The first detailed attention data from a major media group is out with Nine releasing findings of its attention study with Professor Karen Nelson-Field’s Amplified Intelligence. It's all in the chart below but for a 30-second spot on linear television, the average person pays just 11 seconds of “Active Attention”, or 37 per cent of the ad. BVOD on connected TVs and mobile phones score higher on active attention but when added to “Passive Attention”, linear television vastly outperforms most of its rivals, say Nine’s Liana Dubois and Jonathan Fox. So what to do with this conundrum? Hatched Media's Head of Planning, Andrew Pascoe, who has gone all in on attention, says the opportunity is nuanced but massive. To boot, "attention CPMs", currently being used by many agency groups, are deeply troubled, the trio warn.     

From flipping the marketing funnel sideways to scotching “delusions” that retention and loyalty trump acquisition – and a new performance-enhancing twist on Binet & Field’s 60:40 brand to performance rule (it should be 95:5 in B2B) – the science unpacked in How B2B Brands Grow also applies in large part to B2C marketing, says its Ehrenberg-Bass co-author, Jenni Romaniuk. Jon Lombardo, Global Research Lead at The B2B Institute hopes the science emboldens brands to stop making “drab and dull” performance ads and stop worrying about offending customers. The truth, he says, is few people care about brands at all: “It’s all upside. The job is always to build mental availability.” LinkedIn’s ANZ and SEA Enterprise boss Prue Cox says the likes of Westpac and DocuSign are nailing it. 

Former McDonald’s CMO Jenni Dill joined the old but iconic Arnott’s in the same role 18 months ago after US private equity firm KKR paid $3.2 billion for the business from Campbell's. Rather than stripping out costs in pursuit of rapid profit, the new owners are investing to build Arnott’s return as a contemporary Australian iconic brand. The growth plans are ambitious and, in the case of a sell-out of Tim Tam perfume, unconventional – but this year will see Dill and her team put the foot down and accelerate an all new Arnott’s. A booming retailer media sector, by the way, is promising for Arnott’s growth but Dill remains pragmatic on its potential. For now, it’s sitting at circa 10 per cent of the biscuit maker’s budget. 

Influence, influencers, the creator economy and ‘systems thinking’…standby for some new buzzwords: people-based influence and privacy-friendly zero party data are on the rise. The global influencer market is set to top $16bn this year but the influence industry is still unhinged, poorly managed and urgently needs integrated measurement to help marketing understand business impact. And for different reasons corporate strategy, market research and agency strategy planning are facing structural overhauls that a new venture, The Influence Group, is banking its model on. Here’s why.

$6.5bn fund manager Australian Ethical, Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s, Lion’s Stone & Wood, Four Pines, Koala, The Body Shop and Danone ANZ are all Bcorps – and are all laser-focused on the sustainability and purpose credentials of those they do business with. That includes media owners and agencies. A new media carbon calculator developed by Benedictus Media sister company Net Zero Media – launching ahead of those being touted by the likes of GroupM – will give brands the means to see which media channels will deliver lowest carbon footprint. Bosses of Australia’s three certified Bcorp indie agencies, Benedictus, Alchemy One and Optimising, say those clients can then re-weight spend – and may even make shorter ads – in a bid to lessen environmental impact. They think it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

With the largest social media following in the world as a tourism destination – 17 million – an international advertising blitz in the wings and the expansion offshore of a new customer experience (CX) and post-cookie ID platform trial, Tourism Australia’s CMO Susan Coghill and team are taking on a billion dollar fight. How do you attract tourists when just about every government in the world is throwing the kitchen sink at kickstarting decimated tourist economies? And travellers are eschewing long-haul flights? TA has a potential head start on first party data-driven CX designed to pass muster in a post-privacy, post-cookie world, but it’s got to build and convert intent first. There’s $60bn at stake for the Australian economy, and hundreds of thousands of livelihoods in every state counting on Tourism Australia to pull every lever at its disposal – but the early indications are positive. CMO Susan Coghill unpacks the roadmap.

GroupM’s new CEO Aimee Buchanan spent ten years at OMD, trading on transparency and throwing stones at the approaches taken by GroupM and other bitter rivals. New Essence CEO Pat Crowley was the ultimate under-the-radar operator while leading Ikon’s CommBank account for 17 years. Now he says grown-up kids mean it’s time to step up to steer Essence through the "turbulence" of a triple whammy agency merger. The two are pushing for greater transparency, autonomy versus group trading deals, and say diversity of media planning and decarbonisation of supply chains are coming into view fast for the Australian market. Buchanan says she will reveal the first part of the master plan to staff within two weeks, and says programmatic carbon counters will be in market within six months. Meanwhile, in overhauling Group M, Buchanan says she even has license to make changes at the expense of profit targets, though she’s not made a habit of missing them.

It used to be that P&G and Unilever would almost guarantee a long and possibly illustrious marketing career as the gold standard for applied marketing after university. P&G, in particular, was currency on any CV. So perhaps no surprise ANZ CMO Sweta Mehra – who joined the bank from P&G – has overseen a multi-million dollar investment to develop an in-housed capability program for 300 of her marketers. Mehra wants them match fit for an up-ended marketing world in five years, not floating in their own bubble with narrow, outdated skillsets. But building those smarts involves deep thinking about what skills are needed and ANZ’s program lead, Kate Young, says empathy, creativity and storytelling will be crucial as AI replaces campaign managers and the rest.

Men are scared and lost in the push for gender equality – they don’t even know if it’s okay to hold the door open any more. As a result, the men are disengaging, progress is stuttering and the women are worried. Hence a month ahead of International Women’s Day, an alliance of Australian publishers and agencies are calling on men to “be the change-makers”, otherwise women are “just talking to themselves” as would-be allies muzzle themselves for fear of saying the wrong thing. 10 ViacomCBS sales boss Rod Prosser is on board; Impact.com APAC MD Adam Furness openly admits to getting things wrong in the past – costing him his job at Southern Cross Austereo – and says forty-something white men like him “are the problem” and need to become part of the solution. Now Fck The Cupcakes wants more men – and brands – to do the right thing, and are holding the door open for blokes to enter the room.