B&T's CMO Power List 2026, presented by atn
Our industry is at a time of nearly unprecedented flux. Rapidly evolving technologies, significant demographic shifts and a seemingly unceasing sense of economic anxiety are all coalescing to create challenging operating conditions. As Sir John Hegarty recently told us, there hasn’t been as seismic a disruption to our world since the advent of commercial TV.
But in this time of change, opportunity arises. And these 20 marketing leaders are the ones most thoroughly and successfully grasping those opportunities. They’re also the 20 marketing leaders that exercise an outsized sway on the country we all call home.
With the help of our friends at the Australian Association of National Advertisers, and presented by atn, we’ve picked the crème de la crème of Australia’s marketing industry. These are the most powerful marketers in the country.
The word power is intentional. Power is exercised in different ways. For instance, some brands in this list affect the lives of every single Australian, every single day. Several have the power to transform someone’s life. Others, meanwhile, are re-examining the way that our industry works and functions through new tools, technologies and approaches. Others have made such a big impact on the Australian (and sometimes global) cultural fabric over the past 12 months that have simply been impossible to ignore.
They all have one thing in common, however. They are all marketers that you can learn from.
To learn, however, one needs to pay attention. And that’s why we’re delighted to yet again partner with atn. The team there knows about attention—in fact it’s their preferred currency and raison d’etre. With the media world facing all manner of challenges, atn is one business that consistently delivers exceptional results for its clients when others are struggling. We’re also indebted to our friends at Made In Katana whose studios, photographers, stylists and producers made this our best-looking CMO Power List yet.
Whittling down our CMO Long List to this final 20 is no mean feat. But we’ve done it. And, one should note, not all of these marketers have ‘chief marketing officer’ as their job title. The industry is moving and so are the ways marketing teams are shaped, organised and managed. This list reflects that.
But that’s enough from us. Here, in alphabetical order only, is the 2026 CMO Power List.
Annabel Fribence
McDonald's
It hasn’t taken long for Annabel Fribence to get her feet under the desk at McDonald’s. Less than a year into her new role, when asked how she was settling in at the Golden Arches, she quipped: “I’m Lovin’ It!”.
Fribence is one of the most well-respected QSR marketers in the country and returned to the sector after a stint leading marketing at Westpac. She first worked for Maccas between 2009 and 2011 and KFC for nine years, rising to Asia Central CMO and leading the famous ‘Shut up and Take My Money’ campaign.
Nowadays, it’s Macca’s summer Grinch campaign, ‘I’m ruining it’, and the Grinch Meal that is bringing Fribence joy.
“It’s Maccas at its best,” she said. “It has this cheeky reverence to it, a beautiful product and we’ve got a little sand globe, rather than a snow globe, because the Grinch is ruining Christmas Down Under.
“Our team members are all engaged. Our franchisees have embraced it, so the restaurants have come to life in the Christmas spirit. It’s injected so much energy and optimism, not only for our customers, but for the whole organisation.”
This kind of creative excellence is no stranger to McDonald’s locally. It’s produced some stand-out work over the past few years from its agencies including Akcelo, Wieden+Kennedy and formerly DDB.
For Fribence, great work is about pushing ‘fan truths’, which are grounded in authentic insights, understanding customers and how they connect with McDonald’s products. But it’s not the entire puzzle.
“You also have to take a brave leap in terms of execution. I say to the team, ‘if it feels familiar, then it’s probably not brave enough,’” she said.
As such, Fribence describes herself as a hands-on leader who ensures her team is on top of the data and can combine the art and science of marketing.
"Roll your sleeves up, understand your portfolio, your customers, their behaviour and spend the time knowing your commercial and brand metrics."
Like every other business on this list, McDonald’s has not been immune from the effects of the cost of living crisis and soaring inflation.
To rise to the challenge, Fribence said Macca’s is “hyper-focused on delivering an exceptional product and an exceptional experience, because every transaction is so fragile to retain”.
When “every element of the P&L” is facing inflationary pressures, delivering that value is no mean feat. Fortunately, Fribence is well-versed in some of the key skills CMOs need today including stakeholder management, which she honed at Westpac, commercial acumen and curiosity.
“The pace of change in marketing science, the media landscape, changing customer needs, and consumption behaviours is so rapid. Without that element of curiosity and continuous improvement, you won’t be successful,” she said.
Curiosity is at the heart of the advice she offers the next generation of marketeers.
“Roll your sleeves up, understand your portfolio, your customers, their behaviour and spend the time knowing your commercial and brand metrics,” she said. “You want to be solving problems that keep your boss up at night.”
Never one to shirk the serious questions, we were keen to unearth one nugget from Fribence: her favourite McDonald’s character.
“That’s easy, it’s Grimace. I’m Team Grimace all the way. Did you know I got to dance with Grimace on the stage the other day and he got stuck climbing the stairs because of his rotund physique!”
And, in case you’re wondering, Fribence revealed that Grimace is actually supposed to be a taste bud.
“Seriously, what marketing department would say, ‘We’re going to do a taste bud, and he’s going to be called Grimace’. I think that’s creative bravery. It demands attention. It’s everything that we want to be as marketers.”
Anneliese Douglass
Nestlé
Nestlé’s Anneliese Douglass returns for the third time to B&T’s CMO Power List. And it’s been another standout 12 months for the FMCG marketing doyen.
One would be hard-pressed to find any Aussie household without at least one Nestlé product in its cupboards, fridge or freezer. But while that might tempt others to rest on their laurels, Douglass has continued to push for excellence and innovation across the organisation.
“The biggest misconception about FMCG is that our marketers spend a lot of time on what we call innovation, renovation and product development as well as communications,” she said.
“There are different types of marketers. Some just focus on comms, some on lower funnel, some upper funnel. But when you are an FMCG marketer, particularly within Nestlé, you spend a lot of time on product development. And that’s exciting, that’s fun for marketers to be able to observe consumer behaviour, spot the new trends coming in, the disruptors that they need to address within food choice.”
That holistic view of a marketer’s role within an organisation is reflected in the way Douglass and her team manage the business’ different brands, which include Cheerios, Nesquik, Maggi, Milo, KitKat and more.
“We have a brand-by-brand structure, so confectionery will sit in one with KitKat, Allen’s etc., you’ll have Nescafe, Maggi… There’s no Nestlé need, it’s the needs of KitKat and Nescafe consumers and therefore we look at the insights and marketing that communicate to those brands,” said Douglass.
“With KitKat, we talk a lot about our ‘Talkability’ strategy which is about driving fame for the brand and being always on. Marketers need to think about moving away from being campaign-based to moving to always on and making sure that you are getting scale in different ways than we have traditionally through a 30-second TVC.”
“The biggest misconception about FMCG is that our marketers spend a lot of time on what we call innovation, renovation and product development as well as communications."
Digital, naturally, is central to that strategy. But while many in the industry might chase the convenience—and potentially the quantification bias inherent in digital marketing and personalisation—Douglass, yet again, sees matters in the round.
“If you think about where we were with first party data 10 or 12 years ago, there was talk about personalisation at scale and using different, micro audiences and creativity. Now the discussion is slightly different and more nuanced, which is that you can’t reach anyone at scale, so you have to personalise. I still believe that you can reach people at scale and there are channels that do that extremely well. Outdoor is one of them, TV (with digital video, SVOD and BVOD) still does that. Personalisation at scale is an important part of your strategy, but it is not the only strategy,” she explained.
