‘When you understand the commercial impact, the creative impact becomes more important’: What owning a $100m P&L taught Lisa Ronson Next Generation Marketing Leader Award winner, Pernod Ricard’s Maddie Jahnke about effectiveness

What you need to know:
- Pernod Ricard global brand director for tequila, Maddie Jahnke, was awarded the first-ever Australian Marketing Institute Lisa Ronson Next Generation Marketing Leader Award at this year’s Excellence Awards.
- Having started her career agencyside and across accounts, creative and media, Jahnke then switched to client-side, working for Medibank then the now defunct Holden brand at General Motors before joining Pernod Ricard’s global wine team to build out its in-house creative agency.
- She then took up her first $100m P&L in the light spirits division. It was a shift that transformed the way the marketer thinks about creative and campaign work.
- Per Jahnke: “When you understand the commercial impact, the creative impact becomes more important. It moves from being on just launching a campaign to how do we deliver results for the brand that can move the needle on the on the brand itself, and challenge the category in a different way.”
- Key work achievements along the way have included working on Medibank’s category convention challenging program, ‘live better’, the Malibu CSR campaign, ‘Don’t drink and dive’ featuring Tom Daley and the Bondi Rescue crew, plus creating a wine with F1 driver, Daniel Ricciardo that unlocked three years of compound growth.
- But Jahnke ultimately credits her ability to see opportunity not obstacles, and be courageous to the power of strong leaders who invest in culture to unlock creativity.
- To this end, her most proud achievement as a leader to date is Pernod Ricard’s ‘Uncork Inspiration’ program, which now sees 100+ marketers upskilled annually through a twoday capability program.
Inaugural Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) Lisa Ronson Next Generation Marketing Leader Award recipient, Pernod Ricard’s Maddie Jahnke, started her career agency side. But she became curious early on as to what marketers were actually doing on the other side of the fence.
“In all honesty, I always wondered, why are they not replying to my emails? Isn’t advertising the most important thing a marketer does? I’ve been a marketer for the last eight years, and I can tell you, it is definitely not,” Jahnke tells Mi3.
But it’s when she got her first P&L – a $100 million one – as head of light spirits, digital and insights Pacific for Pernod Ricard two years ago, that the steep learning curve experienced through every step of her career to date became both more sharply inclined, and more eye-opening.
“When you understand the commercial impact, the creative impact becomes more important. It moves on from being just launching a campaign to how do we deliver results for the brand that can move the needle on the on the brand itself, and challenge the category in a different way,” Jahnke says. That’s not just a short and long conversation, or type of tactic campaign conversation, she says.
“I think we all know the balance is critical. But when you get a P&L, you really understand it, because that ownership comes on you to go, ‘okay, it’s not just about having a great ad’,” Jahnke continues. “In advertising, I think we love making great work. But it became this for me: How do we make great work that’s going to drive commercial impact? It was a wake-up call for sure.”
Jahnke’s latest big professional and personal gambit took place two months ago, when she relocated to Mexico City to become global brand director for Pernod Ricard’s tequila business and brand, Altos. With tequila one the fastest growing spirits categories in the world, it’s also one of the most highly competitive, and facing a crossroads as authenticity and cultural lineage cram up against the brand power of players like Patron and 1942.
“Personally, there’s a big opportunity for me to learn a different culture and learn a different language, and that’s really exciting. Professionally, I seem to have this desire to want to take Mexico to the world,” she says. “The tequila category is challenged like champagne is: There’s champagne only from Champagne [the region], but there’s a lot of prosecco and sparkling. The tequila category operates the same way. I have this desire to want to authentically take tequila to the world, but do it in a way that also takes and elevates Mexican culture, which I think is just absolutely fascinating. It’s a massive role, but made easier by a very supportive business.”
