Mi3Australia

Chris Minns might be trying to get NSW public sector workers to return to the office, but don’t expect millennials who’ve migrated in droves to Australia’s regional areas for their forever homes to comply, says Bernard Salt. Even as unemployment figures inch up, and the cost-of-living crisis and softer economic climate give employers more power in the employer-to-employee dynamic, business, social and market commentator and speaker says millennials will “die before they submit to going back to the way things were”. During an exclusive interview with Mi3 off the back of Boomtown’s recent Sydney breakfast discussing the surprising spending power of Australia’s 9.8m regional consumers, Salt shared his insights – and a bunch of census and market data – on the high-income, lifestyle loving, remote working regional resident of 2024 and the opportunity they represent brands. Bernard Salt AM #WFH

Sentiment among publishers is swinging away from the Albanese government backing-up its assertive tone six months ago to take action against Meta and ‘designate’ the social platform after it announced it would not renew circa $75m in funding deals to media companies under laws introduced by the Coalition government in 2021.  Chris Janz Capital Brief

Part Two: After last week's instalment with S4 Capital's founder and former WPP boss, Sir Martin Sorrell – in which he explained why the market cap of his next generation marketing services firm had plummeted from £5 billion to £300 million in the past three years – he's back for part two. We cover the consolidation of the $700 billion global digital ad market down to a handful of global tech media players. Is that dangerous for brands and the broader marketing supply chain? Maybe, but Sir Martin thinks they're only going to get bigger. Plus, we go deeper into AI and mass personalisation – Netflix style – along with the dodgy, inaccurate, but thriving online user data trade that was revealed a month or so ago by UM's former chief privacy officer, Arielle Garcia (which is now Mi3’s top podcast and story so far this year). For the record, Sorrell agrees with Garcia: “Garbage in, garbage out ... There are some murky parts of the market, but that's our role to expose that, not to be a part of it.” Either way, he thinks the platforms will only get closer to marketers at the expense of intermediaries – and there is little agencies can do to stop it. Plus, he says OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who reckons AI will displace 95 per cent of advertising jobs, is “directionally right”. The timeframe? “Three years,” per Sorrell. “It’s going to be uncomfortable.” Conversely, Sorrell says the big platforms won’t be shrinking any time soon. On a GDP basis, “these are countries, they are not companies anymore.” He thinks that means regulation, unless co-ordinated globally, is ultimately powerless. S4 Capital Group S4S Ventures #AI

Last click flaws ‘wasting 35 cents on marketing dollar’, search, display massively overvalued – while social and video an enormous opportunity: Analytic Partners and Meta on how to fix it. #sponsored Meta Carl McLean Paul Sinkinson Analytic Partners

In 2021 Mediabrands CEO Mark Coad warned media agencies risked massive churn and despondent staff due to the sheer volume of dull, manual tasks they had to crunch through daily. So the firm started to build an automation platform in a bid to make bots handle 75 per cent of the overall media agency investment workflow. Since going live it’s slashed employee manual burn by 65,329 hours, says COO Geoff Clarke – and that’s just the start. Here’s what they did, and what the bots now do. IPG Mediabrands APAC IPG Mediabrands

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) is more than 18 months into a digital transformation that has radically streamlined the assessment of skilled technology migrants - a key role for the organisation that has managed the process for the Commonwealth Government for two decades, courtesy of two contracts that also contribute significantly to its revenues. The end result is applications are much more likely to have the assessment ready when they are submitted, and wait times for applicants have been cut from typically four to five months to two weeks. The association has also built a much more fraud-resistant process and eliminated a massive cyber honey pot into the bargain, as it no longer needs to hold sensitive passport data from new applicants on its systems. Richard Wiltshire ACS (Australian Computer Society) Harold Janson Helium

It’s had to revise projected unit sales figures down from 7,000 annually because of the economic climate, Australia’s competitive, nuanced automotive market and changing EV regulations, and it’s faced early challenges with product reliability globally and a digital sales process locally. But the team behind Volkswagen-owned Cupra are sticking to their ambitions of becoming a design and performance-led brand either loved or hated by consumers – never just liked. Cupra’s global brand chief, Ignacio Presto, EVP of sales and marketing, Sven Schuwirth, and Australian director, Ben Wilks, share the inspiration and story behind the latest car brand on the Australian block, how they’re balancing brand distinctiveness and design with local flavour, commercial setbacks thus far and the tribal community and performance play they’re executing to win over a nuanced set of younger-than-average car buyers who still enjoy driving, not being driven. SEAT S.A. Volkswagen Group Australia

Domino's Australia has a goal to become the dominant, sustainable delivery QSR in every market by 2030, according to CEO Don Meij. His track record after merging Silvio's Pizza into a thrice-failed Domino's brand over two decades ago, then building a global pizza success story, suggests he should be taken seriously. A data junkie – and apparently Domino's number one Power-BI power user, Meij also credits the company's shift to econometrics with helping to tame spending and attribution complexity in the increasingly fragmented media market. He says risk-taking and the ability to move quickly drive success – as does recognising Domino's strengths in product innovation and delivery. And for the record, he strongly recommends the Crispy Pepperoni with Jalapenos. "That's my go-to." Domino's Pizza Enterprises Limited

Telstra CMO Brent Smart says going all-in on brand building and spending big on creative isn't about "awards or ego", but because it's the safest commercial choice. Marketers making over-researched vanilla ads are "the brave" ones, because Australia's big brands all look the same, have little distinctiveness and nobody will notice them. So they won't grow and those marketers "will get sacked". Bin creative pre-testing because consumers "talk bullshit" in those scenarios, Smart advises, and start building your own brand metrics, with marketing science fundamentals at the core, that can be correlated to growth, base sales and incremental improvement. Marketing mix modelling can help – and can turn a $10m budget cut into a $10m budget boost, per Smart. But it won't solve the fundamental issue most brands currently face – i.e. chasing "easy" conversions at the expense of future demand, AKA growth through brand. But if the ad is a safe, indistinct dud, even the best media planning, optimisation and MMM can't save it, or the CMO.

More than 12 months after the publication of the Murphy report, the Albanese Government faces mounting pressure from all sides of politics to hand down a blanket ban on gambling advertising. A total ban could slash up to $300 million in annual advertising revenue from Australian media owners, with TV having the most to lose – already the anticipation of a crackdown on gambling ads in the wake of the Murphy report has seen $40 million dollars leak from Nine and Seven alone. While NDAs have kept official commentary to a minimum, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has spent the last week meeting with stakeholders to share the Fed's proposed reforms. So far, it seems a comprehensive ban won't be on the cards, with indications Government is willing to provide concessions to Australia's already struggling free-to-air broadcasters in a time of "diabolical trouble" per Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten. Yet it seems that no one is happy with what's on the table so far.  Seven West Media Tabcorp Sportsbet Ladbrokes Australia Entain Australia & New Zealand #gambling