McDonald’s has reverted to a CMO role as chief customer officer Chris Brown steps down and former KFC and Westpac top marketer Annabel Fribence comes in.
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Guy Pearce narrates film marking 100-years of partnership between Ford Australia, Geelong Cats
Ford Australia and the Geelong Cats are commemorating a century-long partnership, recognised as the longest-running partnership in professional sport, with the launch of a new film titled ‘Forever Ford’.
MMM-multitouch data lessons: Coping with massive footfall drops, predicting the next one and why Michael Kors is betting on under 12-month payback from combined MMM-MTA rollout
Eighteen months on from signing up to pilot Adobe’s Mix Modeler Solution, fashion brand Michael Kors has thrown down the dollars and is rolling out the platform globally to execute marketing mix modelling and multi-touch attribution in one. For VP of global analytics, Manuel Neto, resetting team expectations and change management culturally and operationally is vital to ensure the new MMM and MTA approach sticks and delivers better marketing effectiveness. That requires empathy – and allowing people “the odd cry in the bathroom”, Neto says – as teams adjust to the modelling’s outputs and their channel preferences are tested. But with economic and political volatility in the US leading to declines in store footfall traffic of up to 50 per cent where there are higher concentrations of immigrant populations, Michael Kors has also had to learn how to factor in data on unique macro conditions to avoid reading market conditions and customer sentiment wrong. Yet here too lies an opportunity to rethink marketing messaging, media and campaigns and show customers the brand cares, Neto says.
Short-term ‘trap’: Oxford Uni professor warns on TV industry plan to build outcomes model – but still thinks they should build it; says agencies hold key to advertising beyond reach, and can lift his code
Oxford University Associate Professor Felipe Thomaz was a runaway Mi3 hit last year with a peer-reviewed paper that smashes the economics and relevance of audience reach. His analysis – based on 1,000 campaigns and a million customer journeys via Kantar and Wavemaker data – finds blunt use of reach will not deliver business outcomes, because not all reach is equal.Business outcomes was all the talk at the Future of TV Advertising last week, with industry backing the build of a real-time dashboard via Adgile Media to map and measure impressions delivered to hard results close to real-time. Thomaz thinks it’s a start but warns industry risks falling into a “trap” of short-term skew, essentially applying performance metrics to a brand channel.”That worries me,” per Thomaz. “We know from decades of existing research that the long-term impact of advertising is twice the short-term impact of advertising.”But that doesn’t mean industry shouldn’t build it.Per Thomaz, “It’s definitely the right path, and we can do this, but we cannot stop there. This is low hanging fruit. You start there, start measuring and say, ‘look, I’m getting outcomes’ … But you cannot ignore the fact that the future exists.” However, he thinks if industry builds it – and keeps building – it could pay off. “If you’re eating low hanging fruit and everybody else is eating off the floor, you’re golden.”Meanwhile Thomaz thinks agencies could be the key to cracking the code on moving beyond reach and into outcomes because they have enough visibility on pool of clients and, potentially, their data. He says one big global brand owner that has in-housed most of its media is finding exactly the same thing as his paper suggests – and making major gains as a result.Thomaz says that code is all outlined in his paper – and any agency can lift it. “They literally can just go steal the code and run.”Now he’s working on another paper – aiming to prove the impact of different media channels and beyond – including touchpoints like “customer service and salespeople and their effectiveness in driving different outcomes” within different categories.”This is interesting for the people that own those channels, because suddenly they’re not competing just on audience size – they’re competing on value derived from that audience,” says Thomaz. “That is what media owners are going to be really interested in: Can I charge more for an impression on my platform for this client because they’ll get 6x the return [versus another channel].”
MMM-multitouch data lessons: Coping with 50% footfall drops, predicting the next one and why Michael Kors is betting on under 12-month payback from combined MMM-MTA rollout
Eighteen months on from signing up to pilot Adobe’s Mix Modeler Solution, fashion brand Michael Kors has thrown down the dollars and is rolling out the platform globally to execute marketing mix modelling and multi-touch attribution in one. For VP of global analytics, Manuel Neto, resetting team expectations and change management culturally and operationally is vital to ensure the new MMM and MTA approach sticks and delivers better marketing effectiveness. That requires empathy – and allowing people “the odd cry in the bathroom”, Neto says – as teams adjust to the modelling’s outputs and their channel preferences are tested. But with economic and political volatility in the US leading to declines in store footfall traffic of up to 50 per cent where there are higher concentrations of immigrant populations, Michael Kors has also had to learn how to factor in data on unique macro conditions to avoid reading market conditions and customer sentiment wrong. Yet here too lies an opportunity to rethink marketing messaging, media and campaigns and show customers the brand cares, Neto says.
How Beyond Blue’s mobile-first, data-led, community-aligned transformation delivered +35% traffic to key content and +50% engagement on wellness tools in six months
In just six months, Beyond Blue pulled off a full-scale digital overhaul that delivered the kind of metrics most commercial CX teams dream about: A 35% lift in traffic to core content, a 50% surge in use of its flagship wellbeing tool, and enrolments in its small business mental health coaching program nearly doubled. Even fundraising starts jumped 15%, a secondary benefit in a redesign driven not by revenue, but by mission. This wasn’t simply optimisation for optimisation’s sake. It was a race against time to modernise an unsupported legacy platform and ensure Australians in distress could still find the help they needed, when they needed it.
Workday turns music icons into corporate ‘rock stars’ in new campaign
HR platform Workday has launched a new campaign featuring music stars Gwen Stefani, Paul Stanley, and Billy Idol in a series of television commercials promoting its AI agents.
Australia’s Jetts Fitness ventures into India amidst booming fitness market
Australian gym franchise Jetts Fitness is set to expand its footprint into India as part of its international growth strategy. With over 250 gyms worldwide, Jetts Fitness is recognised for its no lock-in contracts, flexible access, and value-for-money membership options.
From mid-level to CMO: Top recruiters on 2025 jobs outlook for marketers – where’s the demand, hot skills now and next, emergent new roles
Recruiters agree the marketing jobs market is turning a corner in 2025 as corporate Australia regears to pursue topline growth. But placing the right candidate is trickier than ever, with CEO whims and understanding making all the difference in who gets picked as CMO and the length of the shortlist, says Perceptor’s Mark O’Connor. The one consistency is that hiring is laser focused on commercial acumen, says O’Connor, with the agreement of Hourigan’s Stuart Tucker and Hire Aspirations’ Andy Rouse. Competition for jobs isn’t slowing down either, especially across senior roles or brand-oriented jobs. Further down the marketing hierarchy, there’s more buoyancy, although one recruiter says it’s still “a shit show” for candidates given the choice employers have. What’s also evident is the rate of rapid change in skills required, particularly around martech and AI – and there are a slew of incoming new job roles.
Amazon powers customer’s offsite purchases with agentic AI-powered ‘Buy For Me’ feature
Amazon is testing a new agentic AI powered feature in its Amazon Shopping app, enabling customers to buy from other brand retailer websites when items are not available on Amazon itself.