Australian brand marketers and their UK counterparts came up with very different views on where they see their biggest challenges, according to a study by QMS that was aligned to research by Ocean Outdoor UK. Marketers from the UK cited attention as their key challenge, while Australian marketers flagged sustainable growth and unified measurement.

When it came to top marketing investment priorities, the top two criteria for both markets were the same things. Number one: reach. Number two: ROI. But they diverged on the third, which for the UK was cost (CPM), whereas for Australian marketers it was attention.

“So the question [for Australian marketers] is not ‘how much?’ but ‘how well?’, per global advisor to QMS and ad industry veteran, Anne Parsons. “It's a real shift that says that Australian brand marketers are thinking about effectiveness much more than they're thinking about efficiency.”

She says that chimes with peer-reviewed research by Oxford University Professor Felipe Thomaz that found optimising media for reach alone no longer works because all reach is not equal – and used bluntly won't deliver business outcomes. “It's attentive reach, the quality of the reach,” that matters, per Parsons.

Netflix ANZ marketing boss Tony Broderick is 100 per cent aligned.

“As a business, the only metric that really counts is revenue. But the one that marketing is chiefly tasked with is to drive outsized conversation – and reach for the sake of reach won't generate conversation. You need to capture attention. You need to build creative that stops someone scrolling through a feed – phone stopping content,” he says.

“We make great stories … our job is to create the conversation around it. If we do that, we're supporting acquisition, retention, engagement. We have an ad service – engagement drives that as well.”

He says Netflix analyses what people are watching, the conversations about it (Netflix has a billion social media followers globally) and then aims to rapidly launch campaigns based on those insights. “How can we bring those proof points in and get it live within digital out of home, targeted at the right people, a couple of days later? That's something we now do each and every week, working with partners like QMS.”

While Australian marketers flagged cross-media measurement as their biggest challenge, Broderick thinks focusing too hard on measurement creates its own problems.

“A big challenge and an ongoing discussion I have with my team, with my agencies, is ensuring that we try to pursue a plan that is best versus what's easiest to measure. What I'm most focused on is really just the right set of signals, rather than the absolute best report card for every campaign,” says Broderick.

“If you're just following what has always delivered the best results in the past, you're naturally steering away from innovation as well.”

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New ARN CEO, Michael Stephenson, has been unusually quiet for much of the year. After this week’s upfronts, we now know why. Stephenson has been rapidly redesigning ARN from an audio operator to a fully-fledged entertainment company.

ARN unveiled a dozen big new content and commercial initiatives on Wednesday, and at the centre of Stephenson’s blueprint for ARN 3.0 is the iHeart digital platform. ARN has the APAC rights to iHeart, which, in its US home market, has 188 million users. In Australia, it's 3 million on the platform and 7 million when syndicated.

One of the announcements this week was Ruby, iHeart’s branded content studio, which produces 30-minute podcasts for brands.

“It’s a simple model: We will produce your podcast, for free, and we will distribute, amplify and monetise it for you. All we need from you is an upfront commitment in advertising dollars to co-promote your own product, to drive audience to your destination,” says Stephenson.

Ruby has been a massive success in the US: “Many of the podcasts [iHeart has] produced, actually are in the top 10 per cent of downloads of podcasts within the US across the board,” per ARN’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Ben Campbell, “and that's branded content.”

The barrage of new initiatives includes a move into video, new TV-style tentpole entertainment programming like Kissed at Sea and Save Our Pub. The latter involves finding and rescuing a rundown pub, bringing back the schnitty, live music and giving it national prominence post-reno. It's also pushing into live events, like Run Club Rave, “with global DJs playing in parks,” per Stephenson. “Nightclubs are out. Mornings are in”. Across all of that, the content will include audio, video and will run on TikTok as part of a beefed-up, integrated brand platform with the social juggernaut.

Campbell, meanwhile, has also supercharged ARN’s ad tech and data credentials – deals with Westpac DataX, Experian for targeting and LiveRamp on clean rooms were part of the upfront show this week. As were launching a women's sports network, a podcast deal with Are Media and its portfolio of women's brands, not to mention the complete overhaul of the radio network into two national Metro brands, KIISS and Gold.

Stephenson hopes the move will make them easier to buy for national advertisers – and plans to use the revenue upside to keep funding the reinvention.

He’s got an even busier 12 months ahead. Here’s the plan.

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Atomic 212°’s Chief Strategy Officer, Asier Carazo and Bupa's GM of Marketing, Naomi Driver once shared a common fear that permeates much of the industry: How does a brand advance the cause for the 20 per cent of Australians with a disability – without being unintentionally tokenistic or offensive?

Driver says those concerns often stop her marketing peers from doing anything – she would know given it was also once her experience. Driver shares some personal anecdotes that are funny now but mortifying at the time: She once told Mike Rolls, who lives with a double amputation, she liked “keeping people on their toes … then realised I’d put my foot in my mouth”.

Rolls “is a mate” and enjoyed making her feel uncomfortable for a few seconds. But Driver said it made her think even harder about the language used across Bupa’s creative and digital assets – and Bupa's Paralympics program around last year's event (with ads featuring Rolls, who’s humour helped shape the script) is a benchmark for what brands can and should do, according to Inclusively Made’s CEO, Paul Nunnari.

Like Driver, Asier Carazo’s fears have also flipped. He cites Atomic 212° colleague, Senior Account Exec Angus McLeod as an advocate for the missing piece in media industry planning. McLeod lost his hearing after an accident and often experiences media that hasn’t taken into account people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

“Working side by side with Angus is just understanding the reality of millions of Australians,” says Carazo. “Twenty per cent of Australians live with some form of disability. Are we even thinking about them when we put forward the media plan? Are we challenging publishers to include accessibility features on the ads? Are we challenging creative agencies to think about accessibility as a forethought, not as an afterthought?”

Roy Morgan, the go-to source for media pros, started reporting on Australians living with disability within its database in the last quarter. That’s a win, adds Carazo, “but what I would love to see is greater genuine curiosity around understanding the reality of this country … As marketers, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on research and testing, but then you're not allocating any money to understanding how your audiences are able to consume media.”

Inclusively Made has a framework for brands that do want to make inclusivity BAU. The key: “Don't let perfection get in the way of progress … just get the ball rolling,” says CEO Paul Nunnari. “It's not always going to be perfect, but at least having the conversation, seeing what are those low hanging fruits that can be achieved with minimal risk outputs is a really good place to start.”

While Bupa’s Paralympics approach is the benchmark, per Nunnari, it can be as simple as having a wheelchair user in the background of an ad, having a coffee with a mate. “It doesn’t need to be highlighted, it doesn’t need to be inspirational. It’s just two blokes getting together having a coffee, right? It's the norm.”

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