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 – especially when squaring up to financial acumen – but also turned into growth and ultimately, compounding learning. And for Fitness and Lifestyle Group EGM of marketing and PR, Sara Dunseath, time at Harvard studying corporate revitalisation – “after a kick up the bum from my CEO” – fostered adaptability, confidence and relevance.

These three marketing executives join Mi3 Publisher and CMO Awards program leader, Nadia Cameron in the first of our new series of CMO Awards podcasts for 2026 to explore how formal knowledge is power, and why these mid-career learning experiences have proven of such benefit professionally and personally. There’s no doubt the pressure is piling on marketing executives to be constantly learning and adapting their skill sets to suit rapidly changing marketing, business and customer environments. And it can be exhausting, all three agree – especially when there is such scrutiny of marketing ROI and an onus to know how to always deliver success. But surprisingly, taking the time to tackle formal learning in courses that first appeared to be outside the boundaries of the marketing function gave them renewed energy to tackle tasks at hand. Even more significantly, it elevated their own respect for the very discipline of marketing itself in organisations today.

Tune into the conversation here.

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor &ndash; 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 &ndash; especially when squaring up to financial acumen &ndash; but also turned into growth and ultimately, compounding learning. And for Fitness and Lifestyle Group EGM of marketing and PR, Sara Dunseath, time at Harvard studying corporate revitalisation &ndash; &ldquo;after a kick up the bum from my CEO&rdquo; &ndash; fostered adaptability, confidence and relevance.
These three marketing executives join Mi3 Publisher and CMO Awards program leader, Nadia Cameron in the first of our new series of CMO Awards podcasts for 2026 to explore how formal knowledge is power, and why these mid-career learning experiences have proven of such benefit professionally and personally. There&rsquo;s no doubt the pressure is piling on marketing executives to be constantly learning and adapting their skill sets to suit rapidly changing marketing, business and customer environments. And it can be exhausting, all three agree &ndash; especially when there is such scrutiny of marketing ROI and an onus to know how to always deliver success. But surprisingly, taking the time to tackle formal learning in courses that first appeared to be outside the boundaries of the marketing function gave them renewed energy to tackle tasks at hand. Even more significantly, it elevated their own respect for the very discipline of marketing itself in organisations today.
Tune into the conversation here.

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

The CMO Awards Podcast Episode 9: Fountains of knowledge: CMOs on the power of mid-profession learning

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/776c6fc6-8c30-4cb3-8215-b4010048b3ef/transcript

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing

Marketing teams have become incredibly good at optimising campaigns and communications through ever-more precise data and measurement tools. But have we been pursuing precision and ROI to the point where we’ve optimised and measured ourselves into oblivion?

That’s a key question that lies at the heart of the latest Mi3 podcast episode. The second question immediately alongside it: If modern measurement tools are telling us what worked in the past, how do we find the complementary intelligence that’ll help us predict the customers and trends that might drive effective strategies for future growth?

There’s no doubt the rise of digital media and performance marketing have brought marketing teams extraordinary advances in accountability. But for the likes of Les Binet, Mark Ritson and James Hurman, such precision puts brands in danger of losing sight of how to generate future demand.

How to identify which customers are worth winning longer term is a key piece of the value intelligence puzzle, says social and behavioural scientist, Ross Honeywill – and he’s pitching his 5.5m next economic order (NEO) consumers as the predictive bellwether for early adoption as well as less price-sensitive customer mindsets.

For David Jones’s GM of marketing and retail media, Melissa Polglase, escaping a short-term view is tough in an economic climate where growth is hard to come by. “The digital world has allowed us to track ROAS conversion at a really microscopic level, and that can be quite addictive, particularly in a very choiceful economy now, where customers are really being quite prudent in how they’re spending,” she agrees.

Moreover, platforms are great at “driving an outcome to an audience within a platform”, continues Polglase. Getting past that firstly means staying true to the marketing strategy. But it also means adopting a more customer-oriented mindset, says Polglase.

For example, focusing on a more affluent customer who identifies with experiences and quality was a critical step in designing the retailer’s customer loyalty program – and such care has paid dividends, including a +40 per cent better transaction value than non-member shoppers.

