The youth radio station is expanding its greatest product, but may weaken the value of the Hottest 100 brand if it continues adding spinoffs.

Triple J runs the leading music ranking in Australia each year that anchors the summer calendar, having grown the event into a titan across more than 30 years. In 2023 it is running an extra countdown in July with a focus on covers over recent highlights, and is launching a new dedicated radio station.

But this barrage of spinoffs risks diluting the marketing genius of the Hottest 100. Triple J should be wary of altering the components that strengthened its brand.

Marketing madness

The Hottest 100 is undoubtedly the jewel in Triple J’s crown, having become what is likely the ultimate event of Australian music.

Its success is no wonder, as stellar design lends tremendous value to Triple J. Audiences have been trained to recognise the event as the primary recap and ranking of the prior year’s art, as longevity and consistency have established its place.

Once, the event even had the strength of association with a public holiday, helping develop a culture of social listening with music fans unlikely to be stuck at work.

In 2022 Marketing sat down with Made in Katana’s co-founder Adam Callen to discover how the company has worked with Triple J to grow the Hottest 100 event since 2015, modernising the voting operations by transitioning to Google Clouds. He celebrated the digital transformation’s improvements on user experience, security and voter focus, but utilising cloud technology also unlocks endless audience insights.

Triple J is constantly challenged by an imperative to target 18 to 24-year-olds, requiring a regular turnover of its listener base. It achieves significantly greater engagement with that demographic through the annual countdown event rather than with regular broadcasting. 

According to the ABC, the 2022 Hottest 100 engaged 74 percent of the youth demographic in some way, while Triple J’s regular broadcast only reached 26.4 percent of 18 to 24-year-old radio listeners.

An event that grew up alongside the station

In 1989, the year that Triple J first broadcasted a list of “hot” songs that was topped by Joy Division, the government-funded radio station had yet to expand nationally. Through its early iterations the countdown did not limit itself to songs from the prior year, only morphing into the timely event as it is known today in 1993.

Another defining characteristic of the radio station began in 2004, with the first cover performed live for ‘Like A Version’. “The concept was simple: invite artists to come into the Triple J studios to cover a song they love and one of their own tunes,” a Triple J promotion for its 2023 event states.

In the years since over 800 covers have been produced, and in 2021 a ‘Like A Version’ song topped the countdown for the first time, when The Wiggles mixed one of their signature jingles into Tame Impala’s Elephant.

‘The Hottest 100 of Like A Version’

In 2023 Triple J is running a second countdown midway through the year, this time focusing on its own tunes with a ranking of ‘Like A Version’ songs. Voting closed recently, ahead of the countdown on July 15th.

This is not the first special Hottest 100 that Triple J has organised, having celebrated the music from the first 20 years of its annual format, the best of the 2010s and revisited the “of all time” format multiple times. But it should be the last.

Monopolising the content of a countdown obviously elevates internally produced music as Triple J expands beyond its standard showcase, but weakens the integration of the Hottest 100 into the wider industry. 

The station is a respected curator of music, and a perception of bias is not good for a critic. 

Is this really good idea so soon after The Wiggles won the #Hottest100 only the year before last?
“triple j’s Hottest 100 of Like A Version”https://t.co/PWwrsgYEFc

— Istoph (@crk5) May 18, 2023

After building such a strong timeliness factor associated with the main show, this extra event holds a weakened justification for its own existence. 2023 is not a significant anniversary for ‘Like A Version’, and it is not the end of a decade. July seems to fit the bill only as it occurs halfway between regular Hottest 100 countdowns.

It’s now hottest time all the time

To keep the party going on and on after the countdown, Triple J has had another surprise up its sleeve. A Hottest 100 dedicated station launches on 17 July that will play songs from previous countdowns on repeat.

The new Triple J Hottest station seeks to transform the late-summer excitement into year-round engagement, which seems an ambitious undertaking. Blasting Hottest 100 content constantly could well backfire.

When it comes to digital asset management, or ‘DAM’, there are marketing teams that have it, those that think they have it because their system can store and share images, and those that probably know their stuff isn’t up to scratch.

Put simply, DAM is software that helps companies organise their digital content and manage it across the whole content lifecycle. It allows users to store, organise, and distribute digital assets quickly and at scale from a centralised platform. 

This doesn’t mean DAM is an expensive Dropbox. Over time, it has evolved to cover a broader spectrum of content management. This includes search capabilities, tighter control over usage and sharing, and improved ability to track asset performance.

DAM has emerged in tandem with the sheer proliferation of assets that a brand will need in its inventory, as well as the growing number of channels to distribute those assets. In 2023, marketers need to be able to create engaging – and often personalised – content for segmented audiences with a moment’s notice. Automation and templating allow businesses to create more content faster, while safeguarding branding consistency and freeing creative teams from repetitive, grunt work.

And DAM continues to mature with us. Companies like Bynder offer strategic digital asset management platforms that help to conquer the chaos of content, touchpoints, and relationships. From experience, Bynder says there are five things every strategic DAM system should have in 2023. 

Don’t find yourself checking these boxes? Perhaps it’s time to “re-platform”.

1. Flexible and expandable use cases

Step one involves looking far ahead. Marketers should ask themselves: why have a DAM in the first place? What is the size and scope of their DAM deployment and how might that need to change? 

Over time, businesses will find that they’ll want to expand their DAM to other use cases outside of the original implementation. Perhaps this means bringing on teams, new brands, additional external partners or stakeholders, or even new entities inside the larger business. 

Everything about the DAM, from its permissions and taxonomy to its services and support, has to make users feel good about its potential to expand in future.

2. Personalisation and localisation at scale with templates

Templates are a super hot topic in content creation right now and will continue to be in 2023. 

With branded templates, brands can safely play with variations within their defined parameters. This can also make all content look like it was designed by the creative team (even if it was really Sam from sales!)

With a global DAM deployment and one system of record, teams can push out core assets and content to all markets, agencies, partners, and distributors. Templates allow marketers to scale up their content to make it more relevant for local markets, and it’s especially useful for campaign-specific content. 

3. Universal brand guidelines for collaborators 

Most DAM platforms will accommodate a basic brand guidelines setup. But in 2023, as platforms consolidate across the enterprise, and collaborator networks get much more complex, a more universal brand guidelines capability is required. But what does that mean?