She takes the same approach with AI. While “everyone has a piece of tech” she’s only really interested in the tech if it’s “end to end”, which is where WPP Media and Saatchi & Saatchi, the agencies tasked with Nestle’s media planning and buying, as well as its creative work excel.
It’s an un-showy approach that might not readily generate headlines in the trade press. But it’s an approach that is relentlessly and refreshingly effective.
At the 2025 Austrlaian Effie Awards, for instance, Nestle’s team picked a bronze and a silver for Nescafé, and a silver and a gold for KitKat’s ‘Break Chair’.
“I was extremely proud of both teams. It’s an incredible achievement because it says that marketing has delivered return on investment,” she said of the win.
With a legion of powerful brands, a deeply effective team and sharper, smarter strategies, we wouldn’t bet against Douglass returning to the CMO Power List for a fourth, fifth, even sixth time in the years to come.
Brent Smart
Telstra
Brent Smart is one of the longest standing members of the CMO Power List, appearing first whilst he was helming NRMA Insurance. He’s appeared in subsequent three years on the spin as CMO of Telstra. Since joining the telco in September 2022, Smart has overseen a radical change in the way Telstra looks, feels, sounds and appears in the minds of consumers through unrivalled creative confidence and character.
“The important thing is to be really clear on why we need to be creative. We need to be creative at Telstra to drive reappraisal. We’ve done a really good job of improving the customer experience—best NPS scores ever, lowest complaints—and whilst our customers feel that, non-customers don’t. There’s a whole bunch of customers who judge us on what we were—not what we are,” Smart told B&T.
The gap between customers and non-customers, or the delta as Smart calls it, is measured through brand metrics and has been closing.
That customers are noticing the difference and appreciating the creativity is not surprising. Telstra’s creative brilliance, led in large part by main creative agency Bear Meets Eagle on Fire (BMEOF) with help from bespoke agency +61 which includes Omnicom’s TBWA, is recognised the world over. Rarely a month goes by when Smart or Micah Walker, the chief creative officer of BMEOF, are not posting to LinkedIn a trophy haul. But for Smart, one stands apart—its Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
“Winning a Grand Prix at Cannes doesn’t happen very often. It’s not just a 2025 highlight, it’s a career highlight. And we picked up eight Lions in total. I don’t do it for the awards. It’s not why I do what I do. But I passionately believe that creativity is the way that we can deliver maximum commercial impact as marketers and that’s why I do it. But awards are a way to benchmark,” Smart said.
“Are we world class? We think so.”
“To have eight Lions says that we’re the most creative brand from this part of the world. That was our ambition when I started three years ago. That felt really stretchy and a long way off. It has almost happened faster than I thought it would.”
While Telstra can now claim with as strong a justification as one is likely to find that it is the most creative brand in Australia, it is also comfortably the largest telco in the country. Its dominance extends across mobile phone plans, traditional landlines and even NBN plans according to data from the ACCC. But that position necessitates Telstra to work harder, according to Smart.
“To have eight Lions says that we’re the most creative brand from this part of the world. That was our ambition when I started three years ago... It has almost happened faster than I thought it would.”
“We’ve got a really clear strategy called Connected Future 30 and it’s focused on growing our core business. We’re all about core connectivity as a company… But it is hard to grow when you’re the biggest. It’s also hard to grow when you’re premium. But that’s my job, growing the brand while protecting the premium. It’s job number one, two and three. And growth comes from non-customers, not customers. That’s future demand and future growth,” Smart said.
“All the creative work is in service of that strategy. We’re not doing it to be creative. We’re not doing it to win awards. But we’re absolutely doing it because more creative brands are more effective. More creative brands grow faster.”
To that end, Telstra also won three silver and one bronze Australian Effies at last year’s ceremony. Few marketers are so willing to think and step outside of the box as Smart. Fewer still are able to turn curiosity and creativity into cold, hard cash so effectively.
Catherine Anderson
Origin Energy
After working in the energy sector for more than a decade, Origin’s CMO Catherine Anderson still talks about the category with a contagious enthusiasm. It’s a heavily regulated, politically charged and constantly evolving category. But for Anderson, energy is more than a utility; it’s one of the most consequential consumer categories in the country.
That sense of responsibility has shaped a year of change. On the surface, Origin’s new brand platform and refreshed visual identity marked a clear repositioning around usefulness, a deliberate response to consumers asking for help as they navigate rising costs, solar, batteries and electric vehicles. But Anderson is quick to point out that the real shift has happened behind the scenes.
Much of the past year has been about doubling down on its customer focus among the 2.5 million households which use an Origin service. Namely, the brand has rewarded loyalty, improved clarity and guided consumers through what can be stressful category entry points.
That thinking led to unconventional ideas, such as a partnership with 7-Eleven that funded free coffees during tough economic times, redirecting traditional marketing spend into tangible value for customers.
“Performance dollars, in my view, will always work better when we’re treating customers well. We’re rewarding them for their loyalty with us, and they feel comfortable in the decisions that they’re making,” Anderson said.
“We have heavy performance effort and targets, but we try to do that in an ecosystem of love and support and kindness for our customers as well.”
That belief has fundamentally shaped how Anderson builds her team. Rather than chasing new skillsets for their own sake, she has pulled customer experience closer to marketing, championing contact centre staff and embedding new initiatives such as regular “pause and listen” sessions where her marketers sit in on customer calls. The aim is simple: to understand where the system is failing people and fix it.
Empathy is the starting point. Energy customers don’t think about their provider until something goes wrong, and those moments often coincide with major life changes—moving house, financial stress, or new technologies.
Add Australia’s cultural and linguistic diversity, and the responsibility to communicate clearly becomes even sharper. Under Anderson, Origin has leaned into Easy English, community engagement and practical education, reframing marketing as a service as much as a message.
“There is a huge opportunity for Origin, government, communities and individual households to come together. The energy transition is happening, and it’s incredibly important. If we’re all in it together, it’s important to understand how to support each other."
That same philosophy extends to technology. Anderson’s approach to AI is pragmatic rather than evangelical. Origin’s teams learn by doing, sharing fortnightly experiments and tools that improve workflow, translation, tone of voice and accessibility. In servicing, AI helps handle simple queries and extend availability, while complex, emotionally charged conversations remain firmly human.
“There is a huge opportunity for Origin, government, communities and individual households to come together. The energy transition is happening, and it’s incredibly important. If we’re all in it together, it’s important to understand how to support each other,” Anderson said.
“As a marketer that feels a very deep responsibility to my customers, my role is to find the right partners to work with and the right education to produce.
“We have the opportunity to thread that story about the energy transition together with those groups. Marketers are great storytellers, so I love to use my skill in doing that to bring people together”.
Her own path into the role reflects that worldview. Early career years in Vietnam and Indonesia—working with brands including Coca-Cola, Google and MTV—were triggered by a desire to experience new perspectives. It sharpened her understanding of people navigating systems not designed for them, a lesson that continues to shape her leadership today.
In a category defined by its current systemic change, Anderson’s focus remains grounded: protect customers, simplify complexity and build trust over time. If marketing can do that, the commercial results tend to follow.
Dean Norbiato
KIA
KIA’s Dean Norbiato is now in his seventh year leading KIA’s marketing team. And frankly speaking, the Korean brand keeps on trucking its way into Aussie hearts. It has vaulted lofty hurdles over that time, too, and is currently in the midst of some of seismic changes to the sector.
The way consumers purchase cars is changing, with fewer people walking into dealerships looking for a deal. KIA, once a challenger, is now a firmly established incumbent in Australia’s automotive industry and it has a range of Chinese marques nipping at its heels.