“It really comes down to putting customer strategy ahead of channel optimisation and having the leadership in place to be bold, and to be able to continue driving short-term results while asking long-term questions,” Polglase says.  

OMD chief strategy officer, Rob Frost, agrees digitisation has tipped the scales too far towards optimisation. “What we were doing is taking any metrics we could get and saying this was a proxy for something else that happened,” he says. “At the same time, what we started to do is apply those metrics to any piece of activity beyond direct response as well. So we started thinking, how can we do this for our brand? Then we fell into this trap of short terms.”

One of the critical things about consumers with a NEO mindset is they choose what matters to them, explains Honeywill. Unlike traditional consumers, they’re also socially progressive, independent minded and curious about what comes next – and importantly, “are more ready to spend and spend more frequently and pay more for a difference they believe in”.

While NEOs appeal, Frost is quick to warn against “oversegmenting” for the sake of it, particularly in the upper funnel. “If we know that speaks to 95 per cent of your out-of-market customer base at any point, we should be thinking about building up that distinctive brand for the long term, however possible. But there seems to be really interesting use cases for any segmentation, especially when we start to look at that predictive element of how we do that in the mid and lower funnel,” he says.  

One of the things Omnicom is looking at is building what Frost dubbed “a brand brain”. “This would allow us to pull in real-time [customer] signals and understand not just what's happened previously in all of your campaigns through your modelling, results and metrics, but start to get an idea of how those real-time signals are starting to impact what happens in the lives of consumers or within your categories,” he says.

“If we have a way of building these brand brains and repositories of that kind of data and information, and can find smarter ways of asking the right questions and pulling from that, we can get closer to doing something different – and that hopefully better predicts a potential outcome than we ever have done before.”

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor &ndash; Marketing
Marketing teams have become incredibly good at optimising campaigns and communications through ever-more precise data and measurement tools. But have we been pursuing precision and ROI to the point where we&rsquo;ve optimised and measured ourselves into oblivion?
That&rsquo;s a key question that lies at the heart of the latest Mi3 podcast episode. The second question immediately alongside it: If modern measurement tools are telling us what worked in the past, how do we find the complementary intelligence that&rsquo;ll help us predict the customers and trends that might drive effective strategies for future growth?
There&rsquo;s no doubt the rise of digital media and performance marketing have brought marketing teams extraordinary advances in accountability. But for the likes of Les Binet, Mark Ritson and James Hurman, such precision puts brands in danger of losing sight of how to generate future demand.
How to identify which customers are worth winning longer term is a key piece of the value intelligence puzzle, says social and behavioural scientist, Ross Honeywill &ndash; and he&rsquo;s pitching his 5.5m next economic order (NEO) consumers as the predictive bellwether for early adoption as well as less price-sensitive customer mindsets.
For David Jones&rsquo;s GM of marketing and retail media, Melissa Polglase, escaping a short-term view is tough in an economic climate where growth is hard to come by. &ldquo;The digital world has allowed us to track ROAS conversion at a really microscopic level, and that can be quite addictive, particularly in a very choiceful economy now, where customers are really being quite prudent in how they&rsquo;re spending,&rdquo; she agrees.
Moreover, platforms are great at &ldquo;driving an outcome to an audience within a platform&rdquo;, continues Polglase. Getting past that firstly means staying true to the marketing strategy. But it also means adopting a more customer-oriented mindset, says Polglase.
For example, focusing on a more affluent customer who identifies with experiences and quality was a critical step in designing the retailer&rsquo;s customer loyalty program &ndash; and such care has paid dividends, including a +40 per cent better transaction value than non-member shoppers.
&ldquo;It really comes down to putting customer strategy ahead of channel optimisation and having the leadership in place to be bold, and to be able to continue driving short-term results while asking long-term questions,&rdquo; Polglase says. &nbsp;
OMD chief strategy officer, Rob Frost, agrees digitisation has tipped the scales too far towards optimisation. &ldquo;What we were doing is taking any metrics we could get and saying this was a proxy for something else that happened,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;At the same time, what we started to do is apply those metrics to any piece of activity beyond direct response as well. So we started thinking, how can we do this for our brand? Then we fell into this trap of short terms.&rdquo;
One of the critical things about consumers with a NEO mindset is they choose what matters to them, explains Honeywill. Unlike traditional consumers, they&rsquo;re also socially progressive, independent minded and curious about what comes next &ndash; and importantly, &ldquo;are more ready to spend and spend more frequently and pay more for a difference they believe in&rdquo;.
While NEOs appeal, Frost is quick to warn against &ldquo;oversegmenting&rdquo; for the sake of it, particularly in the upper funnel. &ldquo;If we know that speaks to 95 per cent of your out-of-market customer base at any point, we should be thinking about building up that distinctive brand for the long term, however possible. But there seems to be really interesting use cases for any segmentation, especially when we start to look at that predictive element of how we do that in the mid and lower funnel,&rdquo; he says. &nbsp;
One of the things Omnicom is looking at is building what Frost dubbed &ldquo;a brand brain&rdquo;. &ldquo;This would allow us to pull in real-time [customer] signals and understand not just what's happened previously in all of your campaigns through your modelling, results and metrics, but start to get an idea of how those real-time signals are starting to impact what happens in the lives of consumers or within your categories,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;If we have a way of building these brand brains and repositories of that kind of data and information, and can find smarter ways of asking the right questions and pulling from that, we can get closer to doing something different &ndash; and that hopefully better predicts a potential outcome than we ever have done before.&rdquo;