For many large organisations, it means having all brands in their portfolio under the same guidelines deployment tied to their DAM. And any brand collaborating with the creator economy – which is many in 2023 – will need guidelines to empower individual creators to produce content on their behalf in a way that confidently reflects the brand’s identity.

4. DAM integrations

If you must have only one of the must-haves let it be this: a strategy to integrate your DAM, broader tech ecosystem, and your go-to-market approach. 

This goes for all brands. An integration strategy elevates the DAM deployment to the strategic level – ensuring the greatest return on investment (ROI). 

Remember to keep in mind: integrations are a strategy and a roadmap, not a checkbox. You need a roadmap that spells out which integrations should occur, in what order, and how exactly each integration will work. Ask yourself what the main goal of each integration is or the direction of the data flow.

The ROI of a well-executed integration strategy comes in the form of less time spent messing around with assets between platforms and more on quality collaboration. This will evolve into a strategic contributor to your business. More content will be at the ready on your customer-facing channels, enhancing the experience, and often directly contributing to more sales. 

5. Combine text and visual workflows

Finally, look for a DAM that combines text-based and visual-based content workflows. 

Many brands separate the two, which can be detrimental, with context-switching reducing employee productivity. Bynder saves time by allowing users to brief, ideate, comment, and work through text as well as visual content intuitively, in one place. 

Armed with these five must-haves, it’s a good time to hunt for a new DAM solution or evaluate the one you have. Bynder’s DAM software comparison guide can help you compare vendors and features so you can see which solution is perfect for you.

Bynder goes far beyond managing digital assets. Our digital asset management platform enables teams to conquer the chaos of proliferating content, touchpoints, and relationships in order to thrive. With powerful and intuitive solutions that embrace the way people want to work, and a richly integrated ecosystem, we are the brand ally that unifies and transforms the creation and sharing of assets, inspiring teams, delighting customers, and elevating businesses.

Read more on the latest in Technology and Data news.

In a post pandemic world, securing and maintaining customer loyalty has become a more complex undertaking for marketers. With inflation causing increased cost of living, consumers are tightening their budgets and becoming more restrained with finances. For brands to survive the current economic climate, developing lasting connections with customers is crucial – without this loyalty, customers are likely to jump ship to competing brands at the first sign of better value.

How marketers can strengthen customer relationships and work on securing customer loyalty 

This can be achieved with effective email and data management processes, viewed through the lens of empathetic marketing. The impact this has on the organisation is significant: it is leverage for tactics like relevant content, empathy, and social positioning, which, in present-day context, bolster customer engagement. 

According to the Data & Marketing Association’s (DMA) Customer Engagement 2020 report, 77 percent of customers agreed that compassion should be shown by brands throughout the pandemic. And while the pandemic has now subsided, it’s clear that in today’s current environment of financial stress, it is more important than ever for brands to focus on thoughtful, even compassionate, communications. With consumer spending rapidly evolving, customer loyalty has never been more so relevant.

Data quality is key

A perennial challenge for brands is maintaining high-quality data – this intel is crucial to inform smart business decisions. In fact, according to Validity’s research, The State of CRM Data Health in 2022, 61 percent of respondents reported poor quality data resulted in a loss of existing customers, and 56 percent reported poor quality data as responsible for a loss of new sales. 

It’s clear that prioritising data quality is crucial for brands to survive and thrive in today’s current economic climate. Quality of data affects the end-user experience and, ultimately, will have an impact on the bottom line. Consider, for example, duplicate customer records: These increase fulfillment costs, as well as create a negative consumer experience if the customer is contacted twice with the same correspondence. 

In another instance, an invalid or misspelt email address translates to a poor customer experience for someone expecting a reply to correspondence. And, for the company, it is a wasted acquisition cost.

To address poor data quality, brands should first ensure those in leadership understand the importance of data for overall business success. Educating those in charge, will allow investments and resources to be channelled to this department. Having someone in charge of data is one of the early investments that should be made; quality data and how it is applied to informing business decisions will create more robust, future growth opportunities.

Although digitalisation continues to evolve, many organisations still rely on manual data maintenance processes – these need to go. Manual maintenance and cleaning of data simply isn’t sustainable in today’s environment. The sheer volume and velocity of incoming data is too great for manual processes to be effective.

Regulation around consumer privacy is also vital when it comes to data. For organisations with a global footprint, this is even more pertinent because an organisation is subject to the law where the data subject resides, regardless of where the organisation is headquartered.

Examples of consumer privacy laws are GDPR in the EU, APP in Australia and PIPL in China. These regulations ensure ethical data management. This means brands must offer complete transparency when requesting customer data in terms of why they are requesting the data, how it will be used, and how consent to use data can be withdrawn. Offering transparency will build trust from the customer; and the customer is only likely to share data if they understand the greater context and mutual benefit.

The upside to such compliance and privacy laws is data that is shared intentionally by the consumer will allow brands to gain more accurate insight into the target market because [data that] is proactively provided is far more likely to be accurate.

Email isn’t going anywhere

Validity’s State of Email 2022 report found that global email volume is set to increase over the coming years. In fact, according to the report, the global volume of emails sent over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend period increased by 70 percent compared to the 2021 daily average. 

Hardly surprising that this peak coincides with the holidays as marketers are trying to get a jump on the buying season to meet end-of-year targets and clear excess inventory. 

The numbers are a clear reflection of how email is a reliable and accurate channel to communicate with customers.  In fact, email is regularly cited as consumers’ preferred channel for receiving marketing communications due to trust and relevance.

But with an increase in volume comes greater competition to land in subscribers’ inboxes. And to do so, marketers should adopt email best practices to maintain sender reputation and achieve a high deliverability rate.

Sender reputation is the primary factor mailbox providers (MBPs) use to determine which emails are accepted and where they are placed – whether they are placed in the inbox, junk or spam folder. To maintain a good sender reputation, senders should aim to measure their reputation daily and address any issues – from spam complaints, bounces, spam trap hits, failure to authenticate correctly or block listings – that could result in a drop of reputation. 

