The global agency holding groups are challenged, the consulting firms are making moves but brands are not backing new indies and start-ups, despite their frustrations. Or are they? Mi3 Executive Editor Paul McIntyre talks to the CEOs at Bastion Collective, Lavender CX and the listed RXP group for a reality check in the first of a new series on the future of Big versus Indie. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The global agency holding groups are challenged, the consulting firms are making moves but brands are not backing new indies and start-ups, despite their frustrations. Or are they? Mi3 Executive Editor Paul McIntyre talks to the CEOs at Bastion Collective, Lavender CX and the listed RXP group for a reality check in the first of a new series on the future of Big versus Indie.&nbsp;See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

A weekly wrap of the “must-know” developments in Marketing, Media, Agency and Technology for leaders and emerging leaders in the industry. Veteran industry journalist and Mi3 Executive Editor Paul McIntyre talks each week with guest marketers who are in the know on what matters at the nexus of marketing, agencies, media and technology. Powered mostly by Human Intelligence (HI).

A weekly wrap of the “must-know” developments in Marketing, Media, Agency and Technology for leaders and emerging leaders in the industry. Veteran industry journalist and Mi3 Executive Editor Paul McIntyre talks each week...

Mi3 Audio Edition

Is the era of independent agencies and consultants over?

Not all reach is equal and neither is our level of attention: We know it instinctively, we’re told it, and now we’re getting better understanding into how to apply its qualitative impact to achieve mental availability, brand equity and sales uplift. The good news for digital out-of-home users is that the channel not only commands solid, bankable doses of total attention, it’s delivering the short and long for brands more efficiently than other digital, scrolling formats.

QMS and Amplified have just dropped the latest landmark research in a multi-year program of work to gauge how attention is playing out in the digital out-of-home sphere. And it’s an eye opener for what DOOH can deliver, revealing surprisingly distinctive attributes that are sure to get tongues wagging in our industry. What’s more, the new study maps attention based on the principles of active, passive and non-attention, leveraging models and methodologies to ensure these findings can be understood and applied within the broader digital media ecosystem.

The first and arguably most significant finding: Digital out-of-home has a dual effect, not only helping to build short-term advertising strength but also mental availability. “We found this situation where both metrics moved similarly together, which was very surprising to us, but also amazing,” said Amplified founder, Dr Karen Nelson-Field.

It’s a nod to Mark Ritson’s ‘bothism’ argument – yes, brands actually can get both if they find the right vehicle to deliver them. “This is the first time I've seen where, in fact, it does drive both in the same platform,” said Dr Nelson-Field. “You can get your short and your long.”

In complement, and arguably the stat most likely to upset the industry apple cart: DOOH can do this with just 1 second of active attention. That’s less than half the 2.5-second threshold established for scrolling, “fast decay” digital formats.

Such results certainly had OMD chief planning officer, Thad King, rethinking both the right levels of attention required, and the role DOOH can play against a more diverse set of campaign objectives.

“Think about out-of-home: It's visible from the moment you see you see it. The brand is visible; the message is visible,” he commented. “I think it stands to reason why it doesn't need as much attention. All the stuff that's been established previously around the two-and-a-half seconds to establish mental availability is still true, because it's for formats that storytell; you definitely need that level of attention for those storytelling formats. But it's something we probably haven't thought of before.

“The level of attention that's required to drive outcomes from both a short-term and a long-term perspective is definitely going to help us potentially reframe some of the thinking in terms of out-of-home and the role for the channel at different stages.”

That’s not the end of it either. The study also shows the longer time in view for one of these billboards or street furniture assets, the more active attention it earns, stacking both passive and active attention in tandem and further strengthening outcomes.

“This is not saying that passive converts on its own. To be honest, we feel like there are a lot of publishers who do get a lot of passive attention that say it's highly valuable from a conversion perspective. It's not,” argued Dr Nelson-Field. “What we see here is that passive is leading to more active, and active is related to the outcome; it's related to the sales or related to the equity, the brand equity.”

