The myth of rationality in business decision-making; the hypocrisy of CEOs and boards paying billions to acquire brands only to squeeze marketing budgets; why digital supply chain ignorance costs marketers half their budget; CX and e-commerce overhauls; in-housing, outsourcing and hybrid models; deafening silence on social media ills; one or two Covid pivots; and why you should skip the futurist's session at your next conference, if they ever return. Mi3's most read marketing stories of 2020 distil the good, the bad and the innovative, corralling insight from some of marketing's top minds and practitioners across the issues that matter most. Here's to 2021...

Supercharged tech capabilities, e-commerce and digital transformation captured the lion's share of attention in Mi3's marketing and technology coverage. From global and local pressure to regulate data and privacy, to the end of third party cookies and the fundamental impacts of those changes on attribution and targeting, take this five-minute refresher on what stories garnered most clicks for Mi3 readers around martech, adtech and data in 2020. If nothing else, use this page as a handy bookmark for what's set to drive marketing and tech trends for 2021. Tomorrow we break down our biggest stories for marketers and marketing this year.  

Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland, renowned behavioural scientist and vape-toting macro brain, says marketers are leaving most of the money on the table by placing too much faith in 'rational' marketing strategies. He questions why the rational business people, e.g. accounts, always get to run the rule over creative ideas and never the other way around. Meanwhile, top marketers from CommBank, Xero and Simply Energy give big, emotional kudos to the brands that have helped them power through Covid. It's all in the series final of A Show Called Brandin'.

An industry-wide survey shows marketers and agencies are struggling with basic marketing and business maths formulae. We might be ok with ROI and NPV, but most of us are more WTF when it comes to AWOP and Negative Binomial Distribution. Brand Traction's Jon Bradshaw and VMLY&R Chief Strategy Officer, Ali Tilling, want to change all that in a bid to keep marketers at the top table, agencies at pace with consultancies and move the needle on growth through the right kind of creative accounting.

Marketers have got really good at selling to people who are already buying - less so at winning over new customers. Going narrow isn't really working, so brands seeking growth need to start working on tomorrow's customers now – and all that fuss over millennials is about to pay off big time. Hipages' Stu Tucker, Salesforce's Jo Gaines and The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride founder Mark Hawwa are joined by demographic expert Simon Kustenmacher in this week's episode of A Show Called Brandin'.

Capgemini’s takeover deal for listed Australian tech, CX, brand, data and design group RXP buys it a firm generating about $120m from specialist expertise across Salesforce, Microsoft and ServiceNow. It also brings into the fold The Works, the Sydney-based agency RXP acquired in 2018 for circa $33m. Is Australia witnessing the emergence of another Deloitte Digital or Accenture Interactive, and have agency holding groups missed a trick by not getting in there first? Capgemini ANZ CEO Olaf Pietschner and RXP CEO Ross Fielding outline what’s next.

DDB's Leif Stromnes says brands have a duty to rebuild Australia post-Covid - and the smart ones are already investing in community initiatives. Koala CMO Peter Sloterdyk agrees. The firm will create 120 Australian jobs in 2021 and go large on brand investment, though not at the expense of short-term tactics. The two say striking the right balance between value and brand values will be critical in the year ahead. Nine's Liana Dubois is onboard with all of that. She outlines how to best combine brand and performance – and where it can all go wrong – in the final instalment of our Fourcast series.

Marketers are obsessed with metrics. Yet nine in ten are flubbing ROI measurement, at least in the B2B world. Meanwhile, balancing brand spend versus performance marketing is getting harder post-Covid, and brands risk becoming blands, according to Net-a-Porter cofounder Megan Quinn and Spark Foundry CEO, Imogen Hewitt. But that doesn't apply to subscription-based toilet paper, the hot product in Deloitte CMO Rochelle Tognetti's life, while Volvo CMO Julie Hutchinson has a moment of revelation. It's all in this week's episode of A Show Called Brandin'...

Budget Direct is the fastest growing insurer in Australia - is it product, customer experience or marketing and comms that’s driving the growth? CMO Jonathan Kerr unpacks the answer and lobs a jibe at “transformation programs” - Budget Direct has never done one. Kerr is joined by the Head of Innovation at the rebranded Aware Super, Anita Ayres, NRMA’s Digital and Data lead Harris Hutkin and CX Lavender's Damian Sharpley who get real on the customer roadmap.