Solo has been an Australian favourite since its inception in 1968, and only recently it made an adults only variation with Hard Solo. The boozy lemon drink quickly went viral as people couldn’t wait to try the classic flavour.

However, the new-to-market drink has people turning heads, and not because of its tart flavour. Rather, there has been an influx of complaints that Hard Solo is marketed towards minors. And, the debate has hit parliament.

MP for North Sydney Kylea Tink has been leading the push to limit or ban alcohol marketing from reaching minors. She spoke about Hard Solo, and referred to it as having issues “from beginning to end”. 

The criticism is tied up primarily in the packaging. 

“This is a product that looks like a soft drink, tastes like a soft drink, has the same name as a soft drink, went through a self-regulatory process and seemingly was approved to be marketed,” she says.

Crossbench MPs met with representatives from the alcohol industry on 10 August 2023, a pre-planned meeting that was about pushing for advertising reform on a swathe of unhealthy and harmful products including alcohol, gambling and fast food.

During this meeting, the new Solo was also brought up.

“We saw this new drink introduced to the market a little over a week ago and that has provided a really useful focal point for us to pursue these conversations,” says Tink.

Hard Solo and its appeal

The complaints weren’t limited to Tink and her team, with Cancer Council of WA also submitting an official complaint about the drink. Its main complaint was that the recognisable Solo packaging was too similar to the non-alcoholic version. 

“The appeal of Hard Solo to minors is evident given the established appeal of Solo to minors,” the statement says.

Solo, which is owned by Asahi, says that the company and the new packaging strictly complies with the ban on marketing alcohol to minors. The company argues that 85 percent of the original Solo consumers are adults, and the new drink is scoped to be bought predominantly by 25- to 50-year olds.

“This drink looks very different to regular Solo and we strongly refute any claims they can be confused,” says an Asahi spokesperson.

It might sound laughable, but the irreverence of Uber Eats’ petition to rename Australia’s capital city to CanBEERa has got people talking. And this has brought attention to Uber Eats’ recent focus on championing Canberra-based beers offered through their delivery service.

The campaign, led by Special PR, generated widespread media coverage. Awareness was bolstered by a range of mixed media marketing campaigns, including roving boards and a town crier, which were used to carry the petition to Parliament ahead of International Beer Day on 4 August.

The tongue-in-cheek petition never intended to take itself seriously; it simply aimed to garner widespread attention.

“With the catchy Town Crier and the ‘Welcome to CanBEERa’ sign outside Parliament House – it was the perfect backdrop for our petition and to get people outside of Canberra talking about it,” says Alex Bryant, managing director of Special PR in Australia.

Uber Eats’ updated beer selection for Canbeera

Uber Eats is shining the spotlight on local Canberra breweries. Within weeks of the campaign, Uber Eats launched its offering in Canberra to help local bottle shops power their deliveries in the ACT. Uber Eats have also made Canberra-based beers available to order in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

“The nation’s capital has an outsized contribution to award winning domestic beer production and our petition to rename it CanBEERa has brought national attention to these incredible brewers that we hope will translate into national demand for their quality products,” says general manager retail, Uber Eats ANZ, Lucas Groeneveld.

Uber Eats has also made some big strides in liquor delivery, commencing last mile delivery and growing its beer selection by double digits in the last 12 months.

The petition to rename Australia’s capital to CanBEERa was the first campaign by Special PR, Special Australia’s new offering. It continues Uber Eats’ history of always light-hearted campaigns, which often feature celebrities or involve eye-catching advertising.

And as to whether or not the petition will be successful? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Let’s start by addressing the obvious. By nature, pop-up marketing efforts tend to lean towards the invasiveness side of the spectrum. They’re ultimately designed to disrupt the user’s experience onsite, but in a way that grabs their attention toward a call to action. 

Based on the early ‘first gen’ pop-ups that used to plague the internet over ten years ago, pop-ups have historically had a bad rap. And to be clear, those are still annoying. But on-site pop ups on brand websites have evolved to be one of the most effective ways to capture customer data – for example marketing email address opt-ins – so you can grow your owned audiences. 

Growing your owned, addressable database is hugely important because it unlocks a cost-efficient way to re-engage your buyers, continue to nurture them over time, and convert them into loyalists. Pop-ups are therefore very necessary – and not as evil as many may think! 