The power of this new data also comes from the fact this was an expansive study, with large format billboards in Sydney and Melbourne, City of Sydney CBD assets and a mix of pedestrian and vehicular traffic all in the frame.

“We measured everything from overbridge sites to monopoles, sites that were on the sides of buildings, A sides, B sides. We wanted to really make sure we had this wide variety of different types of sites. The reason behind that is to give us a really thorough understanding of our assets, but also to take away bias,” said QMS chief strategy officer, Christian Zavecz. “We didn't want to sugarcoat it and just do our most premium sites. We felt that was really important to understand the contribution and relative performance of all of our assets.”

Not all reach is equal and neither is our level of attention: We know it instinctively, we&rsquo;re told it, and now we&rsquo;re getting better understanding into how to apply its qualitative impact to achieve mental availability, brand equity and sales uplift. The good news for digital out-of-home users is that the channel not only commands solid, bankable doses of total attention, it&rsquo;s delivering the short and long for brands more efficiently than other digital, scrolling formats.
QMS and Amplified have just dropped the latest landmark research in a multi-year program of work to gauge how attention is playing out in the digital out-of-home sphere. And it&rsquo;s an eye opener for what DOOH can deliver, revealing surprisingly distinctive attributes that are sure to get tongues wagging in our industry. What&rsquo;s more, the new study maps attention based on the principles of active, passive and non-attention, leveraging models and methodologies to ensure these findings can be understood and applied within the broader digital media ecosystem.
The first and arguably most significant finding: Digital out-of-home has a dual effect, not only helping to build short-term advertising strength but also mental availability. &ldquo;We found this situation where both metrics moved similarly together, which was very surprising to us, but also amazing,&rdquo; said Amplified founder, Dr Karen Nelson-Field.
It&rsquo;s a nod to Mark Ritson&rsquo;s &lsquo;bothism&rsquo; argument &ndash; yes, brands actually can get both if they find the right vehicle to deliver them. &ldquo;This is the first time I've seen where, in fact, it does drive both in the same platform,&rdquo; said Dr Nelson-Field. &ldquo;You can get your short and your long.&rdquo;
In complement, and arguably the stat most likely to upset the industry apple cart: DOOH can do this with just 1 second of active attention. That&rsquo;s less than half the 2.5-second threshold established for scrolling, &ldquo;fast decay&rdquo; digital formats.
Such results certainly had OMD chief planning officer, Thad King, rethinking both the right levels of attention required, and the role DOOH can play against a more diverse set of campaign objectives.
&ldquo;Think about out-of-home: It's visible from the moment you see you see it. The brand is visible; the message is visible,&rdquo; he commented. &ldquo;I think it stands to reason why it doesn't need as much attention. All the stuff that's been established previously around the two-and-a-half seconds to establish mental availability is still true, because it's for formats that storytell; you definitely need that level of attention for those storytelling formats. But it's something we probably haven't thought of before.
&ldquo;The level of attention that's required to drive outcomes from both a short-term and a long-term perspective is definitely going to help us potentially reframe some of the thinking in terms of out-of-home and the role for the channel at different stages.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s not the end of it either. The study also shows the longer time in view for one of these billboards or street furniture assets, the more active attention it earns, stacking both passive and active attention in tandem and further strengthening outcomes.
&ldquo;This is not saying that passive converts on its own. To be honest, we feel like there are a lot of publishers who do get a lot of passive attention that say it's highly valuable from a conversion perspective. It's not,&rdquo; argued Dr Nelson-Field. &ldquo;What we see here is that passive is leading to more active, and active is related to the outcome; it's related to the sales or related to the equity, the brand equity.&rdquo;
The power of this new data also comes from the fact this was an expansive study, with large format billboards in Sydney and Melbourne, City of Sydney CBD assets and a mix of pedestrian and vehicular traffic all in the frame.
&ldquo;We measured everything from overbridge sites to monopoles, sites that were on the sides of buildings, A sides, B sides. We wanted to really make sure we had this wide variety of different types of sites. The reason behind that is to give us a really thorough understanding of our assets, but also to take away bias,&rdquo; said QMS chief strategy officer, Christian Zavecz. &ldquo;We didn't want to sugarcoat it and just do our most premium sites. We felt that was really important to understand the contribution and relative performance of all of our assets.&rdquo;

Attention that translates into brand building plus sales punch: Digital out-of-home’s superpower

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/eb39f610-b551-4621-a924-b4ac006c3790/transcript

Host: Andrew Birmingham, Editor - CX | Martech | Ecom

Agentic commerce is about to redraw the shopping journey. AI is moving beyond search and recommendation to evaluate products, weigh trade-offs and increasingly make decisions on the customer’s behalf.