Personally, I actively fail in front of the team. I actively ask questions that may not be the right ones or may not give the right answers, but just to show them it’s ok. I know people say there's no stupid questions, but I think when you're in the pursuit of change and doing things differently, curiosity, authenticity and courage are the things we need to make sure we're encouraging the team to develop … It's the impact that we have on culture that is the unlock to actually doing great work.
People and P&L power
According to judges for the AMI’s Lisa Ronson Next Generation Marketing Leader Award, it was Jahnke’s ability to see opportunities where others see obstacles, along with her relentless pursuit of excellence, which made her their top choice for this year’s inaugural trophy.
In her own opinion, Jahnke believes her ability to be courageous and bring a challenger mentality to the job at hand comes back to the people she was fortunate enough to have as bosses early, then throughout her career. That very first person was Kirsty Muddle, now CEO of Dentsu in Australia and previously Jahnke’s boss at full-service agency, Cummins Ross, where she began her career.
“When I ask why I am the way I am, I always think about who you have really early in your career,” Jahnke says. “If you look at people like her [Kirsty], and were sheltered by them really early on in your career, you probably end up being someone.”
At Cummins, Jahnke swung between accounts, service and media, working on brands such as Jacob’s Creek, Asahi Beverages and Jeep. “I’ve never really let the limitation of a role within a business to find the work that I’m doing,” she says. “It was my chance to learn some really foundational skills in advertising.“
However, it wasn’t long before Jahnke made the switch to client-side. Her first role was on media at Medibank under marketing chief Fiona Le Brocq – another strong leader Jahnke reveres. A healthy media budget and ambition to move towards being more than just insurance awaited her there.
“Medibank was pushing through the category convention and really challenging the status quo. That mindset Fiona created led us to do some really brilliant work around Medibank ‘live better’ and creating programs to help the community stay happier and healthier in their homes for longer. It was when Medibank was number two, and we managed to reclaim number one, back off Bupa, so another challenger brand,” Jahnke says.
Learning from Holden’s market exit
A less happy ending awaited her after she opted to join General Motors on what proved the last failed attempt to resurrect Holden in the Australia before the brand’s exit from the market in early 2021.
“What I learned is really how to manage a portfolio of brands. The auto industry is a bit one dimensional at times, so how to create something that could reclaim that spark of history that sits within a brand, but bring it into the 21st century, was kind of amazing,” Jahnke says. “The work never saw the light of day, unfortunately. But despite every obstacle that brand had, it still had something … I still have this deep belief the brand will come back in one day. I just have an inherent love for Aussie brands and I just can’t see that brand not living again in my lifetime.”
In joining Pernod Ricard, a former favourite client, Jahnke initially oversaw digital marketing and insights and built out the internal Creative Studios agency for Pernod Ricard wine makers prior to its sell-off to Australian Wine Holdco Limited, completed on 30 April 2025.
“Eric [Thomson, former global marketing director] really saw the opportunity to create something within a business. It’s not the big creative ideas, it’s how we can be effective and efficient in using data and insight to inform the decisions,” Jahnke explains. “We never envisaged doing an Asahi and completely taking it all in-house. But having specialists gives you so many benefits: It reduces the time you waste communicating with your agencies, your briefs get better, the work gets better. It lifts the quality of capabilities in the marketing team, which is a really big personal passion point of mine. It ended up putting us in a space where we could move at the pace we need to, to meet the customers’ needs.”
In assuming a role running Pernod’s light spirits, digital and insights in the Pacific, Jahnke got her first P&L worth $100 million. She worked alongside with, then for Kristy Rutherford, who was awarded the First-Time CMO of the Year at the inaugural CMO Awards, powered by Mi3.
“I was the adland chick, trying to just make great creative and thinking I knew better than everyone else. I got a very big reality shock on what it takes to actually be marketing – supply chain, commercials, financials. That was a real deep learning curve, but an incredible opportunity,” Jahnke says. “Like every role, I thought I knew 50 per cent of the job, then I got in it and I knew like 3 per cent. I felt overwhelmed, but completely supported.”