Faced with these challenges, Norbiato’s deep experience and understanding of consumers means that KIA should remain in the driving seat for a while. That said, the job isn’t easy.
“[KIA] has to be a lot of things to a lot of people,” Norbiato told B&T.
“We sell a $20,000 light car, a $144,000 large SUV, and everything in between. Ensuring we kept the core of our brand identity was very challenging, because it’s easy to then splinter the brand and erode the core of what you stand for.”
To ensure that no model becomes the ugly duckling of the family, Norbiato keeps the customer riding shotgun in every decision.
“You need to understand the customer and how they engage with your comms—rather than imposing something on the public."
“It’s having a customer lens. That’s something that as marketers, we can often forget with the pressures that come into the job—like being pushed into a performance-based approach and not thinking more broadly about the brand marketing that fuels performance,” he said.
“You need to understand the customer and how they engage with your comms—rather than imposing something on the public—how they like to be marketed to, on what channels and communicating on a level that is easier for them to understand.
“I feel we did an excellent job on that with the Tasman in terms of the language we used, the areas that we turned up, the partnerships that we formed. The challenge is to ensure you’re doing it across EVs, as well. We use the Australian Open as a springboard to promote that range and it’ll be the same in 2026 when we launch our fifth battery electric vehicle into the market,” Norbiato added.
The Tasman’s launch certainly caught the eyeballs, and it’s selling and reviewing well, too.
That KIA is using sport as a vehicle to enter consumers’ minds should not be surprising—Norbiato is a self-confessed sports fanatic. But there’s also shrewd marketing and media thought behind the brand’s sporting overture to the market. In 2025, the Brisbane Broncos, complete with KIA’s logo front and centre on its jerseys, won the most-watched NRL Grand Final of all time. Achieving that level of broadcast cut-through in today’s world is rare, if not impossible, through traditional paid media.
“You want to look at affinity levels for that sport. You want to look at the population that overlaps with your intended audience. For instance, when you look at the light commercial segment, both NRL and Broncos fans, in particular, over-index. It seems like a fairly agricultural assumption and way to do it, but when you look at the data that sits behind it, the activity it generated from said customer base to our website and conversions, it was exceptionally strong,” said Norbiato.
“Fundamentally, it boils down and makes it an easier decision when there’s real business results that sit behind those partnerships. But there’s a lot of due diligence that goes into it.”
With a strong grasp on customer desires, a series of impressive wins in the bag, it seems to us that it’ll take a Herculean effort from any rivals to stop KIA’s seemingly inexorable rise.
Georgia Hack
L’Oréal
The past 12 months at L’Oréal Groupe ANZ have been driven by momentum. For chief digital and marketing officer, Georgia Hack, it has been a year of expanding capability at pace while sharpening the Groupe’s connection with an increasingly complex and diverse consumer.
“We’re in a very dynamic, fast-moving category. But our focus is on driving sustainable growth, while unlocking new pockets of growth across emerging segments, channels and consumers needs,” Hack told B&T.
That consumer-centric mindset has driven a re-imagination of how L’Oréal engages consumers across its 36 brands. Under Hack’s leadership, a foundation has been laid for a best-in-class digital and marketing function, embedding a stronger strategic alignment across content, media and channels, with unparalleled creativity.
One of the most visible shifts has been L’Oréal’s creator capability. Hack has positioned them as a full-funnel channel — one uniquely placed to educate, inspire and build trust in a category where credibility matters.
“Beauty is complex now. Consumers are highly educated about ingredients and efficacy, and creators can demystify that in a way brands can’t always do on their own,” Hack said.
L’Oréal has now leaned into long-term creator partnerships, with a deliberate focus on respecting creative craft. “We often say no brief is the new brief,” she said, allowing creators to connect authentically with their communities. The approach also reflects how consumers shop — mixing and matching across brands — making multi-brand storytelling a powerful engagement tool.
“We know that everything we do can have a meaningful impact. Having longer-term partnerships allows us to build mutual trust and collaboration, and allows creators to speak to their audience in a way that’s authentic to them.”
“We’re entering a new age of credibility. You can’t hide. Your product efficacy, product safety, ingredients and values all have to stack up.”
Emerging technology is an area where Hack balances opportunity with responsibility. While L’Oréal is actively integrating AI to optimise business operations and enhance consumer experience, it has drawn clear ethical lines, including a global commitment not to use AI-generated faces in campaigns.
“Beauty is about confidence, self-esteem and trust. Authenticity matters,” Hack said.
That emphasis on trust is becoming even more critical as consumers increasingly rely on large language models to discover products. Hack describes the next phase of marketing as a “credibility era,” where efficacy, science, ingredients and values are instantly interrogated, and exposed, by AI-driven discovery.
“We’re entering a new age of credibility. You can’t hide. Your product efficacy, product safety, ingredients and values all have to stack up,” she added.
It plays to L’Oréal’s long-term strengths: science-led research and development, , rigorous standards and trusted brands that have been built over decades. It’s also why she remains optimistic about the future, even amid economic uncertainty and rapidly changing consumer tastes.
“You can launch a beauty brand overnight, but you can’t replicate 116-years of R&D, safety and science to cater to a wider range of beauty needs that truly reflects our consumers”.
Looking ahead, Hack sees creativity and human connection as the ultimate differentiators in a more automated world, from disruptive brand moments to storytelling that resonates emotionally.
“I feel blessed to be a marketer and to lead an incredible team, especially during such a dynamic era. We stay curious, seize what’s starting, keep consumers at the heart of everything that we do, and approach every shift in the landscape as an opportunity to grow”.
That mindset continues to power one of Australia’s most influential digital and marketing operations, and Hack’s leadership style, built on optimism, empowerment and trust, where people feel both supported and challenged to deliver at their best.
Jenni Dill
Arnott’s Group
For Jenni Dill, the longstanding chief marketing officer of the Arnott’s Group, 2025 was a year defined by a series of sector-wide challenges solve through creative, imaginative means driven, largely, by her marketing teams.
The cost of living, inflation, pressure on supply chains and increasing ingredient prices were all among the big challenges Arnott’s faced. Dill told B&T she was happy the company’s brands typically sit at the “everyday great value end of the spectrum” but that it remained a “very, very challenging year”.
“Everyone was feeling it from all walks of life, all socio-economic groups and that played through in seismic shifts in consumer behaviour that we had to figure out how to address,” she said.
The first point in addressing the changeable market conditions was “reminding customers” of the value Arnott’s products offer and finding more ways to use them. But rather than simply launching a vast paid media drive, the former McDonald’s CMO and team thought outside the box.
“Launching an Arnott’s cookbook was very strategic and tactical at the same time,” Dill said.
“It enabled people to fall in love with new products and remind them of how much they love some products, show them products they haven’t had before and also find new ways to enjoy and consume pretty much our entire product range… Finding new ways to deliver experiences to an existing brand, whether it’s been around for 60 or 160 years, is really important. As marketers and leaders, we’ve got to make sure that we’re continually looking for those new opportunities and looking at things with fresh eyes.”
“The challenge is making sure you’re never too busy on the day-to-day… you’ve got to find those moments for a bit of fresh thinking.”
To keep this fresh, consumer-focused perspective, Dill deliberately sets aside time for deep, uninterrupted thinking.