For brands, a chatbot and a few tweaks for AI search will not cut it. Winning will require trusted data, credible evidence and enough brand strength to ensure the machines do not reduce everything to price.

In the latest edition of the Mi3 Market Voice podcast, Accenture Song Senior Managing Director and Global Commerce Practice Lead, Rajat Agarwal, joins Mi3 technology editor Andrew Birmingham to explain why AI agents could transform consumer behaviour faster than the original shift to e-commerce.

Digital commerce solved the problem of access, then replaced it with the problem of abundance. Consumers can find almost anything, but they are often left wading through endless options, dubious claims and reviews they do not entirely trust before abandoning the purchase anyway.

Agarwal says agents could break that cycle by understanding what the customer is actually trying to achieve, testing the available evidence and cutting the field down to a smaller set of credible choices.

The most immediate change will be a move from search-and-browse journeys towards intent-based commerce. Fully autonomous transactions remain at an early stage, but Agarwal expects customers to give agents greater authority as their confidence increases.

That development creates a sharper divide between brands with genuine emotional connections and those that rely primarily on broad positioning. Consumers may continue to ask agents for favoured brands, but weaker brands will increasingly be assessed through price, promotion, availability, features and supporting evidence.

“Mediocrity will evaporate,” says Agarwal who argues that brands without a strong connection to customers risk becoming commodities selected by agents according to functional attributes. “However, brands which still have the right emotional connection with the customer will continue to thrive and to do well.”

This episode also explains why agentic commerce cannot be left to a specific functional or local team or treated as another optimisation programme. Agents may draw on product pages, ratings, reviews, community discussion, video, pricing, inventory and other internal and external sources. Brands need consistent, structured and credible information across that entire environment.

Agarwal advises companies to begin with the customer journeys they want to win. They should then identify the evidence an agent will need, create the supporting knowledge graph, improve product-information and digital-asset systems, distribute the information consistently and measure whether the strategy is working.

Starting with a generic AI-visibility score can produce the wrong result. Agarwal cites a fashion business that appeared to perform strongly in agent discovery but was being associated with discounts and value rather than fashion, inspiration and style.

Choice of agents, agents of choice

The episode develops an important distinction between becoming a choice of agents and becoming an agent of choice.

Every consumer-facing business will need to become a choice of agents by ensuring its products can be found, understood and purchased through external AI systems. Agarwal calls this a no-regret move. “You have to make your product discoverable and transactable by these horizontal agents.”

A smaller group of companies will aim higher. Rather than simply making their products visible to other people’s agents, they will try to build the agent customers choose first. Done well, those vertical agents could combine deep category expertise and human judgment with the speed and convenience of digital commerce.

The prize is establishing and preserving intimate customer relationships.The risk is that the agent carries the brand with it. If it hallucinates, makes a poor recommendation or loses the customer’s trust, the damage will not stop with the technology.

Agarwal’s advice is to start now, without pretending the data, models or architecture are finished. Agentic commerce needs to be built as an enterprise capability spanning marketing, commerce, communications, supply chain, technology, governance and the operating model.

The business case runs well beyond cost cutting. Agentic commerce could lift conversion, rescue sales lost to choice overload, reduce acquisition costs and give brands more room to move without adding spending at the same rate.

Agarwal tells Mi3 that the early results are promising. The catch is that the market is still too young, and the evidence too uneven, to produce reliable benchmarks that every company can plug into a business case.

His 12-month prescription is straightforward. First, understand how the brand is being read across the AI decision ecosystem. Then fix the data and technology foundations. In parallel, companies should decide whether their own websites, apps and commerce platforms need to become agentic experiences.