Pop-up marketing and the value add

When used appropriately, they have a lot to offer brands and consumers alike. There are various ways of capturing data once a visitor comes to your site, so let’s run through five of the main approaches, from most to least intrusive:

1. On entrance
   Quite simply, when a consumer visits a brand’s website (generally speaking) with an introductory offer – 10 percent off an initial purchase, for example – in exchange for their email address or mobile phone number. This is the most commonly recognised pop-up and can be a great data capture strategy. 
2. On exit
   Shown to a website visitor once it appears a user’s intent is to veer away from the website, for example, going to click address bar on a laptop or rapidly scrolling on a phone. The user will see an offer or discount, similar to those presented on entrance. Because a user is already engaged with the website, but shows signs of wavering, this can be a powerful way of reengaging with your audience in the same session.
3. Timed
   Timed pop-ups are the “chaotic good” of pop-up intrusiveness as they’re typically deployed when a user has been on your site for a particular length of time, to offer discounts or promotions and incentivise the user switching from consideration to immediate purchase. This consumer is more likely to have genuine interest in your product, and therefore, it’s highly likely they’ll be similarly engaged on a discount on an imminent purchase. 
4. Native deployments
   Leaving aside conventional pop-ups for a moment, native deployment is about capturing user data in a slightly less intrusive manner, within standard on-page elements or modules. For example, this could include an email newsletter subscribe form that sits in a global footer. 
5. Persistent deployments
   It may seem counterintuitive, but persistent deployments are one of the most subtle options. They sit in the corner of a website — usually in the form of a non-intrusive button — and follow the user through their website journey, ready and waiting to be clicked on when the customer is ready. 

Although they operate at different stages of the user journey, all are designed first and foremost as value exchanges. After all, if they didn’t work, brands would simply stop using them. Consumers provide valuable contact information, such as an email address or mobile number, and brands offer discounts or special offers in return. But where is the line between invasive and effective?

Regardless of the point in the consumer journey, or intent you’re trying to capture, when deploying pop-ups on your site, there are a few key things to remember:

• Offer value. If you’re not offering a tempting reason for a consumer to exchange their details, your pop-up simply won’t perform well.
• Be clear and concise. Make your message accurate and tempting.
• Inject your brand personality. Don’t be afraid to showcase your brand’s personality.
• Don’t overwhelm. Use them sparingly with clear intention. 

At the end of the day, consumers love to hate pop-ups. 

It’s important to realise even the most carefully crafted pop-up won’t work every time. While it’s certainly valuable to let a campaign run so performance can be observed over time, it’s also worth trialling new concepts, copy and images, as well as different offers, to figure out the ideal formula.

Once you’ve done enough to get someone to offer you their data, the next — and much bigger  — job is understanding what they like, what they don’t, when they tend to buy, what messaging resonates, and how they like to be interacted with. Having the right technology partners is crucial to getting this bit right.  

Jamie Hoey is the Australian general manager at Wunderkind.

They’re making their way into our hearts and onto our screens, and the Aussie women’s FIFA team the Matildas is also making their way into the TV ratings’ record books.

Held every four years, the Women’s World Cup found its home for 2023 in Australia and the Aussie crowds are absolutely loving it. Adopting soccer as their sport of choice over cricket, AFL, netball and rugby, local viewers are tuning into the games by the millions.

In fact, the 7 August match between Denmark and Australia smashed the free-to-air ratings record for the year by nearly 400,000, with an estimated 2.294 million metro viewers tuning in to watch Captain Sam Kerr trot back on the field for the first time this tournament following an injury, after a two-goal thumping of Denmark. The only program that’s come close to those numbers is Nine’s State of Origin Game I in June, which didn’t even make three million metro viewers.

Matildas cement themselves in Aussie sport history

This World Cup is proving to be a shift in the market when it comes to women’s sports. Previously not a huge ratings winner, and the source of many exhausting public debates, women’s sports is seeing a change in its popularity – led by the Matildas. 

Research shows that women’s sports spectators have increased by a whopping 36 percent in 12 months, from June 2022 to June 2023, and these numbers show no signs of dipping. As more Australians tune in to watch the fate of the Matildas, who are currently placed the highest of any Aussie team that has previously been in a soccer world cup, these numbers will likely only increase.

It seems the only thing female sports has been missing is the fandom and the finances because the skills, the personalities and the rivalries have already been there. Now it’s time to make legends.

Fast food chain Taco Bell is celebrating “Taco Tuesday” in the UK by putting a positive spin on a common slur on a billboard. “See you next Tuesday” might be often used colloquially for a word we won’t be running here in Marketing mag, but Taco Bell’s risk is worth the reward.