“That doesn’t mean blocking out days and weeks in your diary but it means that 10-minute reflection moment in a day about doing this differently For me, it’s spending time with consumers, whether that’s at a barbecue on the weekend, school gate pickup or wherever. There’s worlds of information out that doesn’t require me to do very expensive consumer research. It’s constantly looking in the store, in consumers’ homes, how they’re using our product, the problems they’re experiencing and figuring out how you can solve them,” Dill said, adding the solutions might require a perspective shift.
“The challenge is making sure you’re never too busy on the day-to-day… you’ve got to find those moments for a bit of fresh thinking.”
That said, Dill believes the smart marketers will marry their freshness of thinking with a deep understanding of consumer trends and forces.
“Consumer consumption habits have changed quite dramatically since we were kids or when our parents were kids in terms of the accepted wisdom on nutrition… That has changed dramatically over decades, it hasn’t changed that rapidly over years or months. Whether you’re concerned about your weight or obesity or the hype around GLP-1 from the US, or you follow TikTok nutrition trends, everything is saying more protein, more fibre, less sugar, smaller snacks, healthier meals, more whole grains, lean meats and fish, more vegetables… There’s a leading edge to that trend and a mainstream edge. The trick is being out in front of it so you can make a business opportunity, without being too far out in front,” she said.
And, as the influencer economy grows further, spotting the inflection point between niche to mainstream adoption is key. Matcha, hot honey and pistachios are three trends Dill is keeping an eye on, though she can “neither confirm nor deny” whether there are products in development on these themes.
But, given Dill is a four-time CMO Power List inductee, we’re sure she’ll separate the fad from the trend.
Jenny Melhuish
ALDI
Jenny Melhuish has well and truly made her mark on ALDI since joining in January 2023. The former Westpac marketing leader has overseen an extended period of sustained momentum for the supermarket challenger brand.
ALDI’s marketing has never been afraid to stand out. Instead, it has built its reputation on doing things deliberately and differently. Under Melhuish’s lead that ethos has intensified, reinforcing the brand’s trademark ‘Good Different’ positioning at a time when value is hard to come by.
“‘Good Different’ isn’t just a line in our marketing, it’s how the business actually runs. It’s baked into our operating model,” Melhuish said.
Restraint, discipline and simplicity, the qualities lacking in the preponderance of low-quality marketing that consumers face, are the very qualities that have amplified ALDI’s challenger spirit for more than a quarter century.
Humour remains the brand’s most powerful weapon. ALDI’s campaigns, created by longstanding creative agency BMF, are charmingly ridiculous, particularly so its Christmas campaigns which cut-through in an increasingly saturated market. They also show Melhuish’s deep commitment to creativity and it’s role in driving the work that actually works.
“Humour is powerful because it disarms people, but only when it’s grounded in a real insight or product truth. When humour feels forced, people feel it straight away.”
That same emphasis on truth over gimmick is also a guideline on just how far the brand is willing to push its notoriously outlandish ideas. Yes, its campaigns may appear strange at first, but they are typically born from completely rational consumer needs—convenience, quality and price—but bedazzled just enough to become memorable.
Behind ALDI’s creative courage sits a sharp media strategy. Every decision is guided by market mix modelling information. Scale is only pursued when it can be achieved efficiently and channels that don’t have the capability to deliver impact are dispensed with.
“We’re very deliberate about where we won’t invest. Effort versus impact is always front of mind,” Melhuish said.
That discipline extends far beyond communications and into customer experience. Special Buys, ALDI’s twice weekly drops of everything from espresso machines to ski gear, brings spontaneity into an otherwise routine category whilst reinforcing the brand’s value first positioning. Other ventures, including ALDI Holidays and Insurance signals a commitment to stretch into similar sectors, provided the brand’s core promise remains the same.
At the 2025 Effie Awards, ALDI was named Effective Advertiser of the Year. It was recognition not just of its campaigns, but of Melhuish’s brilliant brand stewardship, something she believes is chronically undervalued in an industry so obsessed with the short-term wins.
“Compound brand building beats short-term thinking every time,” she said.
In a market dominated by the supermarket giants, ALDI continues to punch well above its weight not by copying its competitors, but by playing an entirely different game. Melhuish has ensured that the brand remains what it promises to be, a challenger that never stops challenging.
If the past two years are any indication, Australia’s ‘Good Different’ supermarket isn’t going to become boring anytime soon.
Joanna Boundy
CommBank
In the past 12 months, CommBank and its CMO Joanna Boundy put marketing’s biggest tenets to the test.
“Great marketing has to have the right blend of insights around customer needs and cultural insights—it needs to resonate but also be really strong creatively, and tap into something that’s culturally relevant,” Boundy told B&T.
When the blend is just right, it promises to be seamless, timely and relatable. CommBank nailed all three when it launched its brand campaign, ‘Doubt Never Did,’ produced by M+C Saatchi. It’s work that Boundy is particularly proud of.
“It was a very modern interpretation of ‘Can,’ which we’ve had for over a decade,” she said.
“We did a lot of research around how Australians were feeling, and what came out loud and clear was that there was this real desire to get ahead, but that for a lot of people, their personal, financial, societal situation meant that they felt like something was holding them back. ‘Doubt Never Did’ responds to that, about how you can release your personal potential.”
The campaign’s bold creative is impossible to ignore, and acknowledges that today’s ‘Great Australian Dream’ looks different for everyone.
It’s Boundy’s fourth year serving as the bank’s CMO, and it’s clear to see that she’s fully settled into the role now—it fits her like a glove.
"If you can provide something helpful for customer needs, that’s when you keep strengthening that relationship that you have with them, and that’s certainly what we’ve been doing in the space.”
“At CommBank, we’re proud that we’ve shown that, in a heavily regulated environment, we can still be very creative and innovative in what we’ve brought to market,” she said.
Dealing with compliance and showing up for customers all comes down to trust. It’s something that the bank’s more than 100-year long history certainly helps with, Boundy acknowledges, but it’s also down to the bank’s rigorous efforts to meet customer needs and wants.
“We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, so customers are coming to us for support with that,” Boundy said.
“If you can provide something helpful for customer needs, that’s when you keep strengthening that relationship that you have with them, and that’s certainly what we’ve been doing in the space.”
Naturally, an organisation the size of CommBank has reams of data at its fingertips. Putting that to work informs it of what customers need.
“We look at what’s happening in the economy and we get really great insights around spending behaviour. That can tell us where there might be greater support that Australians need, and whether CommBank can provide itself or in partnership with other organisations,” Boundy said.
As Boundy continues evolving and adapting to the market’s ever-shifting foundations, she’s got some advice for up-and-coming talent in the industry.
“Make the most of every opportunity, network, learn, be open-minded, be thirsty for knowledge, having a curious mindset will open a lot more doors for you,” she said.
Those are words to learn from , we reckon.
Joanna Robinson
THE ICONIC
The past 12 months have marked a turning point for The Iconic. The fashion-ecommerce brand found itself in a turbulent category when it decided to hit the reset button, and this past year was all about building momentum off the foundations. That transformation was driven by its chief marketing officer, Joanna Robinson, who knew that it was time to go big.
“This time last year, we had our first quarter of growth. Now we’re on track for a full year, and that’s off the back of getting the foundations right,” Robinson told B&T.
Those foundations were hard-won. Post-COVID, The Iconic found itself over-reliant on promotions and performance channels, gradually eroding brand equity and being perceived as a discount destination. The response was a wholesale return to marketing fundamentals: clarifying the brand, rebalancing spend up the funnel and redefining who the business was really for.