Avoiding the efficiency trap: How marketing shifts from precision to prediction

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/49fc4fe1-666d-417b-9f85-b4db007f88bd/transcript

This year’s Nine Upfronts gave brands and media buyers a decidedly different narrative to engage in, and it wasn’t just down to the high-production, immersive format of its showcase.

Nine put forward a confident content slate that exuded what the locally owned and operated media company does best: Breadth of Australian programming, talent and connection across sports, entertainment, drama, news and lifestyle. But secondly, it revealed the engine fuelling how it’s taking all this to market in 2027 has been strategically recharged.

As Nine’s chief executive officer, Matt Stanton, and chief sales officer, Matt James, told Mi3 in a podcast recorded in the immediate afterglow of the Upfronts event, Nine has become a very different media company in the last 12 months. Having tackled the heavy lifting on portfolio mix and strategy, it’s putting forward a refreshingly firm, unified proposition that covers broadcast to streaming, publishing and digital-out-of-home.

Propelled by its most integrated owned and operated media offering to date, buoyed by the $850m acquisition of digital out-of-home player QMS, Nine is pitching a ‘sofa to street’ cross-platform play for advertisers, supported by a single media planning and buying platform, Nine Neo. This go-to-market strategy is designed to bring cohesion to how brands trade and measure the effectiveness of what Nine has to offer. And it’s backed by significant investment into unifying audience targeting and insights extending from screens into physical locations and commerce.

The upshot: Nine is pitching itself as a strong contender against big tech and the global streaming platforms, and the only Australian-owned, fully integrated media network that can connect brands to audiences across their entire day.

It’s a crucial time to shore up this full-funnel, multi-channel proposition in market. Hundreds of millions of ad dollars have exited the linear and broadcast industry over recent years, reallocated to digital platforms and walled gardens. There’s active debate right now around whether it’s the responsibility of government, media buyers or brands to proactively back Australia’s domestic media industry. Many agree supporting local-first content and journalism is crucial to societal cohesion and cultural connection.

But ultimately, media companies have to demonstrate they have the audiences, scale and solid returns on investment to win ad dollars. That’s what Nine is backing itself to provide. Stanton pointed to the power of the State of Origin, Olympics and Married at First Sight in delivering cultural moments as his first proof point.

