Author: admin

At one point “the performance marketing [team’s] main KPI was actually how much investment they could deploy,” says Uber APAC marketing boss Andy Morley. “The mandate was spend, spend, spend … It was getting crazy.” But then they realised it wasn’t actually working. Then they flipped hard to brand – well above Binet & Field’s 60:40 heuristic – and powered to delivery market leader. Today Morley says both Uber’s rideshare and food business has seen no slowdown despite squeezed wallets. Now it’s driving into grocery and beyond with another brand-powered push: “Pianos delivered in one hour” is the CEO’s mission. For its rides business, removing 1 million of Australia’s second cars within five years is the target and Morley says growth – and consumer behaviour change – is rapidly underway. Uber’s moves into trains, planes and buses in the UK could signal the shape of things to come. Meanwhile Uber’s ads business is starting to motor. Drinks and entertainment advertisers in particular are tapping people on the way to bars and on their way home. Morley thinks a shift to attention over increasingly challenged reach and frequency metrics will shape both Uber’s own spend – and the media dollars it seeks from advertisers.

Chobani entered Australia in 2012 and rapidly amassed 20 per cent market share. An “astonishingly large growth” trajectory, per Roy Morgan analysis. But then growth topped out. So the company restructured, creating a multi-disciplinary growth division spanning ops, engineering, finance, insights, product, project management, marketing and packaging. The upshot is the agility to launch new products three times faster, as little as 20 weeks. Now Growth GM Olivia Dickinson is tapping into other categories, partnering with Treasury Wine Estates on an innovation session that literally ran until everyone was too hungry to keep going. She’s bidding to go beyond “sector silos” and hunting new, equally innovation-hungry brand partners.

Overtaking Tesla last month as the largest electric vehicle car manufacturer in the world, BYD is powering in Australia via distributor EVDirect – selling 15,000 cars with virtually no ad spend, instead focusing on earned and owned media. But with a new marketing leader and CEO in place, more models set to drop in coming months, and a new media agency partner recruited, EVDirect is readying to go all out as the automotive brand majors battle for EV share. It’s aiming to overtake Hyundai within two years – and Toyota by 2030.