At the heart of that work was ‘Got You Looking’—a brand platform that has reinstated The Iconic in the market, rallying for its place there. Three years in, the results are clear: active customers are up nearly five per cent year-on-year, unprompted awareness lifted 34 per cent in the first year of the platform and preference and trust metrics continued to climb.
“You have to be more than the products and services that you sell. It’s a real differentiator for us that we play to our Australianism.”
In a fiercely competitive market, where delivery speed is now a status signifier and global players jostle with local incumbents, brand equity and local pride have become The Iconic’s most important differentiator.
“You have to be more than the products and services that you sell. It’s a real differentiator for us that we play to our Australianism—we’re really proud of our Australian and New Zealand brands”.
A renewed push into New Zealand, underpinned by faster delivery, deeper brand investment and a partnership with New Zealand Fashion Week, has driven exponential growth.
The most significant launch of the year, was ‘The Iconic Front Row,’ the retailer’s long-awaited loyalty program. Built with direct input from 50,000 customers, Front Row is positioned as “by our customers, for our customers”, with four tiers ranging from Stylist to VIP. Early engagement has been strong, with tens of thousands signing up to help shape the program before it even launched.
“We always knew we wanted a loyalty program. But timing mattered. We had to get our house in order first,” said Robinson.
That emphasis on patience and commercial accountability runs through Robinson’s approach to marketing. Enhanced attribution techniques and regular brand health tracking have helped reframe marketing as a growth driver as opposed to being a cost centre.
“It’s given us a voice in the boardroom—but it also means there’s more pressure. You’re constantly being asked to do more with less,” said Robinson.
She isn’t sitting still though, with a renewed focus on employee trust and staff engagement, Robinson and The Iconic’s future is optimistic.
With its loyalty program live, brand momentum restored and a galvanised team in place, the next phase is about acceleration.
“We’ve done the reset. Now it’s about building on it and really unlocking what’s possible,” she said.
Justine Mills
Bunnings
Bunnings isn’t just the most trusted brand in Australia, it’s also one of the most effective marketing operations in the country.
At the CRA’s 2026 HEARD conference, marketing professor Mark Ritson specifically called out the hardware store as a brand that often outperforms rivals for effective advertising and marketing, even if its ads aren’t designed to win industry awards.
Bunnings has also been Australia’s most trusted brand for the past two years, according to Roy Morgan.
Justine Mills is the steady hand steering Bunnings’ marketing operation.
She described 2025 as “a really energising year”.
“We’ve built great momentum, particularly with the launch and growth of our retail media offering and establishing new partnerships like The Block,” she told B&T.
“Just as importantly, I’ve loved seeing the way the team has shown up this year—the collaboration, creativity and willingness to push ideas further has been a real highlight for me.”
In March 2025, Bunnings launched arguably the best branded retail media offering in the country, Hammer Media, offering suppliers and advertisers opportunities to reach millions of customers in-store and online.
Hammer Media aims to streamline messaging and enhance brand awareness across Bunnings’ social media, website, in-store radio, eDMs, in-store screens and more. As part of the network launch, 300 digital screens were installed across 150 stores.
Last year Bunnings replaced Mitre 10 (after 20 years) as the official hardware partner for Australia’s most popular DIY show, The Block. The hardware store provided tools, timber and supplies for the Nine show’s Daylesford location.
“It gave us the opportunity to tell both the Bunnings Warehouse and Trade story through one integrated platform, showcase our suppliers and their products within the show, and extend the story well beyond the show itself through our owned channels, like the Bunnings Magazine,” Mills said.
“With cost‑of‑living pressures top of mind for our customers, we’ve had to be really clear-eyed about where and how we invest in marketing to remain highly relevant."
“We also had some fun bringing the brand to life through branded merchandise worn by contestants, like the viral Bunnings cap.”
Another campaign that Mills enjoyed was Bunnings Mini Bears, which tapped into the unboxing collectables trend with five distinct trade-inspired bear designs, including a rare ‘secret’ trade bear.
Although Bunnings reported strong 4 per cent growth in the first half of FY26, Mills explains that operating in a tougher economic environment has proven challenging.
“With cost‑of‑living pressures top of mind for our customers, we’ve had to be really clear-eyed about where and how we invest in marketing to remain highly relevant. That’s pushed us to be more disciplined and more data‑led in our decision‑making,” she said.
“In a way, it’s been a positive—it has sharpened our focus, helped us prioritise what really matters to our customers, and ultimately made the team stronger and more aligned around delivering real value.”
Mills said that the role of the CMO and marketing function is regarded as a growth driver at Bunnings Warehouse.
“Beyond building brand and driving demand, marketing is now directly contributing to revenue—particularly with the introduction of retail media and other commercial capabilities sitting within marketing teams,” she said.
“That gives CMOs a much broader mandate, balancing long‑term brand health with measurable growth and profitability. It requires leaders who can move comfortably between creativity, customer insight and commercial rigour to drive sustainable business outcomes.”
We’ll have a sausage sizzle to that!
Kedda Ghazarian
BONDS
It has been a transformative year for BONDS and its head of marketing Kedda Ghazarian.
The iconic Aussie underwear brand has not only sailed into the United States market with one of the most memorable campaigns of 2025, but it’s also thrown a considerable investment into the sails of Australia’s world-beating SailGP outfit as the title sponsor.
“Trying to take a brand global is always a really daunting task, particularly when you’re doing it from home soil,” Ghazarian told B&T.
“I found the process reinvigorating in the way that I think about the brand and marketing in general, because it forced me to distil the core brand values and traits of an icon like BONDS.”
In Australia, BONDS has the level of brand fame as other icons like Vegemite and TimTams. But it entered America as a challenger brand . Though it had more than a little help Robert Irwin who fronted its first ad outside Australia.
The spot, by Special, was a highlight for Ghazarian and showed Irwin sitting in a backyard in his briefs surrounded by Aussie wildlife, including a tarantula, a large python and even a crocodile. It also had a Hills Hoist, for the more discerning American viewer.
“You have all these ingredients that feel so stereotypical. And then they’re played out in a way that is so quietly confident,” she said.
“As an Australian, the things that I love about our culture and the things that I think our brand brings to life so beautifully is this sense of being laid back and down to earth. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and have a persona that Aussies tend to have. It was about striking that perfect balance of how to present that in a way that felt authentic, but nodded to some of the Aussie stereotypes.”
“A CEO wears BONDS and a farmer wears bonds, and not often do those things kind of cross pollinate in fashion, but we are one of those universal brands in this country,”
Although the Irwin spot grabbed plenty of headlines, Ghazarian’s favourite piece of work from the brand remains ‘As Worn By Us,’ a campaign that showcased everyday Australians from all walks of life wearing the apparel.
“A CEO wears BONDS and a farmer wears bonds, and not often do those things kind of cross pollinate in fashion, but we are one of those universal brands in this country,” she said.
Ghazarian worked agency side as an account director before joining Hanes (BONDS’ parent company) as the social media director of the brand nearly 12 years ago. She worked her way up through the ranks before taking on the head of marketing role two years ago.
What has kept her at BONDS for such a long time has been her mantra of “doing iconic shit”.
“What is exciting for me was to embed that in the team a few years ago. Then to have the year that we’ve had, I feel like we’re living and breathing that ambition and doing truly iconic shit,” she enthused.
Ghazarian described herself as a leader who wears her heart on her sleeve.
“I try to be an open and transparent leader, and I have a perfectionist streak,” she said.
“I really want to do great work, I want my team to have a huge sense of pride about the work we do together.”