Once a positive sender reputation is achieved, brands can feel more confident that their email will land in the inbox but even once here it doesn’t mean their email will be noticed – the next step is to stand out from the competition. Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is one way to stand out in the inbox. This feature displays a brand’s logo next to their email in the subscriber’s inbox. This method is effective simply because customers are more likely to be loyal if they know and recognise a brand logo.

Greater connection through accessibility

Another key consideration for brands is the accessibility of their content. Findings from the World Health Organisation show that vision impairment impacts more than two billion people around the world. 

While brands should want to embrace accessibility to allow all consumers to access and engage with their communications, there are legal requirements within this space too. Laws such as Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the UK’s Equalities Act of 2010 ensure accessibility standards are set in place and met by all senders. A minimum font size is an example of the standards enforced by these acts to allow greater accessibility for those impacted by visual impairment. For example, Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act recommends a 12-point font size. 

Accessibility as a focus in the email community is only due to increase. Many of these practices – such as use of white space, colour contrast, and descriptive text – overlap with general email best practices too. By employing these practices within email communications, overall engagement is only going to benefit.

Brands should look at what they’re doing in the accessibility space and even consider appointing someone to ensure that every email campaign meets, and even exceeds, the necessary standards. 

Building brand loyalty boils down to a business understanding the nuances of its audience segments. The solution may sound simple, but its execution must consider consumers as individuals insofar as their preferences, interests and priorities. This information will empower brands to tailor customer-specific content, which in the long-term, will build lasting relationships with customers.  

Guy Hanson is the VP of customer engagement at Validity.

Connection is arguably the most important thing for brands to get right with customers. But when it comes to capturing the attention of consumers, a brands’ work is cut out. Consumers are using more devices; they’re engaging across more platforms with more content ready at their fingertips. Lion Group’s Anubha Sahasrabuddhe explores.

The importance of connection

Amongst this increasingly fragmented landscape, cultural moments are more important than ever for brands to engage in a meaningful way. Recently, a much-loved Canadian prime time news anchor, Lisa LaFlamme, was dismissed from her position after more than three decades with CTV network. It soon came to light that a senior executive had demanded to know who approved LaFlamme’s choice to “let her hair go grey” before she was unceremoniously dropped.

The narrative became a springboard for a much a larger conversation about the challenges of ageism and sexism at work; it presented the cultural moment for Dove to engage its customers with the #keepthegrey campaign. It was a success with consumers because this already aligned with Dove’s values and resonated with its longstanding Real Beauty Pledge, which encourages women to feel good about themselves by being their natural selves.

Cultural moments are more important than ever for brands to grasp as the conduit for connection. From shared experiences like major sports events to shared reactions to news stories like Lisa’s resignation, occasions that captivate the public are a valuable opportunity to engage audiences and share a message that will have lasting impact. I believe when done correctly, these cultural moments have a key role in building an authentic connection between a brand and its consumers.

Not every cultural moment is the same

The saturated media landscape is making it harder to achieve brand salience, and most marketers will appreciate why leaning into cultural moments is a significant opportunity. Yet simply ‘showing up’ to the nominated moment and expecting your audience to engage with your brand does not guarantee success. It sometimes doesn’t even guarantee any noise for your brand.

When it comes to cultural moments, not every event can trigger the same impact, or spark a meaningful conversation. Participating in a cultural moment usually lives on a spectrum ranging from fun and light-hearted, to ‘out there’ or nuanced. In my experience as a marketer, it has often involved a combination of these. What brands need to discern is the right moment to take part in the cultural conversation. Not every moment will be the right one for your brand to have a voice, so having that deep understanding of why your brand is choosing to play in this moment – and what value you can contribute – will help elevate the way customers respond to you. Brands should also play with the ‘long game’ in mind, therefore consistency in values is key for your customers.  

Using culture saves brands in real time

When a cultural moment presents itself, there can be an inclination from brands to instantly jump on the chance to be seen and spoken about. But it’s our role as marketers to discern the opportunity at hand and acknowledge how we can add genuine value to the conversation. After all, one of our biggest responsibilities in our jobs as marketers is to understand how to solve problems in real time. 

 As Dove has executed so well last month, when brands decide to get involved in cultural moments to build identity, it needs to be easy for people to connect the dots and understand the relevance, the ‘why’ behind getting involved. We’re seeing this challenge play out for many consumer cohorts – whether it be LGBTQIA+ community, or Gen Z consumers – most brands want to be appealing but the connection is hard to maintain without relevance.

Representation is more than visual

Speaking of connecting with audiences, embedding brands in cultural moments is such an important conversation for us to consider in the cultural melting pot that is Australia. We pride ourselves on our diversity, but we need to acknowledge that our cultural identity as Aussies is more complex than the country our parents were born in or the number of languages we can speak. Driving representation in cultural moments is more than casting diversity to break up the sea of white faces. It’s a start, but marketers have enormous potential to contribute to building a culturally diverse voice that connects with consumers.

We cannot lose sight of our role as marketers in shaping culture. We are tasked with representing the breadth of our cultural landscape here and now – and our ability to connect with the next generation of Australian consumers will determine our success. Shaping culture requires courage to try – and the willingness to learn from mistakes – with the knowing that it’s all in service of better outcomes and stronger brands.

When riding the wave of cultural moments in Australia, I believe brands have an exciting opportunity to lean into the richness of what makes up a modern Australian. The opportunities are ripe for brands to join the conversation and have something meaningful to say that will connect with audiences. As I said before, we have a significant responsibility as marketers to not just draw attention to our brands, but to identify what are our barriers to deeper cultural relevance and how we can show up to respond to diverse consumer needs.   

 It’s an exciting time for marketing in Australia. There’s huge potential for brands to join in conversations and use moments to be a part of changing cultural shifts. While brands must always remain discerning of where, when and why they’re participating in a cultural moment, these challenges shouldn’t make businesses shy away or throw the opportunity into the ‘too hard’ basket. Marketers should not lose sight of the underpinning goal to build genuine connection – there’s no greater satisfaction in recognising when your brand’s role in a cultural moment has the ability to generate a long lasting and positive impact.

The death of third-party cookies is coming

Are you ready for a cookie-free future? Google certainly isn’t.

It is difficult to escape the constant noise around third-party cookies. Every advertising network is talking about it – and rightfully so as they are the ones in the firing line.