“It's very important to have scale and diversity in this marketplace,” Stanton continued. “If you are a single platform – and it doesn't matter how big you are – it’s very difficult to compete with some of the big global tech players because obviously, they have the investment of a whole global team versus a local team like ours. So it's really important to get these three business units – streaming and broadcast, publishing, and out-of-home – working closely together, but also in their own right as well. They have to stand on their own two feet is the way I think about it, but then they've also got to collaborate when they need to collaborate … That's the only way we are actually going to be able to compete with the big global players.

“That’s very clear to me, and the portfolio changes we’ve talked about are really significant. Now, it’s about execution, and using these three big assets at the right time, either individually or cooperatively.”

Then there’s strength in fully owning and operating such assets. Nine has a “powerful” ability to unify and coordinate these all the way from content to data, technology, audience and cultural moment, said James. “It’s a big full-funnel proposition that enables us to start from brand to covering the breadth between awareness and transaction,” he said.

“This is also only going to work if you fundamentally have your strategic destiny in your own hands. This requires unified content delivery systems. It requires unified IDs around our 22 million audience base. And it needs all of the investments we are making in the technology to develop this the right way.

“Everything we’re developing comes with a long-term perspective, which I think is another one of our fundamental differences. I appreciate there are lots of partnerships going on in that [out-of-home] marketplace, but you can't make these kinds of investments and unify that in the way we're unifying our data, and even our content platforms across 9Now and Stan.”

James additionally points to the heft of Nine’s assets today as evidence it can deliver this to advertisers. “They really do reach most of Australians, and anything we now do, we can develop from a long-term perspective, particularly as we embed outcomes-based reporting,” he said.

Nine’s commitment to longevity extends to the content it’s investing in. Its recent NRL deal to 2034, along with a freshly minted seven-year EPL deal, are examples. Nine also has rights to the Olympics through to Brisbane 2032. Demand for these marquee events has never been bigger, James added.

“We have properties such as The Block, MAFS [Married at First Sight], and news, which clearly anchors on consistency,” Stanton said. “Advertisers know what they are getting; it’s very consistent, trusted and at the heart of Australian cultural moments.”

Under Nine’s cross-platform strategy, many loved content offerings are also now showing up across its broader asset base.

“If you just put one bit of content on one bit of platform, it will not grow,” Stanton commented. “We now have the EPL and the rights on the streaming side on Stan, but we can put it onto Nine and 9Now as well. We can push it through the publishing business and outdoor as well … From an advertising point of view, when you can do that, it’s very powerful.”