Ghazarian manages a 28-strong team of marketers. Despite her plans for American conquest, she remains grounded and also plans to take the BONDS brand even deeper into regional Australia.
“The impact that you can have in these communities if you do it right, and the generational advocacy that can flow from that is hugely powerful,” she explained.
The great Aussie brand may be slowly making waves on the other side of the Pacific, but Ghazarian is determined that it will never forget its Aussie roots.
Kirsten Hasler
IKEA
In 2025, IKEA’s Kirsten Hasler was faced with an unusual but once in a lifetime situation: launching the brand into New Zealand. Kiwis were already well aware of IKEA thanks to the meatballs, Billy bookcases, references in popular culture and their countryfolk travelling and living overseas.
But despite the broad awareness, there were nuances and particulars that hadn’t made their way into the minds of New Zealanders. Tightening up the understanding of IKEA’s offering was the order of the day for Hasler and team.
“No other country IKEA has entered has had such high prior brand awareness,” Hasler told B&T.
“One of the most important messages to get out was how to shop at IKEA, because it is unique. It’s the long natural way, picking products off the shelf yourself, how to assemble them, how to use the app in store and, when you go to the restaurant, bringing your tray back,” she said.
New Zealanders didn’t expect IKEA to be accessible to all around the country.
Many were aware of the Auckland store opening—it broke ground in June 2023 and announced in September 2025 it would open three months later. But IKEA also opened 29 pickup points across both islands, servicing the entire country. It was also the first IKEA market to open in-store and online at the same time. To get both messages out, IKEA worked with its creative agency, Host Havas, to develop a straightforward but distinctively IKEA campaign.
While IKEA’s marketing teams are still based out of Tempe in Sydney’s inner west, Hasler has ably led her charges to foster a deep understanding of its new consumers. Sustainability in product manufacture, cooking and waste disposal are among Kiwis’ top priorities, alongside a lack of storage space and multi-generational living. The number of carpeted garages did, however, surprise the team.
“We very quickly saw there was an IKEA-shaped hole in the market. On the one hand there were high-priced premium home furnishings brands. On the other were more affordable but much lower quality brands. New Zealand was a perfect space for IKEA to come in because Kiwis have been almost forgotten by many retailers or not prioritised because it’s a small market. IKEA’s democratic design principles: form, function, price, quality and sustainability are perfect for the market.”
"I’ve never had a store manager tell me I’ve driven too many visitors to the store. It’s a very good problem to have.”
So did Hasler and her team’s efforts convince Kiwis to come and say “Hej”?
You bet.
“We had 18,000 people through the door on the first day. We doubled our first day’s sales goal and we’ve seen that continue. We’ve struggled to keep up with demand, we’ve had to scale back some of the fulfilment options,” she said.
“I was joking last week that I’ve never had a store manager tell me I’ve driven too many visitors to the store. It’s a very good problem to have.”
In hindsight, it all sounds rather straightforward. But that was not the case at all.
“I remember saying to the team, ‘This will be a career highlight for us’ and it 100 per cent has been,” said Hasler.
“But it’s been challenging. We had a lot on our plates, managing Australia and New Zealand. It’s a new team working in New Zealand. We’d never done this before and there was no playbook.
“There’s a lot of unknowns and leading in the unknown is incredibly important. For me, it’s been incredibly satisfying to see that hard work pay off. It was a ‘pinch me’ moment when the first pop-up opened in Christchurch three weeks ahead before the store opened, to see the joy in people’s eyes and say ‘This is what the team has achieved.’”
Michael Courtney
Coles
Michael Courtney has taken an unusual path to become Coles’ chief customer and digital officer role. But the supermarket giant looks set to reap the rewards of his diverse career.
Courtney started his career in banking and finance, with stints at Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and ANZ.
He joined Coles in 2015 as its head of business of business development, rising to become its executive general manager of omnichannel operations and innovation in December 2022, with a nearly four-year spell as the EGM of Coles Express.
In July 2023, he became CEO of Coles Liquor and would rationalise its operations before receiving his mammoth customer, digital and omnichannel remit for the entire Coles Group in May last year.
“I’ve always had the opportunity to look at really interesting business problems. And, in order to solve them, you have to think about what it means for customers,” he told B&T.
“The customer and digital teams are coming together… to work across customer problems together, rather than just as functions of a business.
“It’s about how we can deliver a really meaningful change for our customers, whether we show up in a loyalty program, or transact online or in store.”
Following advances in online shopping and AI, Courtney said customers want more personalised and relevant interactions. But while he’s deeply focused on the digital and business challenges Coles faces, Courtney is still keenly aware of the social obligations the grocer has to all of us.
“The thing that has come to mean so much to me working at Coles is this realisation that we are one of the few brands that means something to every Australian, whether you shop with us or you not,” he said.
It’s a responsibiility that no doubt weighs heavily from time to time.
“We are one of the few brands that means something to every Australian, whether you shop with us or you not.”
Courtney describes his leadership style as curious and collaborative, but said that this is underpinned by a desire to provide value in the lives of everyday customers.
“One of the great things about being at Coles is the number of people that are in our buildings every day trying to make customers’ lives easier,” he said.
“Whether that’s being able to have your shop done more conveniently online, or taking prices down to try and relieve cost of living stress, customer service is critically important.
“What we’re aiming to do is be Australia’s most trusted grocery retailer, and a key pillar of trust with customers is the value we provide.”
While Woolworths and Coles are the dominant powers in the market, they aren’t without rivals. Courtney notes the rising in the sector, through ALDI’s relentless rise and online players like Amazon shaking up the sector. That said, he believes competition “forces everyone to be better”.
Coles has also been a dominant force in advertising and sponsorships. From its recent Christmas ad starring a ravenous basset hound, produced by bespoke Omnicom agency group Smith St. , to its Coles’ long-term partnership with Paramount’s MasterChef, where it is the official groceries supplier, and Liquorland’s partnership with Cricket Australia, the brand is hard to miss. And that’s to say nothing of its work with the AFL.
All these, and more, are on the table for Courtney as he looks set to disregard dogma and transform Coles from the inside out.
Michelle Klein
Westpac
After featuring on last year’s CMO Power List with IAG, Michelle Klein made the move to Westpac in September 2025. It was a shrewd decision from the bank, to say the least.
“I’ve never worked in the same vertical twice and that’s because of my personal desire to keep learning and a quest of curiosity. What attracted me to banking is that it is being disrupted in every single way. It’s a case of disrupt or be disrupted. I think we’re leading the charge in so many ways,” Klein told B&T.
In one of her first moves, Klein hired Anna Jackson, Telstra’s Head of Creative Excellence and one of the driving forces behind the telco’s industry leading advertising, to serve as Head of Brand at the bank. Its recent and smart ‘Double You’ campaign is proof of the change already taking hold.
“It’s all about meaning. No matter what you’re saying in your marketing, ultimately people will connect with the meaning you create through your brand,” said Klein.
Klein’s experience, through Diageo, Meta, and most recently IAG, means that finding and communicating the deep, personal meaning in brands is second nature.
“In Australia, brands are built on intense levels of integrity, heritage, authenticity and trust. That creates the meaning around what you sell, how you say it and how you sell it,” she explained.
However, Klein is keen to combine those perhaps more traditional values with the tenets of Silicon Valley. Rather than being incompatible, she sees them as complementary.
“The currency of Silicon Valley is speed. That creates an environment of experimentation, testing with no fear of failure and quickly pivoting to the next thing. If you combine that with trust, authenticity, integrity and heritage, it’s a really great formula,” she said.