Cookies themselves aren’t dead. It would be difficult to find a website operating without them these days. They’re just small text files stored in your browser, which we will need to remember that we’re already logged into our favourite websites. And, of course, websites are still going to use first-party cookies to keep track of the articles we have been reading or the products we have looked at.

It’s only third-party cookies that are on the way out and that’s a good thing for privacy.

Was it right that Facebook could track every website its users visit, even when they weren’t logged in? Too much data is being collected and is only a small security breach (or disgruntled employee) away from hitting the public domain. Most of us wouldn’t feel great about our entire web browsing history being out there.

The difference between first-party and third-party cookies

Simply put, first-party cookies are only accessed by the website the user is visiting. Meanwhile, third party cookies can be accessed by websites other than the one the user is visiting.

First-party cookies are used to store your login details (that is, session IDs – hopefully not passwords) and site preferences, such as font sizes or colours (e.g. dark mode). But they can also track a list of the articles you have read to avoid showing them to you again, or track a list of products you have been looking at to show you similar ones next time.

Third-party cookies are predominately used by advertising networks to track users across and around the wider web. The most common use case is remarketing. This is where a display network can set a cookie and show recently viewed products across the wider web (instead of just your own website) based on products a user has looked at (or even added to their shopping cart without purchasing). Display networks will read this cookie on visits to other websites to recognise the user and then show ads based on their browsing history and behaviour across the web.

When it comes to the end of third-party cookies, Google is moving at a snail’s pace. It is now aiming to phase them out by the middle of 2024, delaying the date another year.

Safari and Firefox have already done so, but only own 19 percent and three percent of the global browser market share respectively. Google owns 66 percent.

What does it all mean in the world of B2B?

Advertising networks are rushing for alternatives, as third-party cookies are an excellent way to follow users around the web. They provide great insight into behaviour, buying intent and interests.

It’s likely we will end up with cohort-based advertising, which means some niche B2B solutions will be more difficult to target if they don’t hit minimum audience sizes.

Remarketing is also likely to suffer if only small numbers of users are coming to your website – which is more likely in B2B than B2C.

What can B2B marketers do about it?

Let the advertising networks worry about the technicalities (they have a vested interest to come up with something usable). B2B marketers should focus on getting the most from their first party data; it will become more and more important.

Did you know only 22 percent of B2B marketers say they regularly ‘test and learn’ to improve their marketing outcomes? This will need to change if they want to come up with the right formulae amid these changes.

The end of third-party cookies might do to contextual advertising what COVID did to QR codes: giving good tech another lease on life.

Contextual advertising means the display networks are analysing each webpage a user is looking at and serving ads based on what the webpage is about, without any cookies.

Advances in machine learning have improved this targeting method over the years, making it easier to target topics instead of just keywords. It’s an old concept, but hard to argue against. Showing ads based on a website’s content can make a lot of sense.

It’s also a good time to look at all your digital channels to see where there might be risks. Some channels are more likely to suffer than others and targeting will probably become broader, increasing wastage. You wouldn’t want to be caught out having all your eggs in the wrong basket when third-party cookies are finally gone!

Cookie changes are pushing all the way into Analytics

Google also had to rethink the way Google Analytics can work with all the privacy-related cookie changes coming their way. The new version of Google Analytics is ready for a cookie-free future and uses machine learning to fill the gaps.

The combination of statistical modelling and actual data signals is meant to provide a better replacement for the current, cookie-reliant version. Google will retire that version (Universal Analytics) in July 2023 and it is high time to plan ahead.

Is your team ready for Google Analytics 4? It feels different and offers a lot more than the current version, but you won’t even touch the surface without spending a good amount of hands-on time in it, ideally combined with training.

One less weapon in the fight against bots

Bots are going through every marketer’s emails, “clicking” every link to scan for security threats. Marketers might see them as bad bots, but their intentions are good.

We can all feel for IT teams who are constantly cleaning up laptops because someone clicked a link in an email to purchase yet another bulk order of iTunes gift cards or redeem their free Bitcoins. The problem is that these bots are messing with email marketing statistics more than ever.

Are your “above benchmark” email open rates real, or are they inflated due to bot activity? Could well be the latter!

This is causing significant issues for marketers who are relying on open rates for sophisticated nurture programs where one email might follow the open of another email (ideally with a delay!).

Apple is pushing this problem even further by downloading every image in emails through proxy servers, including the important tracking pixel (actually a transparent image the size of one screen pixel).

Luckily for B2B marketers, this is only the case for paying iCloud+ subscribers. This makes it less of an issue for B2B emails, but the trend is here to stay.

Marketing automation platforms previously relied on third-party cookies to filter bot from real traffic. The focus is now on finding other (better) ways to identify bots.

Writing first-party cookies on behalf of marketing automation platforms through plugins and APIs creates more work for IT teams, but it’s likely the best solution.

So, where to from here?

Worry less about open rates, and even click-through rates, and focus on actual engagement.

Are your users really engaging with the content on offer? What is their time on your landing page and how many other pages do they visit? Are they converting? Having separate landing pages for your email campaigns can make tracking a whole lot easier – and is also likely to create a less distracting experience.

Lastly, make sure your marketing automation platform has tools to measure, filter and block bot activity. Our marketing automation health check can point you in the right direction.

For B2B marketers wanting to keep abreast of the latest trends in B2B, we are launching our annual B2B Outlook research study soon with insights from B2B CMOs around the world. You can download the current version, which will let you know how to participate in the upcoming study.

Jakob Naumann is the Head of Digital Experience at Green Hat, Australia’s largest B2B agency.

It’s been hard to miss Binge’s latest campaign promoting House of the Dragon, the prequel to the wildly popular Game of Thrones series. The inescapable three-month long effort – which finishes this month – dropped by Federation Square in Melbourne, a gelato store in Newtown, and toured Australia with a travelling Iron Throne, among other activations.

“At every touchpoint, around every corner and in every channel, people will be seeing and hearing about dragons,” said Binge’s executive director Alison Hurbert-Burns early in the takeover. 

“House of the Dragon is the year’s biggest TV show, so naturally we wanted to go big with our campaign.” 