The winners will be the companies that treat agentic commerce as a fundamental change to how they operate. The rest risk accumulating pilots, presentations and proofs of concept that look impressive in the boardroom but amount to little more than AI theatre.

Host: Andrew Birmingham, Editor - CX | Martech | Ecom
Agentic commerce is about to redraw the shopping journey. AI is moving beyond search and recommendation to evaluate products, weigh trade-offs and increasingly make decisions on the customer&rsquo;s behalf.
For brands, a chatbot and a few tweaks for AI search will not cut it. Winning will require trusted data, credible evidence and enough brand strength to ensure the machines do not reduce everything to price.
In the <a href="https://www.mi-3.com.au/31-07-2026/agentic-ai-will-reward-strong-brands-built-trust-evidence-and-customer-connection">latest edition of the Mi3 Market Voice podcast</a>, Accenture Song Senior Managing Director and Global Commerce Practice Lead, Rajat Agarwal, joins Mi3 technology editor Andrew Birmingham to explain why AI agents could transform consumer behaviour faster than the original shift to e-commerce.
Digital commerce solved the problem of access, then replaced it with the problem of abundance. Consumers can find almost anything, but they are often left wading through endless options, dubious claims and reviews they do not entirely trust before abandoning the purchase anyway.
Agarwal says agents could break that cycle by understanding what the customer is actually trying to achieve, testing the available evidence and cutting the field down to a smaller set of credible choices.
The most immediate change will be a move from search-and-browse journeys towards intent-based commerce. Fully autonomous transactions remain at an early stage, but Agarwal expects customers to give agents greater authority as their confidence increases.
That development creates a sharper divide between brands with genuine emotional connections and those that rely primarily on broad positioning. Consumers may continue to ask agents for favoured brands, but weaker brands will increasingly be assessed through price, promotion, availability, features and supporting evidence.
&ldquo;Mediocrity will evaporate,&rdquo; says Agarwal who argues that brands without a strong connection to customers risk becoming commodities selected by agents according to functional attributes. &ldquo;However, brands which still have the right emotional connection with the customer will continue to thrive and to do well.&rdquo;
This episode also explains why agentic commerce cannot be left to a specific functional or local team or treated as another optimisation programme. Agents may draw on product pages, ratings, reviews, community discussion, video, pricing, inventory and other internal and external sources. Brands need consistent, structured and credible information across that entire environment.
Agarwal advises companies to begin with the customer journeys they want to win. They should then identify the evidence an agent will need, create the supporting knowledge graph, improve product-information and digital-asset systems, distribute the information consistently and measure whether the strategy is working.
Starting with a generic AI-visibility score can produce the wrong result. Agarwal cites a fashion business that appeared to perform strongly in agent discovery but was being associated with discounts and value rather than fashion, inspiration and style. Choice of agents, agents of choice
The episode develops an important distinction between becoming a choice of agents and becoming an agent of choice.
Every consumer-facing business will need to become a choice of agents by ensuring its products can be found, understood and purchased through external AI systems. Agarwal calls this a no-regret move. &ldquo;You have to make your product discoverable and transactable by these horizontal agents.&rdquo;
A smaller group of companies will aim higher. Rather than simply making their products visible to other people&rsquo;s agents, they will try to build the agent customers choose first. Done well, those vertical agents could combine deep category expertise and human judgment with the speed and convenience of digital commerce.
The prize is establishing and preserving intimate customer relationships.The risk is that the agent carries the brand with it. If it hallucinates, makes a poor recommendation or loses the customer&rsquo;s trust, the damage will not stop with the technology.
Agarwal&rsquo;s advice is to start now, without pretending the data, models or architecture are finished. Agentic commerce needs to be built as an enterprise capability spanning marketing, commerce, communications, supply chain, technology, governance and the operating model.
The business case runs well beyond cost cutting. Agentic commerce could lift conversion, rescue sales lost to choice overload, reduce acquisition costs and give brands more room to move without adding spending at the same rate.
Agarwal tells Mi3 that the early results are promising. The catch is that the market is still too young, and the evidence too uneven, to produce reliable benchmarks that every company can plug into a business case.
His 12-month prescription is straightforward. First, understand how the brand is being read across the AI decision ecosystem. Then fix the data and technology foundations. In parallel, companies should decide whether their own websites, apps and commerce platforms need to become agentic experiences.
The winners will be the companies that treat agentic commerce as a fundamental change to how they operate. The rest risk accumulating pilots, presentations and proofs of concept that look impressive in the boardroom but amount to little more than AI theatre.

