2025 AGENCY SCORECARDS
Zenith
Team PROFILE
Agency type
media agency
Ownership
Publicis Groupe
tagline
The ROI Agency
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Jason Tonelli
TEAM CAPTAIN
Jonny Cordony
MD Sydney
Megan Kay
MD Melbourne
Warwick Taylor
MD Brisbane & national head of operations
Elizabeth Baker
chief investment officer
Joshua Lee
National Head of Digital and Data
Penny Shell
Chief Strategy & Product Officer
Justine Jones
Finance Director
Madel Guevarra
Head of People & Culture
KEY STATS
offices
Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane
HEADCOUNT
200+
gender balance
Total: 24% male, 65% female, 11% non-binary. Leadership 44% male, 56% female.
CLIENT WINS
10
CLIENT RETENTIONS
Confidential
recma compitches
B
recma profile classification
High
LARGEST CLIENTS
Aldi
Disney
Adobe
TROPHY CABINET
MFA Awards
1
B&T's season report
The 2024 season was an impressive showing for Zenith, though it didn’t quite reach the heady heights of its previous year when its billings grew a third in a market that went back 2.7 per cent.
Instead, 2024 was about doubling down on its ROI positioning and unlocking new media potential for clients, as well as ensuring that its staff are enjoying their playing time as much as possible. With team captain Jason Tonelli at the helm, widely regarded as one of the nicest leaders in adland, that’s not a problem. It also shouldn’t be surprising that 98 per cent of its staff were proud of the work and 80 per cent agreed Zenith allowed them to succeed to their full potential, no matter who they were.
Across the course of the season, Zenith won 10 clients, including Stockland, Arrotex, Spotify and the Autosports Group. It did lose Honda, with the Japanese marque consolidating its media, creative and production with Howatson+Company.
Zenith claims its ‘Imagine Panel’ grew to become the largest single source consumer panel in Australia, beating Roy Morgan’s for size and regularity. It’s also able to derive consumer segments from the Imagine Panel and build a unique, cookie-less first party dataset from scratch for ALDI. This work earned it a Gold at the 2024 MFA Awards for Data-Led Activation.
Zenith was also inducted into the UNLTD Hall of Good award for its work for Missing Schools. The agency also generated $7.7 million in media impact for pro-bono charities including the Children’s Cancer Institute, Queensland Positive People and Act for Kids.
Zenith committed to engaging deeply with the industry. It partnered with B&T on its CMOs to Watch series and continued its existing CMO Roundtable dinners, bringing brand, category and Zenith leaders together to chat about retail media, the cost of living and the 2024 budget.
Its investment team received its 14th consecutive year of verified best-in-marketing trading positions for audited clients by Ebiquity. Zenith said that recognition reflected the team’s learning, market intelligence and capability development across screen, out-of-home and audio.
campaign HIGHLIGHTS REEL
‘#ALDIcore’, ALDI Australia
Despite ALDI’s growing customer base due to its affordability in the cost-of-living crisis, the majority of its new customers felt they were driven to shop there out necessity rather than affinity. Challenged with future proofing these new customers, we had to spark a sense of emotional pride in shopping at ALDI, ultimately driving brand loyalty and long-term customer growth. We identified more than 760,000 ALDI shoppers who ‘prefer shopping at ALDI’ and are currently ‘highly satisfied with their supermarket’. 40% of these ‘fans’ were keen to share their experiences on social platforms. We badged them ready to sing the brand’s praises.
We challenged our ALDI fans to highlight how #ALDIcore they were for the chance to win three years of free groceries and possibly be celebrated by ALDI through additional paid, owned and earned media. We identified fans who were already #ALDIcore and rewarded them in uniquely ALDI ways, landing them coverage on national news broadcasts across TV and online. From there we invited others to join the #ALDIcore with a broadcast campaign and a participation-driving mobile and social campaign. As more Australian shoppers entered their #ALDIcore credentials, we shared user generated entries across dynamic OOH, display, and social.