With the help of agency partners Thinkerbell, Mindshare, We Are Social, Wonder and Habitat, Binge delivered the largest scale campaign it has ever implemented since launching in 2020.

But before blazing through city centres, House of the Dragon promo began in the much quieter Victorian town of Anglesea. 

House of the Dragon visits Anglesea

Nestled at the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, where “bush meets sea”, Anglesea has a population of just over 3000 people, according to the last census. Another few thousand holidaymakers usually funnel into this popular destination over summer.

On a chilly winter morning on Thursday 18 August, a mysterious four-metre-high dragon egg appeared on the shore of the main beach. 

The stunt garnered social media attention, spurred on by a video series across Matt ‘the Outback Wrangler’ Wright’s Instagram and TikTok, which showed him “discovering” the egg.

As soon as news outlets began reporting the story, Binge swiftly trucked the egg over to Federation Square for its next installation.

@mattwrightau Move a dragon’s egg into Melbourne without it hatching? No worries, she’ll be right! Thanks for lending a helping hand @binge #HouseoftheDragon #ad ♬ original sound – Matt Wright

A Targaryen egg on the Surf Coast is not the first time a massive brand campaign has landed in regional Australia.

Queer Eye drops by Yass

Netflix’s Queer Eye press tour in 2018 included a stopover in the rural New South Wales town Yass, where the Fab Five filmed a mini episode for social media.

The name Yass is believed to be derived from the Aboriginal word ‘Yharr’, meaning ‘running water’. Queer Eye’s marketing team, which also included We Are Social, adopted a different interpretation. 

For anyone who knew the show, the location was a symbolic nod to cast member Jonathan Van Ness’ penchant for the ball culture catchphrase “yass queen”. 

 

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A post shared by Queer Eye (@queereye)

Daft Punk in Wee Waa

And who can forget when Daft Punk, one of the most influential acts in dance music history, threw an album launch in Wee Waa, population 2000, in 2013. 

News outlets and social media users kept asking the question: why Wee Waa? The place was unfamiliar even to most Australians. 

But the continuous speculation was itself the answer. Without even having to attend the party in Australia’s Cotton Capital, the French duo’s earned media echoed around the globe.

Cities vs small communities

At the most simplistic level, bringing these big names to sleepy towns generates talking points, says Dr Susie Khamis, an associate professor and head of strategic communication at the University of Technology Sydney.

“On the one hand these are global, very cosmopolitan, very sort of ‘now’ brands, if you like, and to see them somehow just land in these regional outposts, it’s a bit like an alien: something exotic, something super glamorous and famous. Just that anomaly creates buzz,” she says. 

“When there’s an element of intrigue or secrecy, you also motivate people to investigate some more and Google and think deeper. That kind of labour is so important for building investment in the story.”

Getting your brand name in lights in highly populated areas might seem like the obvious choice for marketers. But all three of these examples provide a compelling case for a quirky alternative.

“If they had just gone to the city centres, it might not necessarily have had the same ‘wow-factor’ because generally we’re very used to seeing our city centres awash with that kind of glamour or slick marketing,” says Khamis.

Brands can still reach city slickers and the wider community while visiting small towns, and perhaps with less red tape and a smaller budget. In the case of the House of the Dragon stunt, that broad social media audience was actually the target, more so than the locals taking pictures on their phones.

“It wasn’t long until the news spread and captured the attention of fans nationally, which was always our goal,” a Thinkerbell Spokesperson tells Marketing.

Tourism cashes in

In terms of who are the chief beneficiaries of these campaigns, it’s “layered and complex”, says Khamis. 

“There’s kind of an economic and cultural logic at work here because, for example, more centralised tourism bureaus are really trying to open up tourists’ eyes beyond the obvious go-tos and landmarks.” 

“The local tourism bureaus would no doubt love when these kinds of things happen because it brings a lot of positive energy, but also attention, to these outer areas,” she adds.

After Queer Eye came to Yass, its mayor told the ABC there was an influx of day trippers pumping money into the local economy. So much so, cafes started opening on Sundays. 

It was essentially a free marketing campaign for the town. Even today, Yass Valley Tourism still milks its Queer Eye-tinerary.

While House of the Dragon, Queer Eye and Daft Punk’s campaigns were unique, they all drew tourism, locals, fans abroad and the brands themselves into the spectacle. 

Pulled off organically, a big campaign in a small town can be a win-win for multiple stakeholders. The story sticks in the minds of otherwise distracted consumers and has the potential to live on, as it has on the Wee Waa website nearly a decade later.

When it comes to tech brands; does disruption stop at the product?  

In recent statistics published by CB Insights, it was stated that 70 percent of startup tech companies fail. There are myriad reasons for these failures, but perhaps the most significant is when the people inside the business focus exclusively on the product; at the expense of emotive, action-oriented content. 

Startups and scaleups universe

Tech companies, like all businesses, are customer-obsessed. However, in the early period of growth, this lens tends to be numbers-based and product-focused, not brand-focused. For startups and scaleups, the pressure to meet the needs of investors and drive rapid growth means both the traditional brand building model is often ignored or abandoned.  

In a sector dominated by hard measurement, the traditionally ‘less tangible’ brand metrics are easily rejected in favour of growth and sales metrics. Yet, as hard measurements of branding efficacy and impact evolve; so too has the pandemic more than proven that the impact of experiences, connections and emotions can be transformative for a business. Particularly a tech business.  

Technology has the power to change the world, but only if consumers realise its benefits. Sadly, though, the sector’s preference for product and function-focused marketing means consumers often don’t understand the benefits or the impact the product could have on their lives.    

Tech brands have relied on the disruption of the sector to propel their brands; however, this is no longer enough. With so many brands vying for people’s time and attention, tech brands have to apply disruptive, human-centric thinking throughout all marketing and brand activities – creating emotional connections with people – or risking failing altogether.  

It seems alarmist, but research from Hotwire Australia and The University of Sydney Business School has revealed the power of brand marketing and people-centric messaging and its potential to make or break tech businesses. 

The unprecedented research study, which examined the branding techniques used by tech startups and scaleups, revealed a sector obsessed with blue logos, descriptive names, functional brand taglines and product-centric marketing.  

In this sea of sameness, there were very few startups and scaleups using any emotional brand messaging – and there was very little brand awareness among consumers.  

