Retail Media Builds Bridges: Canada’s leading department store Holt Renfrew on how marketing and merch alignment powers growth in demand, CX and profit

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 departmen…

Coles ‘Down Down’ blockbuster not dead yet says brainchild Ted Horton after ACCC wins lawsuit over ‘deceptive’ price spikes - but agency economics breaking, attention metrics ‘pseudo science’, ad awards still warp industry

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 podc…

CMO Awards Podcast Episode 14: The cheeky challengers: CMO winners from amaysim, Australian Pork, Mountain Culture Beer Co on breaking the marketing and creative mould

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 ap…

CMO Awards Podcast Episode 13: Combatting the belief marketing is a discretionary spend

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 …

‘Age of the erratic’: How KFC’s Vanessa Rowed and Lyka’s Cam Luby are using MMM to navigate extreme volatility, bury dud products and replace them with better, faster

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. “Eve…

The CMO Awards Podcast Episode 12: Compounding benefits – playing the long game in brand and campaign strategy

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, …

The CMO Awards Podcast Episode 11: Selling the unreliable: How to build belief in bold marketing

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…

‘Why hammer at an LLM spending tokens’: Pega’s Jonathan Tanner warns on AI hype; banks pivot to rules, context and real-time decisioning as CX, fraud prevention, and lifetime value collide

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…

Family back as the new black: World chaos, kids’ killer schedules and personal screen rabbit holes trigger cross-generation co-viewing surge to fastest-growing audience segment for 2026

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, …

The CMO Awards Podcast Episode 10: Recasting marketing teams and capabilities in an AI world

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 disrupt…