The agency behind the eye-catching billboard The Or has taken a ‘Cheap Tuesday’ offer and ran with it. For £2, customers can treat themselves for a taco and a soft drink every Tuesday. And, in a time of economic crisis, two quid for a meal is an absolute steal.

To advertise this special, Taco Bell’s latest out of home campaign spells out “See you next Tuesday”. It’s a way to stop passersby, and only in the fine print do you find out just why you’re being technically insulted on a billboard.

Taco Bell and its cheap offer

Lucy Dee, head of marketing at Taco Bell UK spoke about the edgy campaign. “Life can throw all sorts of curveballs at you and we all deserve something to look forward to,” says Dee. “The Or have perfectly grasped this through the lens of British humour, creating an eye-catching campaign that frames Taco Tuesday as a weekly highlight and unmissable pick me up.”

Dan Morris, ECD at The Or added to Dee’s comments. “The incredible offer of a £2 taco and drink in this economy is almost guaranteed to become a landmark weekly moment,” he says. “In fact, it’s so powerful that Brits may even start using ‘See You Next Tuesday’ as a way to describe the uplifting spa day for your soul that bargain tacos give you, rather than to hint at a certain offensive slur. Hopefully.”

So, next time you think you’re being called a ‘See you next Tuesday’, check the fine print. Perhaps it’s not as sinister as it looks.

Fast food chains constantly refresh their menus to keep the crowds coming, and for disappointed diners who miss out on limited releases it can be a long wait for another chance. Now, for the first time in years KFC is offering its Fiery Zinger Burger, but this time with an added boost to appeal to heat fiends.

The end result is the company’s hottest ever burger.

“We know so many Aussies like their meals to pack a punch, so the Fiery Zinger Burger is perfect for fans looking to satisfy their heat cravings or test their limits,” says KFC Australia chief marketing officer Tami Cunningham.

It’s an amplification of a staple marketing technique for KFC.

The brinkmanship of heat marketing

It’s easy to see why selling spiciness works. The Scoville scale lends brands authenticity to position products in an adventurous market that treats every release as a dare.

And who doesn’t love a challenge? There’s strong marketing value in any call to action, and the chance of social media virality. One of the most popular YouTube series ever is a combination of Scoville and celebrity called Hot Ones, which has sustained enough popularity to reach 21 seasons.

But there are perils. Brands risk alienating adventurous customers by either underdelivering or posing a danger to unseasoned taste buds. The Google reviews left by naive chip munchers on the ‘Paqui One Chip Challenge’ product make for an interesting read of bodily experiences.

KFC brings back the Zinger Burger heat

The Fiery Zinger Burger released for a short period in 2016, but this time it comes with a new level of heat, thanks to its extra-hot sauce of 11 chillies – which includes jalapeños, habaneros and Carolina Reapers.

“Delivering a fresh take on iconic KFC flavours, the hottest burger from the Zinger range is sure to delight Aussies with a unique KFC eating experience that truly brings the heat. Get in quick as you never know when it’ll be back again,” says Cunningham.

To up the ante, there is also a new Fiery Double, with spicy fillets acting as buns in a burger.

The spicy meals will only be available for a limited time, from 8 August until 4 September, so don’t wait around. But for those with the KFC app, early access is under way. 

KFC was recently singled out as hot in a different way, found to have Australia’s favourite chips.

Rum and Coke might dominate cocktail menus around the world, but Pepsi wants consumers to consider Pepsi as the perfect partner for the popular drink.

If you thought there was a special day or month for everything, you’re not wrong. August is Rum Month and companies are pulling out all stops to celebrate. Soft drink giant Pepsi has joined the celebration and opened up a debate as old as the drink itself: Coke or Pepsi?

Pepsi is vying to be recognised as the better tasting cola when pairing with rum. In a new campaign #BetterwithPepsi, the campaign has been designed to make people rethink rum and Coke.

Along with a social media campaign, Pepsi’s creative includes finding a secret Pepsi logo in renowned rum company Captain Morgan’s own bottle. With a small circle, Pepsi shows that perhaps Captain Morgan was always hinting that it should’ve been the beverage of choice with the spiced rum. 

Pepsi pulls up the numbers to prove it’s a worthy battle for rum and Coke 

Pepsi also has the numbers to support that the recipe should now become ‘rum and Pepsi’. In a recent consumer preference survey, 56 percent of participants responded that they enjoyed mixing Pepsi with their spiced rum rather than Coke.

The research went even deeper, with flavour experts coming into the battle.

