Top Australian marketers from Honda to Asahi, Kia, Freedom, TPG and Lendi took the stage recently at the Mutinex Marketers & Money forum – joined by the newly-enthused virtual marketing professor Mark Ritson who declared his "very shallow interpretation" of econometrics and Market Mix Modelling (MMM).
Ritson quickly flipped his position after a boots-and-all deployment for his globally expanding Mini-MBA program.
A prominent theme among delegates was that marketing and measurement is at a critical juncture - Mutinex CEO Henry Innis said there was "uncomfortable truth" from 2008 to 2020 that "we let measurement shrink the ambition of the entire marketing industry".
Companies and brands, he says, must now decide between independent, impartial measurement capturing the causality of marketing's commercial impact - or the inherent self-preferencing risk of platform attribution data and dashboards - and now free or subsidised in-house MMM models.
Still, the next wave of MMM is coming and captured fully in this report along with lessons from marketing and growth teams in the real world about planning, managing and deploying MMMs.
Download the report inside this series for sharp MMM lessons from marketing teams at various stages of MMM maturity and the next wave of developments.
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Top Australian marketers from brands including Kia, Asahi, Honda, Freedom, Lendi and TPG disclosed their key strategic, commercial and operational learnings from MMM rollouts. Plus Mark Ritson reversed his "very narrow interpretation" of MMM, and more!
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“Marketing is a commercial function, and the best marketers are commercial marketers.” Marketers roll their eyes at stale suggestions; they learn the language of business. Instead of struggling with pidgin CFO-speak, Asahi Chief Growth Officer Brian Phan has a simple, actionable plan: Do the boring fundamentals, go broad, and follow the money.
"It was chaos in our business ... We hadn't properly planned for it. We were looking at [market mix modelling] as another marketing tool, but it's much bigger than that." Senior marketers from Honda, Aussie/Lendi and Freedom detail the highs – and lows – of implementing an MMM platform, what it’s delivering, and what they would do very differently in hindsight.
Mark Ritson, a former academic-provocateur in marketing at Wharton and Melbourne Business Schools, once described marketing’s use of econometric models as “a calamitous, moving bag of snakes.” But then he applied a market mix model (MMM) to his growth-hungry $20m MiniMBA business just in time for a rapid US expansion. His new view? “Seismic impact”. The business is now taking a vastly different approach to multimillion dollar media investment in the UK and Australia, and Ritson admits he was guilty of failing to practice what he preaches on media neutrality. He also found proof of what he had long suspected – Meta is not the high performing channel that some of his marketing team swore blind was delivering best bang for buck. Either way, he says the MMM impacts go way beyond media and deep into business strategy.
Top Australian marketers from Kia, Honda, Freedom, Lendi, TPG and others joined an enthusiastic Mark Ritson recently at the Mutinex Marketers & Money forum where they discussed their learnings, difficulties and the commercial impact of market mix modelling (MMM) programs.
Ritson, a former academic-provocateur in marketing at Wharton and Melbourne University Business Schools, once viewed econometrics in marketing as a “calamitous, moving bag of snakes”. After deploying Mutinex on his $20m MiniMBA business – in time for an ambitious US expansion – he’s turned on his “very shallow interpretation” of advanced MMM models.
Honda’s Head of Marketing, Terri Golder, was equally frank, acknowledging the automaker’s MMM deployment has thrown up some “confronting” data that’s challenging the organisation constructively - but not before a painful early deployment. “I’m probably the pin-up of what not to do, because it was chaos in our business,” she told delegates. “That was definitely my fault.”
Get the full download on the brand case studies, watchouts and MMM’s next innovation wave in the 30-page special report, Marketers, Money & Measurement: MMM's Next Wave from the links below.