This year&rsquo;s Nine Upfronts gave brands and media buyers a decidedly different narrative to engage in, and it wasn&rsquo;t just down to the high-production, immersive format of its showcase.
Nine put forward a confident content slate that exuded what the locally owned and operated media company does best: Breadth of Australian programming, talent and connection across sports, entertainment, drama, news and lifestyle. But secondly, it revealed the engine fuelling how it&rsquo;s taking all this to market in 2027 has been strategically recharged.
As Nine&rsquo;s chief executive officer, Matt Stanton, and chief sales officer, Matt James, told Mi3 in a podcast recorded in the immediate afterglow of the Upfronts event, Nine has become a very different media company in the last 12 months. Having tackled the heavy lifting on portfolio mix and strategy, it&rsquo;s putting forward a refreshingly firm, unified proposition that covers broadcast to streaming, publishing and digital-out-of-home.
Propelled by its most integrated owned and operated media offering to date, buoyed by the $850m acquisition of digital out-of-home player QMS, Nine is pitching a &lsquo;sofa to street&rsquo; cross-platform play for advertisers, supported by a single media planning and buying platform, Nine Neo. This go-to-market strategy is designed to bring cohesion to how brands trade and measure the effectiveness of what Nine has to offer. And it&rsquo;s backed by significant investment into unifying audience targeting and insights extending from screens into physical locations and commerce.
The upshot: Nine is pitching itself as a strong contender against big tech and the global streaming platforms, and the only Australian-owned, fully integrated media network that can connect brands to audiences across their entire day.
It&rsquo;s a crucial time to shore up this full-funnel, multi-channel proposition in market. Hundreds of millions of ad dollars have exited the linear and broadcast industry over recent years, reallocated to digital platforms and walled gardens. There&rsquo;s active debate right now around whether it&rsquo;s the responsibility of government, media buyers or brands to proactively back Australia&rsquo;s domestic media industry. Many agree supporting local-first content and journalism is crucial to societal cohesion and cultural connection.
But ultimately, media companies have to demonstrate they have the audiences, scale and solid returns on investment to win ad dollars. That&rsquo;s what Nine is backing itself to provide. Stanton pointed to the power of the State of Origin, Olympics and Married at First Sight in delivering cultural moments as his first proof point.
&ldquo;It's very important to have scale and diversity in this marketplace,&rdquo; Stanton continued. &ldquo;If you are a single platform &ndash; and it doesn't matter how big you are &ndash; it&rsquo;s very difficult to compete with some of the big global tech players because obviously, they have the investment of a whole global team versus a local team like ours. So it's really important to get these three business units &ndash; streaming and broadcast, publishing, and out-of-home &ndash; working closely together, but also in their own right as well. They have to stand on their own two feet is the way I think about it, but then they've also got to collaborate when they need to collaborate &hellip; That's the only way we are actually going to be able to compete with the big global players.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s very clear to me, and the portfolio changes we&rsquo;ve talked about are really significant. Now, it&rsquo;s about execution, and using these three big assets at the right time, either individually or cooperatively.&rdquo;
Then there&rsquo;s strength in fully owning and operating such assets. Nine has a &ldquo;powerful&rdquo; ability to unify and coordinate these all the way from content to data, technology, audience and cultural moment, said James. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big full-funnel proposition that enables us to start from brand to covering the breadth between awareness and transaction,&rdquo; he said.
&ldquo;This is also only going to work if you fundamentally have your strategic destiny in your own hands. This requires unified content delivery systems. It requires unified IDs around our 22 million audience base. And it needs all of the investments we are making in the technology to develop this the right way.
&ldquo;Everything we&rsquo;re developing comes with a long-term perspective, which I think is another one of our fundamental differences. I appreciate there are lots of partnerships going on in that [out-of-home] marketplace, but you can't make these kinds of investments and unify that in the way we're unifying our data, and even our content platforms across 9Now and Stan.&rdquo;
James additionally points to the heft of Nine&rsquo;s assets today as evidence it can deliver this to advertisers. &ldquo;They really do reach most of Australians, and anything we now do, we can develop from a long-term perspective, particularly as we embed outcomes-based reporting,&rdquo; he said.
Nine&rsquo;s commitment to longevity extends to the content it&rsquo;s investing in. Its recent NRL deal to 2034, along with a freshly minted seven-year EPL deal, are examples. Nine also has rights to the Olympics through to Brisbane 2032. Demand for these marquee events has never been bigger, James added.
&ldquo;We have properties such as The Block, MAFS [Married at First Sight], and news, which clearly anchors on consistency,&rdquo; Stanton said. &ldquo;Advertisers know what they are getting; it&rsquo;s very consistent, trusted and at the heart of Australian cultural moments.&rdquo;
Under Nine&rsquo;s cross-platform strategy, many loved content offerings are also now showing up across its broader asset base.
&ldquo;If you just put one bit of content on one bit of platform, it will not grow,&rdquo; Stanton commented. &ldquo;We now have the EPL and the rights on the streaming side on Stan, but we can put it onto Nine and 9Now as well. We can push it through the publishing business and outdoor as well &hellip; From an advertising point of view, when you can do that, it&rsquo;s very powerful.&rdquo;

Unpacking Nine’s ‘sofa to street’ proposition: How unmatched local scale and a cohesive cross-channel play will unlock commercial growth for Australian advertisers.

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/c33d4212-a867-461c-811c-b4cf00618f13/transcript

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing

There is a constant refrain in the marketing industry and it’s this: That many marketers are brilliant at what they do, but very few are brilliant at marketing the actual profession to the CEO, CFO, boards and executive peers.

Lying at the heart of this issue is marketing’s persistently problematic commercial nous and its all-too-commonly crippling ability to connect the dots on what it does to business strategy, growth and outcomes.