“If I can get the team and our agencies to think about moving fast, being brave and experimenting whilst also taking with them a sense of connecting in an authentic way. Westpac has been around for 200 years, it was the first company in the country. How do you leverage all of that authenticity without telling a history lesson?”
“In Australia, brands are built on intense levels of integrity, heritage, authenticity and trust. That creates the meaning around what you sell, how you say it and how you sell it."
Klein, of course, as you might have noticed, is not one for looking in the rearview mirror. As Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, she’s envisioning a thoroughly modern marketing team at Westpac enabled by AI.
“Based on my experience of running the marketing and complaints departments at IAG, we could see the power of AI and how it would help people who were calling to complain. The answer was not to give them an AI-generated response, no one wants that when they’re frustrated but it aided the team to find the right answers and solutions faster,” she said.
“If you translate that into marketing, it’s not just about generating trillions of images in five minutes. It’s about using it for continuity and consistency and how the brand shows up in every channel… AI can be a force multiplier in consistency. But consumers know when something has been created by AI, too. So the craft in the way we did things yesterday has to apply in the things we do today and tomorrow.
The recent ‘Double You’ campaign is proof of this – the film has authenticity at its heart, not showing a ‘fake’ world, instead injecting magic into the everyday. The cast were all real siblings; most of the story was captured in camera not in made in post.”
Klein’s vision for Westpac is bold and transformational. And that’s exactly what she expects from the team, too.
“Be courageous, be kind and be curious. They’re all related and unique. The courage to say you got something wrong and then having the support of the team through that next stage, because that’s about learning and curiosity. If we can talk about failure and what went wrong as much as what went right, you create a level playing field for people to be brave and curious,” she explained.
And the results are already looking impressive.
Mim Haysom
Suncorp
You might think of insurance as a rather stayed, change-averse industry. But you’d be wrong, certainly in Australia. And you’d be even more wrong about Suncorp and its irrepressible CMO Mim Haysom.
Few marketing chiefs make it past their third anniversary with a particular brand. Haysom, meanwhile, has been with Suncorp for nearly eight years and has cemented her place as one of the country’s most dynamic, enterprising and influential marketers for years. It’s her fourth time on the B&T CMO Power List for a reason.
Haysom believes insurance is facing two significant, structural challenges: inflation in pricing and a shift to prevention, rather than reaction. On both fronts, she’s ahead of the pack.
“There’s been inflation in premiums and the cost of insurance for Australians. We’ve been working really hard to ensure insurance is affordable for all Australians because we’re seeing the frequency and severity of weather events increasing,” she told B&T.
“For us, the idea of Australians not being insured because they can’t afford it is just completely unacceptable.”
Haysom and her team have played an integral role in turning this vision into a reality by giving its customers—across its portfolio of 10 brands in Australia—information on making their homes more resilient, how to drive more safely and beyond.
“All of our prevention work helps mitigate risk, which means in turn that our customers are better prepared and more resilient. That will help manage the cost of insurance and the cost of insuring their risk. We’ve really spearheaded a lot of the prevention work and have taken it to market with the [Suncorp] Haven utility that we launched in Queensland,” she said.
“For us, the idea of Australians not being insured because they can’t afford it is just completely unacceptable.”
Suncorp’s Haven tracks 16 million addresses across the country and tells users what weather perils may befall their homes and how they can prevent them. Haven, delivered in partnership with Suncorp’s invaluable creative partner Leo won a host of awards, including the Best Tech and AI Campaign at the 2025 B&T Awards. Suncorp would also win at Cannes Lions and it scooped the Australian Grand Effie.
“We’re absolutely the leaders [in prevention]. We went to market with it first and we’ve been talking about storm season preparation for many years,” said Haysom.
One thing that did change in 2025 was Suncorp’s media agency. Haysom moved the account, which covers all its brands, from OMD to a bespoke WPP Media ‘Open Era’ model. It would be the single largest media account move by billings of the year.
“OMD has been a wonderful, fantastic partner…[But] I was looking for thought leadership around future technologies, the future state of media and WPP Media really impressed me with the way they were thinking about bringing that into their offering,” Haysom explained.
Haysom has hardly let her mammoth media pitch detract from exceptional creative work. But with a CV that lists stints at JWT, Clemenger, Whybin TBWA and M+C Saatchi, that was never likely to happen.
“When you have a portfolio of brands like we do, they all have a very specific role to play—whether that’s their target audience, segmenting, geography, whatever it is. Having one agency partner [Leo] that helps shape it is really beneficial because they understand the whole ecosystem and how it fits together,” she said.
It’s hard for Haysom to play favourites among her brands. Though she does admit the cartoon star of Bingle’s ads, ‘Fluffy’, comes close. But regardless of the brand, the need remains the same.
“Work that connects with customers and audiences in some way, shape or form that creates that emotional connection. That’s the work that works,” she said.
And you’d be mad to doubt her.
Nicole Bardsley
Uber & Uber Eats
There are three guarantees in life: death, taxes and that Uber Eats is going to keep running cracking creative campaigns.
Such has been the consistency of Uber Eats output in recent years, its annual tennis ad has become a ‘thing’, whether it’s starring Andre Agassi (2024) or Jim Courier this year.
For Nicole Bardsley, Uber and Uber Eats’ head of marketing, last year’s ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’ ad starring Andy Murray, was a highlight of the past year. And, quite rightly, it picked up a host of awards around the world.
Working with broadcast partner Channel Nine, the creative integrated seamlessly with the Happy Slam.
“Trying to deliver Andy Murray to tennis was a really fun moment where we can hack the broadcast,” Bardsley told B&T.
“We’re able to do some innovative and very cut-throat moments. We followed that with probably the biggest ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’ campaign we’ve ever done, where we took Cher and burnt her at the stake. That’s kind of a lifetime career highlight, to be honest.”
Uber Eats launched the ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’ brand platform in Australia in January 2023, and it has since been exported to other markets including the US and Canada.
Bardsley said the campaign delivers “really strong” performance and has been a critical brand lever to help the company deliver double digit growth in a highly competitive delivery and mobility market.
“With the brand platform, we’re seeing the benefits of compound creativity and we continue to get an increase in results every time we run it,” Bardsley said.
“That Andy Murray campaign delivered our best brand attention and brand linkage scores that we’ve seen across any of the campaigns to date. It’s also delivered some of our biggest brand lifts and has been a contributing factor in what has been a really incredibly successful year for the business as well.”
“What we found with that brand platform is we're seeing the benefits of compound creativity and we continue to get an increase in results every time we run it,”
On the mobility side, Uber recently launched its ‘Can’t Do That If Your Driving’ campaign, starring Tom Cardy and Shania Twain, to reposition Uber as a service that you call not because you need to, but because you want to.
Uber heavily invests in brand marketing and are “big believers in the importance of brand saliency, in driving growth and category growth”.
Nonetheless, in light of the cost of living crisis, Bardsley says that the focus has shifted more towards a full funnel approach.
“We are making sure that we’ve got a really strong mid-funnel layer that’s helping to tackle those perceptions of affordability and drive value to consumers,” she said.
“Last June we developed a value campaign platform, ‘Ding Dong Deals’, which tackles perceptions about affordability and delivers really good value and promos to our customers. It’s working in harmony with our brand campaigns that drive top-of-mind brand salience.”