“Rum tends to evoke warm, sweet flavours reminiscent of caramel and vanilla, a result of the oak barrel ageing progress,” explains PepsiCo’s corporate executive research chef for global beverages Chef Kyle Shadix.

“The crisp, sweet and citrusy notes in Pepsi bring perfect balance to the warm spice notes of rum, like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, creating a smooth, well-rounded taste profile for a perfect summer cocktail!” 

Perhaps this should all come down to the most reputable decider of all: a blind taste test.

With Australian business and government becoming more data-driven, some important conversations are finally being had, including how data is sourced, utilised, secured and stored for a better experience.

While these are challenging and at times vexed topics, the emergence and popularisation of decentralised or self-sovereign identity promises to alleviate some key concerns around data control and customer consent collection and management.

Under privacy laws in Australia, explicit consent is currently required for only “a limited range of collections, uses and disclosures of personal information”. An expansion is now being canvassed to cover “any collection, use or disclosure of personal information”, though that’s “generally opposed” by industry on grounds that it could be burdensome for all sides. Marketers, in particular, worry an expansion could result in people being asked to consent so often that they take the “nuclear option” and opt-out of all forms of branded communication entirely.

What’s needed is balance: meeting the privacy needs of people whose data it is, and the operational needs of organisations that collect, store and use it.

Data is often a critical input to customer experience and service delivery. Customers today expect a certain amount of personalisation in their interactions, and organisations want to retain an ability to use customer data for those purposes. It would not make sense to introduce friction into this process.

At the same time, changing consumer attitudes to privacy and data sharing need to be taken into account. A recent survey found 43 percent of Australians are unwilling to have their data shared with any third-party. Such attitudes are often shaped by experience, such as perceived or actual data misuse by a brand, or having their PII accessed or stolen in a data breach incident. That is a key reason why consumers now tie their willingness to share data in future to the presence of increased protections and safeguards.

As consumers become more savvy, and privacy laws and regulations catch up, it is incumbent on organisations and brands to navigate to a customer-centric and privacy-preserving path for data use.

Applying Identity and Access Management (IAM) protections and controls to both sides of the data equation – the person, whose data it is, and the business collecting and storing it – and embracing decentralised identity are likely to be critical steps to ensuring the right balance is struck.

Verifying identity to help with a better experience

Currently, every organisation collects personal data and individually controls customer preferences and consent for how that data gets used. 

These consents may need to be revisited over time, such as if a person’s relationship with a brand or business changes – and organisations should have the mechanisms in place to keep up and honour that. An IAM system can be utilised by the organisation to track and manage that consent flow lifecycle and to keep a record of authorised uses of data for a particular period of time.

However, not all organisations meet this standard today. As we’ve seen in some high-profile Australian data breaches, data is often stored for far longer than the use case it was collected for. There are often mismatches between how consumers think their data should be treated, and how it actually gets used.

Decentralised identity – also called self-sovereign identity – flips this paradigm around and puts consumers in charge of their data and more directly in control of how consent is managed. Rather than having to separately establish individual identities with each organisation they transact with, the customer has just one verified identity, held in a digital wallet on their smartphone or other device, that they can use for every interaction.

Under this model, when an organisation asks the customer to verify their identity, only a small amount of information, only what is necessary at that given time, is exchanged. For example, if all the organisation needs is an age verification, decentralised identity would confirm the person is over 18 and that that’s been verified. There would be no need to overshare anything else – such as a full scan of a passport or driver’s licence with address, birth date, etc. – for the intended purpose. The customer can also manage and revoke consents centrally from within their digital wallet, instead of having to manage them in self-serve portals attached to every organisation they interact with (assuming that granularity of control is even offered – it may not be).

This will shift identity and data handling practices from organisations having all the power, to a world where consumers and organisations both have a key role.

To operate in this world, organisations will need to ensure they have the right IAM controls, covering both the customer as well as employees looking to use and leverage customer data. Having IAM on both sides of the data is the bare minimum organisations can do to make sure that as they unlock the value of that data and personalise interactions, that customers and their data stay protected, and privacy and consent are respected.

With a tightening of Australian privacy laws inevitable – a question of when, not if – it makes sense for organisations to prepare for this new reality now. By adopting best-practice data handling, privacy protections and IAM controls today, organisations will be best placed to meet current customer expectations and evolving laws in the future.

