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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.