Agentic AI will reward strong brands built on trust, evidence and customer connection. Mediocre brands will perish 

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/d7223ee2-a9b2-4860-ada5-b49e002fe1a6/transcript

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing

Brand rejuvenation: How do you honour the legacy while seeking a new narrative that grabs attention, compounds consumer and customer affinity, and delivers new commercial momentum? In this episode, two of our 2026 top 10 CMOs from the CMO Awards – Bank of Queensland marketing chief and #1 CMO of the year, Adrian McCaffrey, and Uber head of marketing and #6 CMO of the year, Nicole Bardsley – unpack what they’ve been doing to deliver marketing effectiveness with their fresh, reinvigorating approaches to brand.

In the last 18 months, McCaffrey has been spearheading BOQ’s key strategic growth program, ‘The Bank of Queenslanders’. The multi-pronged repositioning takes into account brand, media and customer channels to new product development, tech and app innovation, and internal cultural and operational change.

BOQ was carrying the “hallmarks of being a leader”, including the brand codes and cultural affection that could take it there. Yet it lacked the energy and united momentum to make it one, says McCaffrey. Having been outspent by the majors by 25:1 in a $400m+ media spend category, BOQ marketers also found themselves almost entirely skewed to performance-heavy campaigns and spread too thin. Three pillars reset the gameplan: Reinvigorate the brand’s core promise as a bank for Queenslanders, build a new customer-first multi-channel platform model, and win in retail and business banking. Cue a return to significant sporting partnerships, a more targeted media approach, and even an ‘ultimate Queenslander’ program and quiz on TikTok.

“The genius of the ‘Bank of Queenslanders’ is that it’s so simple,” says McCaffrey. “It felt like we’d fallen into a trap of having to explain who we were and what our brand meant a little too much, versus leveraging what it says on the tin, or what people know us for.”

The result in six months were hefty: Number one share of voice in Queensland, double-digit percentage growth in home loan SME applications the team “had to check a few times to make sure they were correct”, per McCaffrey, and positive uplift in key brand metrics. Importantly, it’s an example of how marketing can drive true balance sheet contribution, he says.

At Uber, a mature Australian market and category leadership meant a diminishing growth trajectory for the rides business if it continued relying on its product-led marketing approach. It was a strange contradiction to the Uber Eats business, where brand-led growth dominated, Bardsley says.

Having identified private car trips as the next big competitor to square up to, behaviour change was evidently going to be needed if rides was to find net new growth. Cue Shania Twain, Aussie comedian Tom Cardy, and the brand platform. ‘Can’t do that if you’re driving’.

“Brand marketing is most effective at doing behaviour change. Hence why we needed to shift away from saying there’s not a product that’s going to change that. It needs to be a brand-led strategy,” Bardsley says.

Halfway through the rollout, budgets were cut – a challenge Bardsley agrees many marketers can relate to. “It forced us to be much more disciplined in our approach,” she says.

“We made the deliberate decision to concentrate investment and to prioritise learning … we created a robust market-level experiment, which mean we had clear treatment markets and clear control markets. It meant major cities of Australia didn’t receive the campaign, which is often a tough decision when you’ve got the business wanting to drive short-term impact as well. But we needed to ensure we could build out statistically robust evidence to be able to support the business case that marketing can drive both long-term brand impact as well as short-term incremental demand.”

It worked: The marketing team proved out incremental demand in markets the campaign was live in. “Most importantly, those numbers have been critical to help us prove out the business case and we’re currently planning for the second run of the campaign,” says Bardsley.  

