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Retailers are “vetting suppliers through ChatGPT” and using LLMs to form business plans just as consumers are likewise shortcutting legacy search. That was the “eye-opening” realisation Patties Foods faced up to when TBWA and Eleven presented the evidence to its marketing team. Hence the prompt pilot of TBWA’s new system for brands to navigate AI search – and marketing and growth chief, Anand Surujpal kicking off an immediate trial program to tackle visibility in the LLMs. He calls it “total reputation” and says brand comms is next off the rank.

“We’re really lucky that we’re competing against a lot of ways of getting this [customer] information that are both incredibly expensive and incredibly inaccurate,” says co-founder and CEO of Aussie customer intelligence startup, Heatseeker, Kate O’Keeffe. Buoyed by US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding, and a swathe of ASX-listed and Fortune 500 clients including ServiceNow, Medibank and Tyro, and with former Uber and eBay CMO Steve Brennen as chief evangelist in tow, the three-year-old tech platform aims to disrupt the US$110bn market and customer research space by tapping large-scale behavioural experimentation with advanced AI and synthetic person avatars. The initial game plan was to give marketers a faster, more accurate way of tuning into what their customers really think to help validate campaign launches, value propositions and offers. Now it wants to redefine how companies understand the voice of customers to derisk business decision making with tech that delivers outcomes within two weeks. Can social-based experimentation and data collection with synthetic avatars work well enough to do away with the longstanding survey, focus group or consumer panel?

“We’re really lucky that we’re competing against a lot of ways of getting this [customer] information that are both incredibly expensive and incredibly inaccurate,” says co-founder and CEO of Aussie customer intelligence startup, Heatseeker, Kate O’Keeffe. Buoyed by US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding, and a swathe of ASX-listed and Fortune 500 clients including ServiceNow, Medibank and Tyro, and with former Uber and eBay CMO Steve Brennen as chief evangelist in tow, the three-year-old tech platform aims to disrupt the US$110bn market and customer research space by tapping large-scale behavioural experimentation with advanced AI and synthetic person avatars. The initial game plan was to give marketers a faster, more accurate way of tuning into what their customers really think to help validate campaign launches, value propositions and offers. Now it wants to redefine how companies understand the voice of customers to derisk business decision making with tech that delivers outcomes within two weeks. Can social-based experimentation and data collection with synthetic avatars work well enough to do away with the longstanding survey, focus group or consumer panel?

“We’re really lucky that we’re competing against a lot of ways of getting this [customer] information that are both incredibly expensive and incredibly inaccurate,” says co-founder and CEO of Aussie customer intelligence startup, Heatseeker, Kate O’Keeffe. Buoyed by US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding, and a swathe of ASX-listed and Fortune 500 clients including ServiceNow, Medibank and Tyro, and with former Uber and eBay CMO Steve Brennen as chief evangelist in tow, the three-year-old tech platform aims to disrupt the US$110bn market and customer research space by tapping large-scale behavioural experimentation with advanced AI and synthetic person avatars. The initial game plan was to give marketers a faster, more accurate way of tuning into what their customers really think to help validate campaign launches, value propositions and offers. Now it wants to redefine how companies understand the voice of customers to derisk business decision making with tech that delivers outcomes within two weeks. Can social-based experimentation and data collection with synthetic avatars work well enough to do away with the longstanding survey, focus group or consumer panel?

Urban Rest started out with five serviced apartments in Sydney. Now it has 1,300 globally and counts Apple, KPMG, media holdcos and entertainment companies among those using its units. It’s also moved into the hotel management business – but digitally doing away with the front desk and physical customer service. Chief Commercial Officer Jeff Baars rebuilt the tech stack three years ago to enable that growth – its units are now “doubling every four months” – via a self-serve digital business model. Now he’s shifting gears into agentic AI, with agents telling guests everything from how to work the oven to booking the best places to stay – and pushing service agents into every channel bar voice, which Baars thinks is not yet up to scratch. Next is AI-based revenue management.

Marketing technology was supposed to make marketing measurable; instead, it’s delivered a multi billion-dollar blind spot, according to a new McKinsey report. Not one of the fifty Fortune 500 CMOs interviewed could clearly articulate the return on their martech investments. Marketers and agency execs Mi3 spoke with say it’s because there is too much focus on the tech toolkit, and not enough on the use cases and the business objectives those use cases will meet. Yet McKinsey predicts martech budgets will jump another 25 per cent over the next two years – and a lot of people are pinning hopes on AI to solve mounting problems. Maybe, but hiring and keeping the right people might be a better bet.