Author: admin

“It’s a trap”, Initiative global CEO Dimitri Maex stated bluntly on a miserable Sydney morning, leaning over a cafe table with his then ANZ CEO Mel Fein. Maex wasn’t predicting the bombshell defection two weeks later of Fein and her two Initiative lieutenants, Sam Geer and Chris Colter, to Accenture Song. Or was he, given the timing of his flash Australian fly by? Whatever the case, Maex in a follow-up from the conversation with Fein – before it emerged she was bolting to set up a new, rival media agency venture – was almost effusive of the talents possessed by the media agency posse. More on that later, but the trap Maex was provocatively speaking of was the marketing funnel – it never existed and adherence to its construct is wayward and distorting investment decisions, he says. Marketers need new models, fast, but most of Initiative’s clients, says Maex, don’t have them – and very few can clearly articulate how marketing contributes to business. So he has a short-cut – and here it comes, sans Fein, Geer and Colter.

Hyundai is the first brand to have signed on to the 36 Months campaign to lift the minimum age for social media accounts from 13 to 16, launched by Nova radio’s Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli and Rob Galluzzo, the boss of production company Finch. Galluzzo is “100 per cent certain” more brands will follow to help build and fund the programs that rebuild a physical social network for teens that isn’t manipulated by the anxiety-inducing algorithms that have made young teenagers the product. Which creates the perfect platform for brands to walk all the talk about ‘purpose’ and ‘showing up in the right way’. “A brand can go to its board, and ask ‘how do we want to show up for these kids, these families, the community?’ If they don’t have an answer to that, they probably need to have a pretty big discussion about what they stand for as companies,” per Galluzzo. Now 36 Months is building out three crucial pillars to use the time reclaimed from the platforms to better prepare young Australians for physical and digital life ahead. Wippa and Galluzzo unpack where next, and how brands can help repair the fractured civics they have inadvertently funded.

A commitment to building brand awareness coupled with running’s explosive popularity and a diversifying product portfolio have seen Hoka power 25x in under a decade: In 2015 it sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in Australia, today it sells more than 1 million. Now it’s aiming to double that. Local success is indicative of rapid global growth for the running and trail shoe brand, which reported a 34 per cent increase in sales in the last quarter to 31 March 2024, bringing quarterly revenue to US$533 million and global revenue to US$1.8 billion, up 29.7 per cent year-on-year. Hot on the heels of a successful five-day experiential-led campaign in Sydney with its Hoka FlyLab cube and content program, Hoka ANZ chief, Matt Adams, and Emotive founder and CEO, Simon Joyce, unpack what it takes to balance brand investment with commercial return – and take a proactive over reactive marketing approach. Once people try the shoes, says Adams, 80 per cent of them buy. 

During last week’s Ad Council breakfast to profile Effie winning entries from Arnott’s Group / Publicis Groupe, Aldi / BMF and Uber / Special, the alignment of agency and client-side marketing teams was touted as one of the most important ingredients in achieving modern creative effectiveness. In an environment where dollars are constrained, agency compensation remains a concern, and a definite skew towards in-house agency models, the trio extolled the benefits of a long-term, strategic relationship between brand and agency. And the reasons for this are about as human as they get: Number one for all is the value of creating a safe psychological space to discuss what’s worked and most importantly, what hasn’t.