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor &ndash; Marketing
Brand rejuvenation: How do you honour the legacy while seeking a new narrative that grabs attention, compounds consumer and customer affinity, and delivers new commercial momentum? In this episode, two of our 2026 top 10 CMOs from the CMO Awards &ndash; Bank of Queensland marketing chief and #1 CMO of the year, Adrian McCaffrey, and Uber head of marketing and #6 CMO of the year, Nicole Bardsley &ndash; unpack what they&rsquo;ve been doing to deliver marketing effectiveness with their fresh, reinvigorating approaches to brand.
In the last 18 months, McCaffrey has been spearheading BOQ&rsquo;s key strategic growth program, &lsquo;The Bank of Queenslanders&rsquo;. The multi-pronged repositioning takes into account brand, media and customer channels to new product development, tech and app innovation, and internal cultural and operational change.
BOQ was carrying the &ldquo;hallmarks of being a leader&rdquo;, including the brand codes and cultural affection that could take it there. Yet it lacked the energy and united momentum to make it one, says McCaffrey. Having been outspent by the majors by 25:1 in a $400m+ media spend category, BOQ marketers also found themselves almost entirely skewed to performance-heavy campaigns and spread too thin. Three pillars reset the gameplan: Reinvigorate the brand&rsquo;s core promise as a bank for Queenslanders, build a new customer-first multi-channel platform model, and win in retail and business banking. Cue a return to significant sporting partnerships, a more targeted media approach, and even an &lsquo;ultimate Queenslander&rsquo; program and quiz on TikTok.
&ldquo;The genius of the &lsquo;Bank of Queenslanders&rsquo; is that it&rsquo;s so simple,&rdquo; says McCaffrey. &ldquo;It felt like we&rsquo;d fallen into a trap of having to explain who we were and what our brand meant a little too much, versus leveraging what it says on the tin, or what people know us for.&rdquo;
The result in six months were hefty: Number one share of voice in Queensland, double-digit percentage growth in home loan SME applications the team &ldquo;had to check a few times to make sure they were correct&rdquo;, per McCaffrey, and positive uplift in key brand metrics. Importantly, it&rsquo;s an example of how marketing can drive true balance sheet contribution, he says.
At Uber, a mature Australian market and category leadership meant a diminishing growth trajectory for the rides business if it continued relying on its product-led marketing approach. It was a strange contradiction to the Uber Eats business, where brand-led growth dominated, Bardsley says.
Having identified private car trips as the next big competitor to square up to, behaviour change was evidently going to be needed if rides was to find net new growth. Cue Shania Twain, Aussie comedian Tom Cardy, and the brand platform. &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t do that if you&rsquo;re driving&rsquo;.
&ldquo;Brand marketing is most effective at doing behaviour change. Hence why we needed to shift away from saying there&rsquo;s not a product that&rsquo;s going to change that. It needs to be a brand-led strategy,&rdquo; Bardsley says.
Halfway through the rollout, budgets were cut &ndash; a challenge Bardsley agrees many marketers can relate to. &ldquo;It forced us to be much more disciplined in our approach,&rdquo; she says.
&ldquo;We made the deliberate decision to concentrate investment and to prioritise learning &hellip; we created a robust market-level experiment, which mean we had clear treatment markets and clear control markets. It meant major cities of Australia didn&rsquo;t receive the campaign, which is often a tough decision when you&rsquo;ve got the business wanting to drive short-term impact as well. But we needed to ensure we could build out statistically robust evidence to be able to support the business case that marketing can drive both long-term brand impact as well as short-term incremental demand.&rdquo;
It worked: The marketing team proved out incremental demand in markets the campaign was live in. &ldquo;Most importantly, those numbers have been critical to help us prove out the business case and we&rsquo;re currently planning for the second run of the campaign,&rdquo; says Bardsley. &nbsp;

The CMO Awards podcast episode 16: Brand rejuvenation: CMO winners from Bank of Queensland and Uber unpack their playbooks for marketing effectiveness

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/d9778569-181c-4805-8d8a-b49b00737006/transcript

Is the era of independent agencies and consultants over?

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