“It’s something that does frustrate me generally about marketing as a practice: The attribute would be the notion of commercial curiosity. By that I mean a deep commitment to really understanding the commercial contribution of marketing and how every interaction and activity contributes to the bottom line,” says Stuart Tucker, former Hourigan Partner, chief customer officer of Hipages and senior executive in brand, sponsorship and marketing at Commonwealth Bank, Aussie Home loans and Optus before that.

“Too often, marketers are guilty of not really knowing the flow of money and not really knowing how they contribute to that. And they use it as a bit of a bit of an excuse, saying no one really understands me at the boardroom or the CFO wants to cut my budget all the time. To nurture a genuine commercial curiosity would be one attribute I would encourage every marketing team to get stuck into.”

Per recent figures from an Australian Marketing Institute survey, 69 per cent of marketers admit they need better financial fluency and only 12 per cent feel confident interpreting financial data. In addition, only 35 per cent of marketers say they’re working regularly with the finance department.

This juxtaposition of what marketing does and commercial delivery is also a frustration point for Nicki Kenyon, one-time CMO of Visit Victoria. A former director of Nine Powered, APAC regional lead for Mastercard and business partner for Meta, Kenyon is now a chair and non-executive director for Big4 Holiday Parks and Australian Grand Prix and sits on the Fenwick Software board.

“It is the bugbear in my career and continues to be, and it would be simply this: Marketing needs to be linked to business outcomes, and be a driver of growth every single time,” she says. “Marketing for marketing's sake is just irresponsible and wrong. If there isn't a clear business goal, then why are we doing?”  

In this latest Mi3 podcast episode, these two rare individuals to have trodden the boards as practising marketers, as well as executives, advisors, educators and board members, explore why we’re still having to defend marketing’s role, budgets and strategy. They also reflect on the big shifts in marketing they’ve lived through that have made it both easier and harder to set and meet expectations of modern marketing effectiveness.

Both Tucker and Kenyon, for instance, urge marketing leaders to sidle up to their CFO tomorrow. “Work with, not against, the finance team. They can and will be your best friend,” said Kenyon. “We've got the tools, we've got the passion, we've got the vision. We can do everything a CFO wants and needs us to do. But instead of working with finance, we tend to work against finance because they're the ones that can cut us off.

“The number of times I've discovered the disconnect between a business strategy and a marketing strategy – it’s mind-numbing that those two things are not absolutely linked.”

Neither Tucker nor Kenyon has any time for the delineation between brand and performance marketing either. Tucker labels such distinction “absolute rubbish”.

“They work in concert, they work together. If your brand is good, your performance works harder. If your performance is good, your brand works harder,” he comments. “I saw it at Hipages: We saw a significant increase in brand metrics and a significant decrease on our reliance on performance.”

For Kenyon, the distinction made between brand and performance is commonly clouding effectiveness. “The depths of academia that dive into analysis and hypotheses and all the data on this stuff, particularly led by people who have never a day spent their lives in a practicing marketer's seat, is generating a lot of hype, it's generating a lot of conversation, and it's generating a lot of revenue for those companies that are specialising in attribution and metrics,” she argues.

“It's important, but it's a double-edged sword. Again, it comes back to what are we trying to achieve: What is the goal? The goal, for example, is not reach. Reach is a media buying tool. It is not in and of itself a goal. So naming what the goals are, then defining what the metrics are to measure the effectiveness of what you're doing in pursuit of business goal is the crux of it.”

All this and a lot more wisdom through the mics – tune into the latest Mi3 podcast here. 

