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Arnott's last month landed the Advertising Council's Grand Effie after launching a master brand campaign that CMO Jenni Dill says delivered "10 per cent sales growth in dollar terms and three quarters of a share point growth" across the portfolio.  "Phenomenal" results, says Publicis Groupe CEO Michael Rebelo, given the effort it takes to move FMCG "super brands" like Tim Tams even a quarter of a percentage point. And just the kind of hard business results Arnott's private equity owners KKR need to see from marketing. Dill says KKR is happy to keep investing in growth provided she's not coming to them with soft metrics. So before approaching the hard, rational board with plans for a big, rare, emotive "master brand" TV-led push, she doubled down on pre-testing, market mix modelling and media benchmarking to show exactly where the growth opportunities lay. It delivered in spades and now Dill and Rebelo have their eyes on another Effie to make up for the one they're convinced they could have had last year. Here's how they landed the most coveted annual award for the serious end of town – and their take on how current market sentiment will play out across the piste into 2024.

Many predicted The Monkeys would be "roadkill" when Accenture in 2017 paid $63m for Australia's hottest ad agency, its creative culture steamrollered by the immaculately polished heads of the consulting world. Instead, says creative chief Scott Nowell, who last week departed the agency he co-founded, The Monkeys began a cultural infiltration mission. Six years on, the broader Accenture Song creative-customer model has turned heads in the broader Accenture business – because it's largely outperforming. But there were some awkward early moments. "A request that we lock our beer fridges until 5 p.m. went down very badly," says Nowell. He admits moving to a hierarchical consulting giant can take some getting used to: "You've just got to ask a lot of people if you can do something or not." But after some mutual "bum sniffing" the "more closed" corporate and "more open" advertising packs began to run together – and start building products and solutions that go well beyond advertising. Whether Nowell climbs back into the saddle, time will tell. For now he's smelling the roses after 17 years building a business that won everything going, rejected an offer to reverse takeover Saatchi & Saatchi locally, came close to forming a "pan-Pacific micro network" with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and tried – and failed – to revive ice cream brand, Homer Hudson, which it co-owned. His advice to anyone starting their own agency today? "Start smarter … get an accountant … try and balance your life." 

Brent Smart stepped into the Telstra CMO role a year ago. He's learned a lot: Performance marketing is a street-fight that Telstra – and he – must win; huge investment in digital transformation and customer experience has powered net promoter scores through the roof; and that creative excellence has to be systemised in a beast that big. Which is why he's lifting the template that has powered Anheuser-Busch to marketing greatness and is creatively scoring every piece of work that ever touches the customer. But he's still probably brand and creativity's biggest champion and thinks for all the NPS high fives, it's the only way Telstra can grow. So Smart's piling into market mix modelling and attention planning to prove it, and build the ammunition to put a greater portion of budget into brand building, while turning off the performance channels faking their ROI. Last month, he launched the first of Telstra's brand plays to win back customers that got fed up with the telco's service and complex plans pre-overhaul – mostly boomers – and he's got a choice word or two for armchair critics.