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It’s perhaps one of the boldest moves to date in the stampede to unravel how brands marketing and CX teams can use AI to do more, better, cheaper. Except Endeavour Group’s marketing team didn’t just want cost-out and efficiencies – they wanted better, more effective work at massive scale for 5.5 million Dan Murphy’s loyalty members and millions of liquor brand portfolio customers beyond. To do it, the AI investment that collapsed process, time, cost and its in-house Creative Studio would be reinvested in smarter people – 20 per cent of head count now is on traditional production and creative execution skillsets, down from about 90 per cent in its Creative Studio. The rest has gone upstream to strategists, technologists and creative thinkers to look at the “business problems we’re trying to solve,” says Kate Dally, Endeavour’s General manager for brand creative and operations. Likewise Endeavour CMO Jo Rose: “We might be putting 40,000 assets out … but maybe we should only be putting four out. We [didn’t] have the right thinking in the front end to make sure that what we're actually creating is the right thing to be creating.”

Tabcorp has followed up 200 fresh job cuts, one-quarter of which have hit its customer division, with the exit of chief customer officer, Jenni Barnett, along with CIO, Alan Sharvin. In their place comes a new executive structure introducing a chief wagering officer position with marketing and product oversight but even closer ties to wagering revenue, plus a chief commercial and media officer role assumed by former Paramount ANZ and Network Ten regional leader, Jarrod Villani. The redundancies are the latest marker of job cuts sweeping media companies, agencies and brands – some overt, others by stealth. The economy may be on the turn but some think slow growth and cost cutting due to sustained business model pressure may be "the new normal". 

An Australian publisher class action against Google’s alleged nefarious and anti-competitive practices to squash the publishing industry is being led by one of Australia’s top silks in competition and commercial law, John Sheahan. The widely regarded barrister is also representing Coles in its case defending ACCC allegations that the two big supermarket chains engaged in deceptive pricing conduct, including Coles “Down Down” marketing. Sheahan is also a member of the Takeovers Panel which is under the remit of the Federal Treasurer.

Selling marketing’s worth while avoiding selling success every time, along with how to work with boards now obsessed by risk, were key imperatives marketing leaders from Guzman y Gomez and Uber, along with one non-executive director, tackled on a panel at the launch of the CMO Awards, powered by Mi3. In a discussion that reflected the very nature of elevating marketing’s stature in business and its role in powering growth, the trio were quick to agree challenge is the mother of opportunity if you’re able to reframe macro-economic conditions – and trust your gut as well as data some of the time.

Last weekend Netflix’s #2 trending title in Australia underlined just how good marketing and product teams in fashion, FMCG and consumer tech have got at triggering desire to the extent executives who worked for – and ran – some of the biggest names in consumer goods and ecommerce globally now say convenient consumption brought about by the ecom revolution is producing such an increase in waste it's choking countries designated for dumped re-use and recycling – literally. Company presidents, top marketers, UX designers and even Unilever’s former CEO outline the impact of industry mastering the science of consumption for growth strategies that have already busted the thresholds for planetary trash. It's a perplexing conundrum going mainstream if the popularity of the Netflix film is any signal.

Gaming advertising in Australia overtook news media's ad revenues for the first time this year. By 2028, PwC reckons it will climb north of $2bn. But that includes in-game product placement, not the traditional digital ad market – which agency execs say locally is lagging the $70bn global market, despite circa 80 per cent of Australian adults engaging with games in some form. It's a massive, high attention medium that dollar for dollar can yield bumper results, per latest attention studies – but the need for a clearer identity in gaming advertising is becoming critical. Is it a channel, an audience, or an environment? Time for marketers to rethink their strategies say execs from Havas, RGA, iion and Amplified Intelligence.

Last year, Apple made an iOS update that podcast businesses hadn't seem coming – and as a result downloads globally plummeted 15 per cent. For some, the impact was massive, with The Kyle & Jackie O Show losing 48 per cent. Cue commercial scrambling. With the dust now settled, industry execs reckon the new numbers are more transparent and have downweighted downloads – which can be misleading – as a core commercial metric. What's more, podcast revenue is strongly climbing locally. Acast's Henrik Isaksson, LiSTNR's Grant Tothill, and Nova's Nicole Bence unpack what happened when the numbers dropped, how things have panned out – and what's next.

The AI driven marketing landscape is a big messy, complex ecosystem of disparate technologies all at different points along the technology landscape according to Scott Brinker and Frans Rierersma in their Martech 2025. But irrespective of that, CMOs should expect it to cause significant real-world changes during 2025. Some of the biggest changes are predicted to emerge in areas such content marketing, sales automation and chatbots, which currently dominate early AI use cases. All of this is creating a new headache for CMOs - modern martech stacks connected in a fragile point-to-point fashion to serve specific use cases, according to the report: "We only connect them to customer data in the late stages of campaigns or customer experiences to deliver limited personalisation."

Every customer interaction counts, and brands need to bring their best game in an era when consumers always expect more, says Jamie Domenici, CMO of Klaviyo. She argues modern marketers need to navigate the complex web of touchpoints, from pre-sale to post-sale, to foster loyalty and drive profitability. Speaking with Mi3 recently she showcased the experiences of brands such as Rhianna's Fenty Beauty, and July Luggage successfully, which capitalised on unexpected surges in brand demand, showcasing the need for seamless connectivity between top of the funnel and the systems and processes that have to deal with occasionally dramatic spikes in demand.