Global tech powerhouses

On the contrary, a review of the global tech powerhouses leading the market revealed the opposite; these brands adopted more abstract names and taglines and employed more emotional people-centric storytelling.   

The research confirmed that consumers are more likely to seek out information on brands that create emotional connections. The brands that combine product-focused marketing with more emotional people-centric messaging are more likely to drive growth.  

While this may shock a sector dominated by engineers and product specialists, it will not surprise many marketers. However, it highlights the need for the broader marketing industry to champion the power and value of brand to the tech sector.

In an industry more familiar with growth, sales and equity measures, there is a hugely important job to be done to elevate the value of brand metrics, and the importance of messaging that creates authentic human connections.  

By elevating tech brands to be more memorable and meaningful, marketers can unlock their business’ potential and drive real financial outcomes. 

Jaime Nelson is the managing director at Hotwire Australia.

I’ve been reading some recent commentary comparing B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing – the similarities, the differences and the size of the gap in between. It is good to discuss. The complexity of the B2B segment is growing, so now is the time to deep dive on its marketing.

It’s good to discuss as awareness and complexity of the B2B segment grows. 

This article focuses on important gaps that require different thinking and strategy for B2B. It goes beyond ‘stating the obvious’ such as different market sizes and the fact that all buyers are humans. 

If you’re a CMO, CRO or CEO of a B2B business, read on to understand what skills and experience you need in a high-performance B2B marketing team that is not found in your traditional B2C team.

Fuelling this debate is as important now as ever. B2B has become its own specialisation in marketing. CMOs are under more pressure to have a measurable impact on growth, and in order to rise to the top, they need a deep understanding of the business buying process and strong alliance with the sales organisation.  

The five pillars of B2B and B2C marketing differentiation

The hybrid firms doing both B2B and B2C are the best placed to see the need for specialisation. They do not ask their B2B team to run B2C and visa-versa. 

Here’s five key factors driving this evolution.

Difference #1: the buying journey

Firstly, the average duration of the buying B2B process is long. We often quote it being three months to three years. B2C is typically a much shorter transactional process – from the daily spontaneity of FMCG to the more considered multiple-month purchase cycle in the auto sector. The B2B buyer rarely follows the breadcrumbs we may lay on the path to purchase. They usually start by researching online to find solutions to their business problem which requires the savvy marketer to have placed relevant content in the right places.

We know there are certain phases B2Bers pass through:

• Awareness – growing their understanding of the problem, the macro and industry trends, the benefits of solving the problem, how others has addressed the task.
• Consideration – unpacking the solution options which will include outsourcing, insourcing, hybrid models or even ‘doing nothing’. During this stage they will formulate a view around a preference and build out their business case.
• Decision – engaging the preferred vendor/s (if they have not already), delving into the details, refining the business case, getting references, negotiating the deal.

We do not rely on the buyer going through the stages, content and channels in a sequential process. It’s more a simultaneous backward-and-forward motion that might look like
a bowl of spaghetti.

Way back in 2012, Lori Wizdo from Forrester changed what the process and channels looked like.

The fact that the B2B journey is more complex than B2C is not new. Marketers need to run a 24×7 always-on program that provides insights and content that the buyer can self-serve at their convenience – not when the seller wants or expects that consumption to happen. And, by the way, the buyer will decide what channel and device that will be on, which also is variable. 

Difference #2: the buying party

What is the buying party? It is a group of decision makers, recommenders, influences and users who are involved in the decision to buy – as well as external advisors and influencers.

In B2C, the ‘buying party’ is generally one. The consumer decides what shoes, mobile phone, book or, for that matter, brand of spaghetti they will buy – solo. 

In a business, the buying party can vary from as little as three or as much as 30, if not more. The size is often a function of the investment – the bigger the investment, the more people involved. Our research (‘Dark Funnel’ online seminar survey March 2022) found that more than half of B2B marketers have between six to ten people in the buying party. 

Gartner quotes the same six to ten people on average in the buying party and that each of these people are armed with several information assets.

Gartner also refers to six core B2B buying jobs that align to the three stages mentioned above. As marketers, we need to consider which buying party members are involved in which jobs and what information they need at that stage. For example, we don’t want to serve up technical information to a CFO, nor want to send macro market insights to a buying party at the decision stage. 

B2C marketers have to address the buying journey of one consumer, usually with a focus on brand awareness with a single proposition followed by buy-now sales activation offers. B2B marketers have to address taking many buyers on a mid-long term journey with multiple personalised messages and content for many stages (jobs). They have to keep the virtual engagement alive and their brand front-of-mind for months/years until the buyer is ready to engage with the selling organisation.

Difference #3: the investment 

The next significant B2B/B2C difference is the investment involved. It’s true that there can be high investment scenarios in B2C such as house/property, education and luxury vehicles. These are ‘considered purchases’ that can mirror the B2B journey in terms of time but not complexity of decision making. 

B2B buying complexity grows in correlation to investment value which we see broadly across the $10,000 to $1,000,000 range. For larger investments, we generally stop talking about products and services and start talking about the marketing of ‘solutions’ to business problems which need a different mindset to B2C messaging.

As with B2C, B2B is interested in the customer lifetime value. However calculating this is more complex in B2B. 

B2Bers don’t have access to the vast lakes of data B2Cers have and hence have more difficulty in determining the likelihood of the next B2B purchase which in turn impacts calculation of CLV. And we want to understand CLV (or Annual Recurring Revenue for services related deals) so as to appropriate marketing spend. We of course want to invest more budget and effort in areas where we will get more return.

Difference #4: sales and marketing alignment

Herein lies the perennial opportunity space in B2B – ALIGNMENT. I don’t want to call it a problem as I prefer to take a positive stance. It’s a growth opportunity. 

B2B marketers generally do not collaborate well with the sales counterparts. Only 52 percent have a strategic relationship according to the Green Hat/BBN/AMI B2B Outlook Research report. In fact I think that is overstated when one unpacks the tactical activity.

Alignment of what I hear you asking?

