Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large

Gary ‘Vee’ Vaynerchuk says his pithy pro-social media views to circa 50 million followers are far more nuanced than the vast volumes of “Jersey boy competitive” social media sound bites let on.

Is two seconds of social media attention enough to work for a brand? No - he agrees with Amplified Intelligence founder Karen Nelson-Field, with a couple of caveats, of course. “Every brand listening right now can waste $10m on social media in five seconds,” he says on this week’s particularly fast-paced Mi3 Audio Edition. “I would buy unlimited television ads in Australia tomorrow, not the Super Bowl. You know what my problem is? I want to pay 20 cents in the dollar that the market is charging because I think that’s the actual value of the actual reach I’m getting, not the potential reach…”

The founder of New York-based VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, Vaynerchuk has more than 2000 staff plotted across the globe and a monstrous social media following built on sharp takedowns on everything and anything linked to legacy media and classic marketing theory and practice.

Equally, Vaynerchuk says there’s a fair chance he’ll be using the same mincer on social media in possibly five years. “When the attention veers away from social networks on mobile devices, which it will at some point, I will be the first person to make fun of people overspending on social media, including myself if I’m still doing it,” he says. “I'm aware that I love the Super Bowl ad, which is a classic ad. And I'm aware that in your setup that I that I do struggle with a programmatic ad, classic television spots, things of that nature. Let me break this down because it's a very smart audience that listens to your show.”

As much as 45 minutes will allow, Vaynerchuk darts rapidly across themes but gets some way into the weeds on industry debate around:

• media and advertising’s long and short impacts for building brands
• attention and attribution metrics
• how blockchains will emerge as authenticity ledgers in the age of AI deep fakes
• why blue-chip companies have to be spending 20 per cent of their entire marketing budget on organic social production now - not media budgets to underwrite largely ineffective creative campaigns that don’t resonate with the public

Take a listen to Gary Vee riffing at marketing’s deep end.

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Redundancy is rife across the marketing and agency ecosystem right now. And whether you have an inkling your job could be on the line, as Liana Dubois did when management consultants entered the Nine building, or it's a complete shock – such as Josh Slighting experienced when he left a growing REA Group, or Katie Dally felt after surviving a first round of cuts at Endeavour Group only to be hit in the second set – it often triggers a professional and personal crisis of confidence and identity. Even experienced marketer Amy De Groot, who’s been made redundant twice, nearly 20 years apart, still felt the shock, upset and grief of this occupational hazard.

It’s hard to get a precise handle on the exact volume of redundancies, but cuts can be found in every pocket of the industry. A clue is in the Advertising Council of Australia’s 2025 Salary Survey, which revealed a redundancy rate of 11%, compared to the usual range of 5–7%, in the 12 months to 31 March 2025.

More overtly, Omnicom’s global CEO last week said 4000 jobs are likely to be shed by end of the year as the merged Omnicom-IPG structure is bolted into place. Up to 120 people are also being made redundant as Menulog shuts up shop in Australia. Endeavour Group is another that made marketing, experience, digital and CX redundancies this year. Dentsu flagged 8% global headcount reduction in Q2. Nine, Seven, News Corp have made hundreds of cuts. The Australian HR Institute quarterly outlook for September 25 shows redundancies are on the rise, with 27 per cent of employers planning cuts, up 3 percentage points since the June 2025 quarter.

Those are the numbers and an attempt at hard facts. But the reality is there are a bunch of marketing and advertising industry colleagues having the cope with the fallout and impact of being made redundant.

In Mi3’s latest podcast, we’re focusing on exploring the impact of the redundancy crisis through the lens of four senior marketers who have been there: Former Nine group CMO, Liana Dubois; former REA Group media lead, Josh Slighting, former Endeavour Group GM of brand, creative and operations, Katie Dally, and former Cars24 head of brand marketing, Amy de Groot.

In this very personal conversation, we humanise the experience of being made redundant to help others out there that have, or are experiencing, the repercussions of redundancy directly and indirectly. We also explore the lateral career paths that have opened up for our guests, as we share learnings and advice on how we can all make more progressive career choices.

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Marketing effectiveness: How we all strive to achieve it. In today’s episode, two very distinctive takes on successful work, from the verticals and business objectives in play, to audience targeting, messaging and channels used – traditional media through to gaming streaming – are in the spotlight. And both landed their brand leaders and agencies coveted Gold Effies at this year’s Advertising Council Australia Awards.

Scoring two Gold gongs was Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and Clemenger BBDO for ‘Lifeblood Blood Supply: How a media first, elevated blood donation into a national news story, saving up to 28,848 lives’ . The pair leveraged a well-established idea – the emergency warning system and media ticker – plus a partnership with the Seven Network to create a mechanism showing the blood supply in a real-time way via the nightly news bulletin, with state-based tailoring, supported through TVCs, integrations with AFL broadcasts and ambassadors and digital capabilities. Lifeblood CMO, Jeremy Weiss says the “behaviour changing” campaign led to a 120% boost in blood donation appointments, along with new donor registrations signing up, were tentpole results. As each new donor saves up to three lives with their first donation, they more than quadrupled the number of intended lives saved.

In contrast, Nestle Australia and VML Australia were honoured with their Gold Effie for their work on extending the iconic ‘Have a break, have a Kitkat’ creative platform into the edgier, decidedly younger media platform, Twitch and streaming. The aim of the ‘Break Chair’ was to connect with Gen Zers aged 18-27, 80% of which engage in gaming – many doing it often. Forging that sense of connection, emotion and engagement on the consumer’s terms played a big part here. The “boundary pushing” mix of tapping influencers, livestreaming, a killer consumer insight on needing regular breaks, and an already distinctive creative platform further compounded impact and results including brand and penetration gains to sales lift, says Nestle head of marketing confectionery, Shannon Wright.

Joined by Alison Tilling, chief strategy officer, VML Australia, and Frank Curcio, national head of product, Clemenger BBDO, our guests unpack their work and the surprising similarities behind their distinctively different but seriously impactful work.

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