Ashley Diffey, Vice President Sales APAC and Japan at Ping Identity

The rescue of Australia’s hopes at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in a thrashing of Canada has been the crowning highlight of a seamless event, and the public is engaged. The conclusion of an entertaining Ashes series failed to impede the success, its metropolitan viewership of 754,000 drastically outshone by the Matildas’ 4 to 0 win over Canada.

It feels like this could be a turning point for women’s sport on the global stage.

Everyone’s tuning in for the Matildas

On Monday 31 July 2023, 1.55 million Australians watched Hayley Raso and company dispatch the higher ranked team across the major cities, with almost a million sticking around to watch the post-game analysis.

After the first Matilda’s game, Football Australia CEO James Johnson, said, “this tournament is creating history and we are delighted as Host Nation. We are seeing a surge in support for women’s football, not just in ticket sales, but also in broadcast viewership, fan festival participation and merchandise sales.”

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So long to the Socceroos

Australia’s mens’ soccer team, the Socceroos, has hardly held comparable relevance within the sport to the Matildas, ranked by FIFA as the 27th best team at the time of writing compared with 10th. Yet with the greater prominence of the long-established men’s event, the Socceroos have previously seemed to garner more attention in Australia. 

This group-stage game against Canada topped the viewership efforts of the mens’ 2022 campaign in Qatar, when a comparable match against Denmark only drew in 618,000 people, though to be fair it was much later at night. 

“This heightened interest in our national iconic brands is also reflected in record CommBank Matilda’s merchandise sales online and in retail stores. These numbers reflect the growing strength and appeal of the women’s game, particularly the CommBank Matildas, and it’s a testament to the incredible athletes who are providing us with such thrilling football,” says Johnson.

We’ll have to wait and see if the Matildas next game in the Round of 16 sets a new record for Australia at the World Cup.

Read more about the Matildas and the Socceroos by checking out Football Australia’s marketing efforts in its TikTok partnership here.

New research by Sefiani has highlighted the importance of a renewed focus on building brand belonging with consumers and employees. 

The study, which investigated understandings and experiences of brand belonging in over 1000 Australian employees and consumers, in addition to 23 senior corporate communicators, found that 46 percent of consumers and 24 percent of employees were more cynical about brands post-COVID.

Brand belonging: the challenge

Communicators now face the challenge of shifting stakeholders’ relationship with brands from transactional to emotional, thereby supporting long-term brand loyalty and belonging. Fostering brand belonging is paramount, with Sefiani’s study finding that 92 percent of employees and 61 percent of consumers agree that feeling a sense of belonging with a brand is important. However, over a third (39 percent) of communicators are unsure if their customers have a sense of brand belonging with their company.

There is also a mismatch between perceived and reported senses of belonging in employees: despite 70 percent of corporate communicators believing their employees have a sense of belonging with the company, almost half reported they were open to moving jobs if presented with the right opportunity.

Fostering expectations

For consumers, who have higher expectations of brands after having turned to them for security and stability during COVID, communicators must deliver personalised and speedy responses. Sefiani’s study found that 45 percent of consumers said brands took too long to respond to issues or trends, with generic communication being the biggest barrier to their belonging.

Communicators must also have a deep, up-to-date understanding of their audience and the socioeconomic conditions affecting them, such as the cost-of-living crisis and job insecurity. This allows businesses to offer fit-for-purpose products tailored to their audience’s personalised needs.

For employees, communicators must facilitate open communication. Transparency of business performance and finances is particularly important for employees, whose livelihoods, already strained by inflated costs of living, rely on these metrics.

Working conditions are also important, with 72 percent of employees believing that the most important factor in belonging was a good relationship with their colleagues and peers.

Implementing research insights

Given the importance of personalised responses for consumers, and their expectation of swift response times, AI presents one opportunity for facilitating brand belonging for consumers. Sefiani’s report noted that AI’s capabilities for predictive analysis, real-time personalisation and hyper-local personalisation were significant draws of the technology. AI is already heavily embedded in marketing, such as in service chat bots.

Social media is another avenue for building brand belonging, with consumer respondents identifying it as their primary channel for meaningfully conversing and sharing feedback with brands. Video content on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are particularly useful for listening to consumer feedback. 

Listening to feedback is also vital for ensuring a feeling of brand belonging in employees. This communication must be not only transparent but constructive and open. 

Concerningly, however, Sefiani’s report found that only 24 percent of corporate communicators were investing in two-way communication with employees. Two-way communication is especially important in allowing organisations to align their behaviours with the needs and values of their employees, facilitating long-term brand loyalty and belonging.

The full report and its insights can be found here.