#ALDIcore was about creating a movement amongst fans, celebrating ALDI as a place you should WANT to shop and be proud to shop, showcasing that plenty of others feel the same. This piece of work demonstrates that our ROI3 approach is not limited to paid media. Starting with an owned and earned approach, we built an ‘infinite fan-first eco-system’ – where ALDI’s biggest fans were amplified in media to grow the fandom. Only ALDI could make everyday shoppers famous with imaginative, new talent integration that drove long-term behaviour shift for grocery shoppers – lifting main shop consideration and positive NPS.
‘Gallery of Emotions’, Disney
The cinema release of Inside Out 2 required us to connect with families with children in the critical school holiday period, when facing stiff competition from other popular cinematic family releases. We launched a national competition on radio for kids to draw or paint the Inside Out 2 emotion that best reflected their own feelings and enter their artwork in the ‘Gallery of Emotions’ art show.
The best pieces were showcased in an exhibition at The North Gallery in Fitzroy and broadcast nationally on socials, web and on air. Unaware that the artists were children, the public could then bid on the kids’ artwork and the highest bid winner earned a trip to an exclusive Inside Out 2 screening. A new gallery space for Disney, and new Inside Out 2 brand assets created by the brand’s biggest fans – plus the film broke all Australian box office records.
This work goes beyond just the promotion of a movie and maximising eyeballs on the trailer, by bringing to life the core theme of the film and making its meaning personal. We made Inside Out 2 more than just an entertainment experience for children and their families by having them take ownership of the narrative and migrate the message from the screen to the real world.
‘SUBHOURS’, Subway
The quick service restaurant (QSR) category sales at lunchtime had declined significantly in 2024, and as the reigning leader in lunch Subway sought to reclaim market share. The ‘SUBHOURS’ partnership between Subway, News Australia and Publicis Groupe’s TeamFresh boosted brand engagement, action and transaction metrics, demonstrating its effectiveness in converting audience interaction into tangible outcomes.
By leveraging News Australia’s deep audience insights and data-driven targeting through Intent Connect, Subway engaged consumers with personalised, timely messages during high-receptivity moments, particularly in the lunch-trigger window. The campaign employed dynamic creative formats like Subscroller (a newly created bespoke format for this partnership) and Truskins, alongside premium editorial placements to enhance contextual relevance and reinforce brand value.
Through collaborating with News Australia, this campaign proved the power of establishing a shared currency to best create, apply and convert behavioural and data-led audience segmentation. While the QSR category typically focuses on their own app and ecosystem data assets, by fusing a dataset outside Subway’s brand world, we successfully converted new customers to the brand and encouraged new behaviours in category. This partnership brought together data strategy and creativity, and demonstrated the full potential of our Power of One model with Publicis Groupe.
Zenith's ANALYSIS
In 2024, we took our renewed view of ROI3 to the next level, achieving industry recognition at each stage: Insight, Imagination and Investment.
The evolution of our Imagine Consumer Panel from a source of real-time consumer insights to a source of cookieless first-party data we can activate against, won us Gold at the MFA Awards for Data-Led Activation.
We unlocked unbriefed spend on proactive solutions with our Imagination Sprints and gained industry recognition for our pro bono charity work from UnLtd. Meanwhile, our investment team received its 14th consecutive year of verified best-in-marketing trading positions for audited clients by Ebiquity.
Our collective efforts saw 98 per cent of our staff proud of the work we produced in 2024. Furthermore, 80 per cent of our staff agreed that at Zenith everyone can succeed to their full potential, no matter who they are. We were recognised by two renowned award schemes, taking home Media Agency of the Year with a local trade publication and Bronze with Campaign Asia. We then rounded out the year together in the Hunter Valley, setting our sights on the opportunities for 2025.
mvp award
Lory Vecchio, National Reporting Director
Zenith’s data wizard, crafts real-time dashboards, delivering dazzling insights and critical intelligence. A true behind- the-scenes hero!
B&T's agency score
Zenith: 8
COACH's COMMENT:
Topping last season’s nearly best-in-class performance would have been some doing but Zenith performed admirably again, firming its place among Australia’s best media agencies.