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor &ndash; Marketing
There is a constant refrain in the marketing industry and it&rsquo;s this: That many marketers are brilliant at what they do, but very few are brilliant at marketing the actual profession to the CEO, CFO, boards and executive peers.
Lying at the heart of this issue is marketing&rsquo;s persistently problematic commercial nous and its all-too-commonly crippling ability to connect the dots on what it does to business strategy, growth and outcomes.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s something that does frustrate me generally about marketing as a practice: The attribute would be the notion of commercial curiosity. By that I mean a deep commitment to really understanding the commercial contribution of marketing and how every interaction and activity contributes to the bottom line,&rdquo; says Stuart Tucker, former Hourigan Partner, chief customer officer of Hipages and senior executive in brand, sponsorship and marketing at Commonwealth Bank, Aussie Home loans and Optus before that.
&ldquo;Too often, marketers are guilty of not really knowing the flow of money and not really knowing how they contribute to that. And they use it as a bit of a bit of an excuse, saying no one really understands me at the boardroom or the CFO wants to cut my budget all the time. To nurture a genuine commercial curiosity would be one attribute I would encourage every marketing team to get stuck into.&rdquo;
Per recent figures from an Australian Marketing Institute survey, 69 per cent of marketers admit they need better financial fluency and only 12 per cent feel confident interpreting financial data. In addition, only 35 per cent of marketers say they&rsquo;re working regularly with the finance department.
This juxtaposition of what marketing does and commercial delivery is also a frustration point for Nicki Kenyon, one-time CMO of Visit Victoria. A former director of Nine Powered, APAC regional lead for Mastercard and business partner for Meta, Kenyon is now a chair and non-executive director for Big4 Holiday Parks and Australian Grand Prix and sits on the Fenwick Software board.
&ldquo;It is the bugbear in my career and continues to be, and it would be simply this: Marketing needs to be linked to business outcomes, and be a driver of growth every single time,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Marketing for marketing's sake is just irresponsible and wrong. If there isn't a clear business goal, then why are we doing?&rdquo; &nbsp;
In this latest Mi3 podcast episode, these two rare individuals to have trodden the boards as practising marketers, as well as executives, advisors, educators and board members, explore why we&rsquo;re still having to defend marketing&rsquo;s role, budgets and strategy. They also reflect on the big shifts in marketing they&rsquo;ve lived through that have made it both easier and harder to set and meet expectations of modern marketing effectiveness.
Both Tucker and Kenyon, for instance, urge marketing leaders to sidle up to their CFO tomorrow. &ldquo;Work with, not against, the finance team. They can and will be your best friend,&rdquo; said Kenyon. &ldquo;We've got the tools, we've got the passion, we've got the vision. We can do everything a CFO wants and needs us to do. But instead of working with finance, we tend to work against finance because they're the ones that can cut us off.
&ldquo;The number of times I've discovered the disconnect between a business strategy and a marketing strategy &ndash; it&rsquo;s mind-numbing that those two things are not absolutely linked.&rdquo;
Neither Tucker nor Kenyon has any time for the delineation between brand and performance marketing either. Tucker labels such distinction &ldquo;absolute rubbish&rdquo;.
&ldquo;They work in concert, they work together. If your brand is good, your performance works harder. If your performance is good, your brand works harder,&rdquo; he comments. &ldquo;I saw it at Hipages: We saw a significant increase in brand metrics and a significant decrease on our reliance on performance.&rdquo;
For Kenyon, the distinction made between brand and performance is commonly clouding effectiveness. &ldquo;The depths of academia that dive into analysis and hypotheses and all the data on this stuff, particularly led by people who have never a day spent their lives in a practicing marketer's seat, is generating a lot of hype, it's generating a lot of conversation, and it's generating a lot of revenue for those companies that are specialising in attribution and metrics,&rdquo; she argues.
&ldquo;It's important, but it's a double-edged sword. Again, it comes back to what are we trying to achieve: What is the goal? The goal, for example, is not reach. Reach is a media buying tool. It is not in and of itself a goal. So naming what the goals are, then defining what the metrics are to measure the effectiveness of what you're doing in pursuit of business goal is the crux of it.&rdquo;
All this and a lot more wisdom through the mics &ndash; tune into the latest Mi3 podcast here.

“Marketing for marketing’s sake is just irresponsible and wrong”: Former CMOs, advisors and board leaders, Stuart Tucker and Nicki Kenyon, on what it really takes to win hearts and minds in the c-suite

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/clips/8facfed5-2cd1-4a13-bbb3-b4cc017eb235/transcript

The CMO Awards Podcast Episode 9: Fountains of knowledge: CMOs on the power of mid-profession learning

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