• shared Goals – without sharing goals, silos can form;
• language – same definitions for Ideal Customer Profile, Target Account List, Marketing Qualified Account/Lead;
• process – sales and marketing working together on lead management through the stages versus throwing Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) over the fence to sales and hoping to convert Sales Qualified Leads (opportunities);
• systems – integrated CRM to marketing automation/website platforms for streamlined data flow; and
• customer/market insights – the collaboration ‘war’ room to share insights to drive targeting, messaging, content.

A B2C marketer would need to have a significant mind-shift to be able to fill the B2B sales and marketing alignment void – a challenge most B2B marketers still have not solved!

And let’s remember that B2B firms are primarily sales’ led, not marketing-led like B2C firms (with some exceptions like auto/property). The B2B sales leader has the louder voice and influence with the CEO/CFO which means the B2B CMO needs to be on top of this alignment opportunity and lead the firm through to the promised land. 

The take-away: alignment is a tough ask for a B2C marketer with a limited understanding of the needs of B2B Sales and how to align marketing to meet those.

This is all without even touching on alignment for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) – an account-centric approach to B2B that is the strategy-du-jour and fast becoming the way B2B work will be done in the future. If you want to understand more about ABM, check out the BBN podcast here.

Difference #5: rational versus emotional connection

Finally there is ‘connection’ or, more often in B2B, what marketers call ‘engagement’. 

B2B decisions are more weighted to rational analysis than emotional connection. We know the buyers are ‘humans’ (please don’t tell me again) and so the buyer feels emotion with everything they do. 

In B2B, the message, creative and content needs to address business problems and challenges. The deeper insight the marketer has of the ‘rational factors’, the better chance of making a sustainable connection with the buying party of the business. 

Examples of these rational factors in B2B are ROI, functional fit, differentiation and proof of performance. They often lead to a binary response. It does or it doesn’t. Does this solution meet our internal investment benchmark? Does it have feature X or function Y? Can they provide evidence that validates their claim?

Don’t get me wrong here. B2Bers do want to find ways to emotionally connect and can see the value in doing so. The buyer’s personal value is a key territory for messaging. The B2B buyer thinks and feels the following:

• Is this brand I am intending to propose known? And if so, is it respected by the people internally and advisors that matter? 
• Do I trust the seller (their people and their capability) to deliver? 
• How will this decision impact my reputation in the firm?
• How will it impact my future promotional opportunities (and remuneration)?
• Can I work with this seller – especially relevant in long-term solution selling? Is the chemistry right as this seller relationship could be for the long haul?

Whereas the B2C marketer will spend more time thinking about how they can get the consumer to love their brand, the B2B marketer today spends more time making rational connections, with consideration here to the length of the buying cycle and size of investment covered earlier. Rightly or wrongly.

The times they are a’changing 

“Come gather round people wherever you roam, And admit that the waters around you have grown,” Bob Dylan.

Cannes Lions acknowledge the times are a’changing – it has now launched the Creative B2B Lion and an evolved Creative Commerce Lion to recognise great B2B work. 

We recognise that ‘Marketing is still Marketing’. The 4 Ps (or however many Ps in your pod!) remain the same in theory. Both marketing genres come from the same school of marketing and thankfully are learning from each other. For example, B2B is learning about the art of emotional connection with the buyer and B2C is learning about direct-to-consumer journey mapping and longer term engagement for considered purchases.

But there is no doubt the times a’changing for B2B marketers, Performance expectations continue to rise. The B2B CEO wants more measurable impact from his marketing team. Today, most aspects of marketing contribution are trackable with data-driven martech and advances in AI and machine learning. Further, the buyer has changed the way they buy and thus become invisible for much of their long journey.

As you can read in Green Hat’s annual B2B Outlook Research Report, best-in-class B2B marketers are honing their skills to better understand the spaghetti B2B journey, the buying party and personas, account targeting and sales alignment – all specialist skills unique to the B2B universe.

Andrew Haussegger is co-founder and CEO of Green Hat, born in 2001 and grown up to be Australia’s largest B2B agency.

With ‘Airwrap’ becoming a verb, it’s a good time to look at how brand names can influence consumer language.

Dyson is well-known for its revolutionary vacuum cleaners, but when it entered the world of haircare, it changed the market entirely. 

As the brand’s success continues, I was interested to see how the Airwrap has transformed our linguistics as consumers.

The Dyson Airwrap has been a real game changer in hair styling tools. 

Engineered with an aerodynamic concept dubbed the ‘Enhanced Coanda airflow’, the $899 tool boasts a ‘no extreme heat damage’ function, allowing it to style hair safely. 

Despite the high price tag, the product was an overnight success online, as influencers raved about the hair styling tool.

The brand is now conducting a tour around the UK to familiarise the Brits with the transformational possibilities of Dyson’s hair tools. Across multiple locations, free 30-minute styling sessions are being offered to convert the curious into customers who will buy the products. 

There’s no doubt that the ongoing promotions, rave reviews and influence on social media have given the Airwrap a huge amount of attention, but have they also influenced the way we speak about it?

As consumers, we are familiar with brands becoming embedded in our language. For example, it’s common to hear people saying Band-Aid instead of ‘bandage’ or ‘sticking plaster’, or hoovering (after the Hoover brand of vacs) instead of vacuuming. Another popular and even more recent example is people saying ‘Google it’ instead of ‘search’ or ‘look it up online’, which many people will do now without even thinking.

What exactly is this?

The phenomenon is called brand language – a marketing technique used to help consumers identify and strike connections between specific words and a given product or service. 

And we are now seeing on social media apps like TikTok everyday people using ‘airwrap’ in their vocabulary as a household word.

Interestingly, James Dyson once revealed it was his ambition to see his name replace ‘Hoover’ in the dictionary as the verb meaning to vacuum clean. Instead of doing the Hoovering, he wanted ordinary people to begin saying they were ‘Dysoning’. Well, that hasn’t come to pass as yet, but with the fame of the Airwrap, Dyson may have succeeded this time. 

The emergence of new brands is constantly changing linguistics.  According to language experts, the internet has become one of the biggest influences on the English language, regularly providing new additions to our vocabulary. Social media is a rich playground for users, creators and businesses to experiment in creating new words. It provides a platform for people who aren’t familiar with grammatical rules and syntax, and gives them a freedom to use unconventional words. 

