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Fosters, Milo, IGA, QBE, RACV and Commbank face potential financial impacts due to falls in key brand health metrics including customer service, familiarity, recommendation, consideration, reputation and trust. These are some of the developments challenging blue chip brand managers over the past year, according to analysis for Mi3 from the 2024 Brand Finance Australia 100, which values and ranks the top 100 Australian brands on value and their reputational strength. Qantas faces further “significant” turbulence due to ongoing brand strength declines, according to Brand Finance MD Mark Crowe. He thinks the airline now faces increasing business costs as a result of sustained brand damage. Whether it can ever fully recover its brand peak is “probably in doubt”, per Crowe, though a category tailwind could deliver a bounce. Other airlines locally and globally are powering in the equity markets and that could help Qantas if it can stem bad news. Brand Finance’s methodology posits any declines in its brand strength index scores are a proxy for future brand value, and the ability of strong brands to both insulate from market challenges and create financial network effects. This year, 20 firms scoring the biggest brand strength declines in the firm’s Brand Strength Index (BSI) are early signals for more attention on brand management for company leadership and boards, Crowe says. Nine, Coles, NAB, Myer and Woolworths, per Brand Finance’s calculations, may also have cause for concern. On the flip side, Westpac and ANZ’s brand strength gains are outperforming the banking category, IAG and Suncorp scored huge insurance brand value gains, while in retail JB Hi-Fi and Carsales are pumping.

Hipages Chief Customer Officer Stuart Tucker is swapping the tradie marketplace for the talent marketplace. The former Commbank, Aussie and Optus marketer is joining executive search firm Hourigan International and expects brisk trade at the top end of town as CMOs question the "grind" amid exploding remits while businesses eyeing growth shoots seek creative analytical problem solvers – skillsets increasingly prized. For marketers ultimately eyeing the C-suite, Tucker warns it's neither for the faint-hearted nor narrow specialists, and predicts radical change.

Two years ago, IBM’s $19bn legacy global technology services span out to become Kyndryl, one of the world’s largest startups. But while the case for separation made logical business sense, relinquishing the safety of IBM’s iconic brand and way of doing things was a mammoth psychological ask for 90,000 staffers – a third of which hated the “stupid” new name – and customers comfortable with the IBM way for so long. Not to mention the legacy and reputation for reliability the new company had to leave behind. Leading brand transformation work from the inside out is former IBM US CMO, Maria Winans, employee number three at the new company. Winans is a classic example of an IBM employee, racking up 29 years with Big Blue before opting to take on the task of creating a new brand and strategy. It’s been no cakewalk, but two years in, brand – and financial – metrics are moving in the right direction.

Melbourne has outmuscled rival Australian cities with their natural and engineered icons in marketshare of domestic tourism dollars post-Covid and now has a forecast from the Federal Government's Austrade that it can grow tourism revenues $16bn by 2028. Outside federal ambitions, Visit Victoria has its own plan, aiming to ride Tourism Australia's global brand push to lift and convert a higher spending and culturally enlightened cohort via a new single, global brand platform. But the two campaigns are almost polar opposites. Visit Victoria boss Brendan McClements – a rare example of a CEO only too willing to talk brand, demand and marketing funnels – says while the global TA campaign taps instantly recognisable Australian iconography, Victoria, lacking such distinctive assets, has tapped Melbourne cult classic film The Castle and gone with "the vibe". He and Visit Victoria CMO Shae Keenan have spent years crafting the plan, with major marketing overhauls along the way. With "hefty targets" to meet, the two – with a little help from Ehrenberg-Bass and an overhauled "agency village" comprising Sayers, AJF Partnership, Principals, OMD and Accenture-owned research outfit Fiftyfive5 – aim to put Sydney, Queensland and the Gold Coast in its own right, in the shade.