsed by 50 per cent. It’s not a story of recalls, performance issues or price hikes. Instead it’s about Elon Musk’s increasingly polarising public persona during the first half of 2025. For a company built on narrative as much as engineering, that shift is potentially fatal especially as electric vehicle rivals like Kia and BYD take  root in Tesla’s traditional markets. The numbers bear it out: sales, revenue and net profit are all in free-falll. Australia is not immune. In July deliveries were down almost 65 per cent, one of the worst performances in the sector. Forrester’s Total Experience Score draws a hard line: when customer and brand experience align, firms enjoy a 5x lift in revenue-driving behaviour. When one side buckles, the upside craters. Tesla now finds itself in a precarious position; it’s beloved by buyers, rejected by prospects. The result? A company with extraordinary loyalty, a stunning market cap, a rapidly shrinking funnel – and massive competition on product and marketing from all angles.