Mi3 Audio Edition

57 per cent of all web traffic is automated and climbing as AI upends search, discovery and commerce. Marketers are watching page views tank – down 20-30 per cent in Australia this year – and scrambling for answers to a fundamental question: When a machine, not a person, discovers, compares, and recommends your brand, what exactly are you optimising for as currency moves from click to...

Host: Andrew Birmingham - Editor - CX | Martech | Ecom A year after Mi3 Australia began its agentic AI research deep dive – dubbed Inside the Tornado – that first wave of febrile experimentation has given way to what feels like the beginning of a Cambrian explosion as businesses embed AI agents into core operations, and realise measurable gains in areas ranging from pricing optimisatio...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large Not all retailers are victims of scale. North America is pouring billions of dollars into retail media, largely sponsored search and digital screens, making giants like Amazon, Kroger and Walmart richer and other retailers chasing scraps. But luxury department store chain Holt Renfrew has carved out a higher-end niche in Canada, and its physical-plus-digital ap...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large For the shopping public, Coles’ ‘Down Down’ has stuck like super glue for more than a decade – while loathed by adland’s elite. They’ll be mostly thrilled on what Horton – Down Down’s creator – figures is likely now in a rare and wide-ranging interview and podcast. Think rest and hibernation, not a Down Down...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing They all work for cheeky challenger brands in their respective categories, they’re not afraid of doing unconventional things – and now they’ve all been recognised as top 20 CMOs of the Year for committing to innovative and distinctly different approaches to realising growth ambitions at hand. In this latest CMO Awards podc...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing The Iconic CMO, Joanna Robinson, describes commercial marketers as “customer obsessed, commercially disciplined, always data-informed and strategically curious”. Former Naked Wines CEO and Unilever marketing leader, Paul Connell, says it’s about being highly accountable, “and also being someone who’s in for the...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large In the last 20 years, KFC CMO Vanessa Rowed has worked across retail, banking, and QSR. Right now, compound market volatility makes “predicting demand really difficult” says Rowed.“That’s the biggest shift I am seeing.” Boards and management are twitchy. “Everything is just happening faster. At the same time, there's less mar...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing Numbers are increasingly stacking up that sticking to your brand narrative and creative platform knitting year after year pays outsized dividends. And it might just be the ticket to avoiding AI slop. But it takes a wealth of market sensibility, consumer contextual input, creativity, fresh thinking and strategic nous to sell in such bold wor...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing Patience of a saint, ‘glass half full’ mentality and commercially persuasive: These may not be the first things you put down on the list of attributes required in modern marketing leaders. But marketing today is as much about exercising influence internally as it is about delivering compelling creative and content externally. An...

Host: Andrew Birmingham, Editor - CX | Martech | Ecom Banks, telcos, and insurers are rethinking how they engage customers, shifting away from mass marketing campaigns toward real-time decisioning systems designed to respond to individual behaviour, according to Jonathan Tanner, a senior executive at Pegasystems. Tanner said many organisations still struggle with fragmented customer experiences, w...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large Ryan Gosling is not a goose - at least on which feature films to front. His new movie, Project Hail Mary, from Amazon-owned Hollywood studio MGM, has blasted to this year’s best opener at the Australian box office at the time of its release. It’s pulling mum, dad, kids and even the grandparents into a co-viewing experience they no longer do much of...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing CMOs have always sought to build best-practice marketing teams – it’s one of the first things they’ll have on the to-do list when they take up a new gig. But what does the marketing team of the future even look like in a world where AI is disrupting everything? How do you as a CMO chart a path through the changing AI lands...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large AI’s impact is rapidly eroding public trust in content, including the vast volumes originated by brands. Gen Z is leading the public concern, typified by confusion over what is real and what has been blurred, blended and bent by nefarious AI operatives with hot prompts. At stake for marketers and corporate affairs in an independently commissioned study ca...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing Last year, one of the world’s leading minds on attention, Amplified founder Dr Karen Nelson-Field, set out to put a figure on the eye-watering cost of dull media. The job followed on from the esteemed Dr Peter Field and Eatbigfish consultancy lead, Adam Morgan’s original work ascertaining the cost associated with dull creative....

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large 95 per cent of St Kilda Football Club’s marketing budget goes into its owned assets. Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, Michael Scott, has worked across some of the world’s biggest and best consumer marketing companies. Now he’s packaging up “rich reach” and “mind-blowing” engagement rates to woo advertisers. The li...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large Merging two massive holdco structures after the global Omnicom-IPG merger and culling 100 brands is not for the faint hearted. Overhauling the local operating model entirely at the same time? Fraught with risk. But Nick Garrett’s master plan has the blessing of Omnicom chairman John Wren, and Garrett says he wouldn’t have taken the job without licen...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing Live shopping, a blend of live video, real-time interaction and in-stream checkouts, is becoming a significant incremental ecommerce growth lever. Global figures suggest living shopping will tip an eye-watering US$2 trillion by 2030 and hit $1 trillion this year. It’s already revolutionising retail in Asian markets: Live shopping...

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing For Expedia Group country director and marketing activation lead, Philippa Durant, completing an MBA culminated in three leadership pillars reflecting her own personal brand: Kindness, passion and creativity. For Monash IVF head of marketing, Stuart Matthewman, securing a new formal tertiary qualification meant being uncomfortable – e...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large Despite a multi-year boom, there’s an abundance of retail executive teams around the world disappointed with their retail media network initiatives - largely because of a misleading valuation method influencing what retailers think they can extract in advertising terms from their physical and digital store media assets. That’s one key finding in the...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large When Jo Boundy greenlighted the second series of CommBank's financial wellbeing series The Brighter Side on Paramount 10, she expected good things but maybe not as good as the audience engagement levels turned out. The bank’s The Brighter Side  TV series garnered 2 million viewers. Tailored social content, which was  “double stacked”...

Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large Gary ‘Vee’ Vaynerchuk says his pithy pro-social media views to circa 50 million followers are far more nuanced than the vast volumes of “Jersey boy competitive” social media sound bites let on.  Is two seconds of social media attention enough to work for a brand? No - he agrees with Amplified Intelligence founder Karen Nelson-Field,...

Redundancy is rife across the marketing and agency ecosystem right now. And whether you have an inkling your job could be on the line, as Liana Dubois did when management consultants entered the Nine building, or it's a complete shock – such as Josh Slighting experienced when he left a growing REA Group, or Katie Dally felt after surviving a first round of cuts at Endeavour Group only to be...

Marketing effectiveness: How we all strive to achieve it. In today’s episode, two very distinctive takes on successful work, from the verticals and business objectives in play, to audience targeting, messaging and channels used – traditional media through to gaming streaming – are in the spotlight. And both landed their brand leaders and agencies coveted Gold Effies at this year&...

British luxury department store Selfridges has just launched a Christmas campaign co-created with Disney across almost the entire Selfridges portfolio of in-store and digital media assets. Now it’s pushing harder into retail media – and looking for similarly deep relationships with select brands aiming to tap its 36 million annual customers. Selfridges head of brand partnerships Kate E...

Australian brand marketers and their UK counterparts came up with very different views on where they see their biggest challenges, according to a study by QMS that was aligned to research by Ocean Outdoor UK. Marketers from the UK cited attention as their key challenge, while Australian marketers flagged sustainable growth and unified measurement. When it came to top marketing investment prioritie...