As language evolves, businesses like Google and Disney have effectively managed to build strong associations with their brands and everyday words. They have been able to create a strong brand language, but does this mean the Dyson Airwrap will become cemented as part of our lexicon? 

Language follows changes in consumer behaviour and, as trends change, will the Airwrap evolve with them?

Who built the Dyson empire?

James Dyson was the inventor of the range of famous products that bear his name and facilitated the development of new technologies. His frustrations with vacuum cleaners influenced the motivation behind his first bagless vacuum cleaner. 

At first, the innovative eponymous vacuum failed to make many sales. But after 1995, it became a massive hit in UK stores. Since then, the Dyson has become a worldwide phenomenon.

The company moved into haircare in 2012 with a $50 million investment into the development of the Dyson Supersonic hairdryer. The company’s engineers found that a powerful airflow could be achieved if air was taken into a motor and accelerated over an annular aperture.

Oh, what a dance salary discussions are in the marketing world. Even in 2022 where there is a market sway to candidates, the salary floor is often very slippery. It’s time to also knock the salary based on experience nonsense on its head.

Losing power

I have coached hundreds of executives and professionals in their marketing and associated careers and job search. And the salary dance conversation is one of the most difficult ones to have.

Even the most powerful senior candidates acquiesce power once in the hiring ecosystem. And many brilliant women forget the ferocious negotiation skills they use in their actual work. Ironic isn’t it?

Get salaries into the open

Candidates are advised not to bring up salary upfront. But why not?   

Take a leaf from the public sector who always advertise salary bands. It just feels deceitful to hide the dollars.

Current salary is irrelevant

In our culture whilst we are not overly offended with monetary dialogue, it would still be considered rude to dance up to someone and demand to know what they earn. 

And yet so many recruiters/hiring companies think that they should ask such a direct and frankly illogical question to job seekers upfront and without any regard.  

 It shouldn’t be a question of ‘what you are earning now’ but ‘what are the salary range expectations for a role based on your experience and skills and ability to do the actual job’ – period. 

This also sets up a framework for candidates to grossly exaggerate their current salary. It’s a bit like going into a car dealership – both parties are poised to hustle and walk in with ‘attitude’ hence time is wasted unnecessarily.

Transparency matters

Marketing have well-documented salary industry charts to match skills, experience and education. Hence the broadly accepted salary range for positions is quite transparent in the marketplace generally. 

The way the issue of salary is raised and dealt with upfront by all parties will minimise the risk of disappointment and wastage of time for everyone. 

For recruiters and hirers

Be upfront. Look at the exact needs of the job you are hiring for and give the role a definite and well regarded salary level to attract the level of skills required. 

Have a strong and detailed (aka not cut and paste) Job Description and Key Criteria list to ensure the candidate is on the same page as the goals and KPIs

Be realistic that at any given time there may be a candidate market shortage as now and hence your desired 100 percent score of skills sought may not be fully met.  

It also ends in grief when a company offers a salary below standard/market rates to try and save money etc- often from a platform of ‘we are so good to work for we don’t need to pay great.’  

Forget the ‘the salary based on experience’ nonsense

It’s lazy, illogical and often deceitful hiring to advertise ‘salary based on experience’ 

In reality unless the actual tasks and KPIs of a role change with the successful candidate, why would experience drive the salary? Come on its code for ‘trying to get someone cheaper’.

If a company wants to hire a candidate for a different set of tasks then create a different role and salary, simple!

Again, if the job itself doesn’t change, why should the salary? It should be fair and good in the first place. 

It is astounding how many candidates go through a long interview process, get offered a role but at the last minute are advised that they aren’t experienced / good enough to have the originally quoted  salary. 

Candidates rightly are furious (as they were given the salary upfront) that all their time has been wasted.

Now let’s also be fair – there are often times when a company feels forced into offering a salary range far above the jobs tasks because the talent shortage is so abysmal. 

Great that they are willing to be flexible for sure – great attitude. But I have observed that a higher salary just isn’t a good enough reason for a great candidate to join you. 

And of course those candidates will jump again quickly when another super-duper salary carrot is offered.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting offering higher than the average salaries isn’t a good thing – sure it is. But for the right reasons and in the right time it will work wonderfully in the hiring process. 

But it shouldn’t be used as bait to get talent as if the role itself is below the candidates capabilities and career objectives, the $$ lure will wear off pretty quickly when boredom and dissatisfaction sets in.  

For candidates

Don’t fall into the trap of sharing your current salary.  It’s no one’s business except yours.

But you should know the market rate for the job and role you are seeking and are qualified for.  

Then start your salary dance from a position of strength and self-worth. When asked that/ or what salary are you seeking – be clear and upfront with:

‘I’m seeking a salary package circa in the vicinity of this amount  Are we aligned here in the same ballpark?’

Get clarity that your expectations are in alignment.   You must know your worth and value.

You should also be a little flexible as should the hiring company. .If you are seeking circa $150,000 and the company is offering a circa $145,000 all parties should be willing to negotiate. But a significant salary gap is a waste of time as it is a misalignment across all expectations.

Do not exaggerate what you are seeking based on current earnings – i.e.: if you are currently on $110,000 you will not do anyone or yourself any favours if you state you are earning $170,000 and seek that level or more.   I saw that many times in my recruitment agency and knew they were pork pies.

Unless you are being dreadfully underpaid in your current role (and that’s another discussion on exploitation) focus on the requirements, success factors and market rates for the new role.

If you are stepping up to a higher position then of course the salary should be commensurate with that if you are the right candidate.

Don’t tarnish your own integrity with changing your salary expectations at the offer stage. If you don’t want the role at the end of the hiring process (which of course is a candidates right) don’t try and ask for more dollars than was discussed as your expectations at the front end. The dance will stop!

Be honest, if you don’t want the role – tell the company/recruiter. But the way the dance starts will determine the last foot moves!

Now with candidates who are transitioning into a new industry, role etc with a deep learning curve ahead, please be realistic that you may have to take a salary cut. Hey, that fair and reasonable a salary vs skills trade-off negotiation may need to take place.  

The salary dance is a tricky one, and we are talking about a person’s career, financial stability, self esteem and respect.

Hiring processes and the salary dance can and must do better. Everyone will benefit.