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Tradie marketplace Hipages, which competes in a $50bn subsegment of the $131bn trade services market, has reached an inflection point, and is now spending circa $9-10m a year developing CRM and ERP-like services for its core audience of tradespeople. In 2025, it will begin development of new capabilities for homeowners as well. It's all part of a plan to grow profitability and market share in the notoriously fragmented tradie ecosystem. On the marketing front, Hipages is back for a sixth year sponsoring Nine's The Block, and it has also taken a Platinum sponsorship of rival Seven's Dream Home, due for launch mid-year.

An eclectic group of business founders and c-suite execs gathered in Nine’s Sydney HQ recently as part of the Compadres business mentoring initiative created by former agency boss and founding partner of poverty non-profit, Global Citizen, Clive Burcham. The lure was a dazzling macro view on geo-politics, AI, retail, marketing, advertising and media and entertainment from a career marketer, John Batistich, who now sits or advises nine company boards from Zip Co and FoodCo to Ksubi International and the $1bn Australian toy company “you’ve never heard of”, Moose Toys.     

Brand tracking disruptor Tracksuit is getting a tailwind from the big tech platforms now pushing it to their advertisers as they seek credit – and brand dollars – outside of performance marketing budgets. After showing how brand awareness powers sales on Amazon, co-founder Connor Archbold is plotting further partnerships and bidding to join the dots between brand, channel choice and ultimately sales. If those “big bets” come off it could mean even faster growth – and pay dirt for a growing pack of big name investors.

Growing complexity of the CMO role and the realisation of the dream of having a seat at the boardroom table has brought with it a growing remit and demanding role that requires ever-more support. It’s also generating plenty of burnout and skills gaps. Enter Tumbleturn’s new fractional CMO service, capitalising on an increasingly popular construct and resource modelling approach with a specific focus on providing a 2IC to existing CMOs or a strategically-minded marketing resource to cash-strapped CEOs and executive teams.

Karen Ganschow has spent her career trying to identify customer problems then addressing them in product propositions, engagement, experiences and services. As the former customer marketing leader and first head of data sciences at Aware Super hangs up her full-time hat, she speaks to Mi3 about the urban myths around digital experiences and customer behaviours, how technology and machine learning have brought the cost of a 360-degree, data-driven customer view – and actionable capability – down by millions, and why she’s still worried marketers are seen as the colouring-in department.

Paramount+ is officially in market with an ad-funded streaming play but is keeping numbers tight. Initially audiences will be low, because it's eschewing the Amazon Prime-Binge approach and building from scratch instead of rolling over streamers unless they pay more for no ads. It's also selling streaming ads as a bundle across the broader businesses, though sales chief Rod Prosser said standalone programmatic buys will follow "this year". Ad loads will be lower than rivals, per global global ad sales boss, Lee Sears, and he claimed that what its rivals are lacking – sales tech and infrastructure – will provide competitive advantage alongside content ownership and local variants of global integration opportunities. On measurement, Prosser's not wedded to OzTam alone.

Social media is set for a shakeup as TikTok parent ByteDance primes a new photo-sharing app to take on Instagram. Dubbed TikTok Notes, the app’s “imminent” launch has been all but confirmed by in-app notifications received by users, though the social media juggernaut has remained ambiguous on details. Forrester’s Mike Proulx says the move comes at a “precarious” time for TikTok, with Instagram Reels gaining ground on the app’s dominance in short-form video – all the while its future in the US market remains under threat by a proposed ban. As speculation about what the rollout might look like runs hot, Social Soup's Jess Hope reckons TikTok Notes is an engagement play – TikTok has the reach already, the one-way content flow on the flagship app has left an "engagement" gap that could be filled by lo-fi photo-based content. But will TikTok Notes pose any real threat to Instagram? Digivizer’s Emma Lo Russo thinks Meta's stronghold may prove too powerful. WARC Media's Alex Brownsell only sees Meta's ad "dominance" increasing.

Stuart Archibald was one of the early proponents of database marketing in the 1990s, forming part of the exec team that launched Tesco’s Club Card, ultimately helping Tesco topple Sainsbury’s #1 UK supermarket slot. But Archibald says hefty corporate tech and CX investments today are spluttering after deployment and most companies “have lost their basic human understanding of customers”.

Following on from its April 2023 merger with BT Super, Mercer Super has restructured its marketing and customer experience teams into a single team called Customer and Growth, and is embarking on a three-year overhaul of digital experiences for customers and advisors alike. A new mobile app is due in H2 this year for customers too, with an emphasis on delivering a better experience rather than new capabilities. That will come later in the project. Advisors will see improvements to their experiences early next year.