During this time, Janhke reshaped the digital and insights capability, embedded a new segmentation model, replatformed the marketing tech stack, redesigned agency partnerships, and created new business-critical roles across CX, data and content to unlock bolder and faster work in-house.
Highlights in the work meanwhile, included the Malibu ‘don’t drink and dive’ CSR campaign around raising awareness of the dangers of drinking and swimming, teaming up with Olympic medallist Tom Daley and the Bondi Rescue crew. She also worked with Daniel Ricciardo in creating the DR3 by St Hugo wine, which set out to break the traditional category cues and excite the next generation of wine drinkers. The initiative delivered three years of compound growth while transforming the way the business worked with retailer Dan Murphy’s.
“That may go down as one of the most interesting things I’ve been a part of doing – creating a product with a celebrity is really an incredible opportunity,” Jahnke adds.
Unlocking creative power through people
As a next-gen marketing leader, Jahnke firmly believes being a great marketer “is all about the people you have in your stable”.
“Whether that’s the people that work for you directly, the people you have the ability to influence, the agencies you work with, or the partners you have and the customers you have, how you connect and collaborate and work together, far exceeds making ads,” she says.
“Something I’ve learned in the last two to three years is this: Investing the time in the people to improve capabilities, or even just listen and hear how their day was, and taking the time to connect with people, gives you the ability to create a safe environment where creativity can be fostered.”
Janhke sees this reflected in every supportive leader she’s worked for. “Creating that space is the unlock to great work. It’s the unlock that drives courage, and a culture of not being afraid to fail,” she says.
“Personally, I actively fail in front of the team. I actively ask questions that may not be the right ones or may not give the right answers, but just to show them it’s ok. I know people say there’s no stupid questions, but I think when you’re in the pursuit of change and doing things differently, curiosity, authenticity and courage are the things we need to make sure we’re encouraging the team to develop … It’s the impact that we have on culture that is the unlock to actually doing great work.”
Uncorking Inspiration
To this end, Jahnke sees the ‘Uncork Inspiration’ global capabilities program she developed at Pernod Ricard as one of her biggest achievements to date. This initially began as an informal forum once a year bringing outside-in thinking into the marketing team. It’s since morphed into a two-day offsite to build the capabilities of 100+ marketers.
“Often in marketing, we spend so much time just trying to deliver the work, it’s hard to take a step back and go ‘okay, investing in people, investing in talent, is going to help us improve the output’,” Jahnke says. “Uncork Inspiration started off being me just inviting my mates – Nick Garrett [new Omnicom Oceania CEO] was in the first one, and I invited a bunch of other people that had something interesting to say. We also had Matt [Davies] and Pieter-Paul [von Weiler] from BetterBriefs.
“I still question how I was allowed to do that, but again, it’s an example of an excellent boss going, ‘Maddie knows what she’s doing, and she’ll make it up if she doesn’t’. Those will go well after I leave, but embedding programs in the business in the Pacific that investing capabilities and talent is by far the thing I’m most proud of.”
As for agency-marketing relationships, Janhke also has some advice: Get to know the business beyond the ad campaign. “If your category is under stress or under pressure, and you’re an ad agency, your marketer is going to be under stress and under pressure. It’s not necessarily directly linked to the ability for the agency to control, but I just think the context is really critical,” she says.
“We used to start our meetings with our media agency, Initiative, with a commercial update. They couldn’t influence the commercial update as the end goal, but just them knowing that in the last week, this has gone up and this had gone down, makes them feel like they’re a part of the business. I think it can unlock different avenues of thought. I would say getting as close as you can to understanding the category, understanding the business, understanding the people and how the internal business operates – as much as they’re willing to share – will help you navigate together. I have such a deep belief in agencies as real partners; they’re not rosters or groups of people; that they can be really good business partners if we enable that and strengthen that relationship.”