The key to getting the brand versus performance balance right, argues Bardsley, is making sure there is a sufficient investment on top of funnel activity. For example, ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’, drives brand saliency which begats benefits for ‘Ding Dong Deals’ at the bottom of the funnel.
Uber has also found growth by expanding geographically and is now present in more than 80 Australian cities and towns. Testament to its success is that Uber and Uber Eats have grown at a time when major rival, Menulog, shut its operations in Australia because it wasn’t profitable.
Bardsley is a staunch advocate for the power of brand and marketing investment to drive growth.
“Demonstrating the impact of that investment in brand in terms of business outcomes is the really critical factor because that makes what we do quite tangible to business stakeholders,” she said.
Her focus for the year ahead, unsurprisingly, is straightforward: “Growth, growth, growth”.
“Finding new ways to imagine where growth comes from in a heavily penetrated market is the number one goal for us as a team next year.”
Polly Blenkinship
Audible
In a challenging economic environment, Audible’s global head of brand media Polly Blenkinship is on a roll.
In the past year, Audible has grown its Australian Originals program to more than 140 titles, including the addition of Corked, by Marc Fennell, which investigates a scandal in the world of elite wine, and Claudia Karvan’s audiobook Like, Follow, Die.
Blenkinship is proud Audible provides a voice for diverse and sometimes underrepresented Australian storytellers to shine.
“We want to be the first choice and best destination for audio fanatics. We’re focused on telling stories in a way that only Audible can and ensuring that our listeners can find, listen and engage with their favorite stories.
“We are also about supporting Australian authors and audio talent. So we are heavily focused on investing in Australian talent that expands the possibilities of audio storytelling.”
More than half of Australians listened to digital audio in the past year. In fact, the category now outpaces TV, video sharing, YouTube and TikTok for growth, as Blenkinship points out.
“Our appetite to deliver new genres and formats and local projects is stronger than ever,’ she added.
Digital audio is not just exploding in Australia; it is gaining traction across the world.
In the past year, Audible launched in Mexico and Brazil, adding to the 10 markets within Blenkinship’s remit.
A challenge within Blenkinship’s role is the ongoing balancing act between maintaining global brand consistency and efficient processes.
“It’s really important not to project what works in Australia or the US onto those marketplaces. I’m a huge believer in tapping into local culture to drive impact,” she said.
“Great marketing leaders bring the voice of the customer to the top of the table and translate that into business strategy."
Blenkinship manages a team of around 20 marketers who work closely with media agency Wavemaker to shift the dial. She says that in a cost of living crisis, marketers need to be more creative and agile in how they use marketing budgets that are consistently under pressure.
“I’m a big believer in not doing 2,000 things that are going to move the dial a tiny percent, but really prioritising the things that are going to have a big impact,” she said.
“When you have budgetary constraints, it challenges the team to think more creatively and drive innovation. We’ve always got an eye on marketing ROI, making sure our dollars work really hard.”
“I don’t just want to run a standard media plan that has TV, press, radio, or outdoor. I want to do things that really drives conversation,” she added.
Two examples of work she is proud of in the past year includes the Harry Potter-themed ‘Audible Express’ from Sydney’s Central station last November to launch a new series about the bespectacled wizard.
In a more left-filed move, Audible partnered with the running app Strava for the ‘Run with Audible Challenge’. It allowed runners to unlock two months free of Audible after cumulatively running for six hours and five minutes—the average length of an audiobook.
Blenkinship said the marketing function shouldn’t always be asking for more budget, but instead should be focused on being more effective.
“Great marketing leaders bring the voice of the customer to the top of the table and translate that into business strategy,” she said.
“And with brands being built in real time today, how you show up in culture can impact performance just as much as product.”
Her advice to the next generation of marketeers is to understand the customer, develop commercial acumen, build diverse experience in creative, media, social and elsewhere, and get close to cross-functional peers.
“The types of skill sets that we might look for in marketing teams in the future will change, but strategic thinking, creativity and commercial acumen will always remain key,” she said.
“As more process-orientated things can be done by AI, it’s really important that marketers are stretching their creative and strategic thinking.”
Shaun Briggs
Specsavers
You know Specsavers. You know the long-running, continuously great ‘Should’ve…’ campaign. But what you might not consider is that the business sits at a fascinating intersection of industries and pressures.
The category is at once discretionary and non-discretionary. It’s essential and aspirational. And it is life changing. Finding the middle path between each of those pulling forces might sound complex. But Shaun Briggs, Specsavers’ director of marketing planning ANZ and two-time CMO Power List inductee, speaks with striking clarity on his priorities for the brand.
“It’s a challenging economy across ANZ—and we’re the value player here—but if we get our fundamentals, comms and offers right then we should do well. And we have,” he told B&T.
“We want to change as many lives as we can through better sight and hearing. My job to help do that is to get those test rooms filled up today, tomorrow and long into the future.”
Reducing the worries consumers have about getting their eyes testing is often the first step. And the disarmingly humorous ‘Should’ve…’ campaign has formed a key part of that for many years. It’s a shining case study of the value of compounding creativity.
“You can run a singular billboard and play on that compound idea, and it will have an outsized impact,” he said, adding that its takeover of the oOh!media’s Sydney Glebe Island Silos as a perfect example.
“It’s one billboard, a big one, but it’s still one billboard. If we’d never done ‘Should’ve…’ before, people would say ‘You’ve messed that up’. But because we’ve built on this idea of little errors over 17 years in Australia, there’s a huge pool to draw on. You’re not asking the customer to think of anything different. You’re just reinforcing what they already know. It’s a quick get.
“Then the next time they have that little thought [about their eyes], we’re top of that mental availability list.”
"If we’d never done ‘Should’ve…’, people would say ‘You’ve messed that up’. But because we’ve built on this idea of little errors over 17 years, there’s a huge pool to draw on. You’re just reinforcing what they already know."
Briggs has been with Specsavers for a little over seven years after cutting his teeth in a list of leading media agencies including Mitchell’s, MediaCom and Initiative. He’s been in his current director role for three years.
“I am one part of a Voltron robot of about 60 people in Australia and hundreds around the world, where we’re all doing the same thing. This is definitely not a me thing,” he said.
That Voltron robot in question is currently in the midst of unifying its back end, tech-enabled marketing processes such as its CRM.
“How frequently should I contact a patient after their sight test is due, with what kinds of messages, what combination of channels, whether it’s SMSing or should I send you an actual letter?” he said.
“We want it to be a blended experience and what happens online to be quite seamlessly integrated to what’s in store… Once the unification is done, the customer will have a much better experience. They will arrive in store and we’ll already know a lot more about them than we currently do. We’ll still have a concierge-type experience about what they’re going to experience today and what to expect. But a lot more of that will be pre-populated and smoother.”
It’s yet another example of how Specsavers, under Briggs’ auspices, is refusing to sit still despite being the category leader. The optician and hearing aid provider has also launched new partnerships with Nine’s Love Island and a refreshed approach to its earned media in the face of generative AI with new agency partner Ogilvy PR.
“We’re deliberate and clear about what we should do. Our brand is a caring brand, humans looking after humans. For now, synthetic talent and any sort of derivative of that is not anything we’re interested in. I am acutely aware of the potential upsides around rollout efficiencies. But if I want someone to be convinced that a particular frame, style or brand is something they should do, it has to come from an authentic place,” he said.
With that in mind, we really think you should go to Specsavers.
Susan Coghill
Tourism Australia
Globally, the average CMO tenure is less than four years. But Tourism Australia’s CMO, Susan Coghill, is rapidly approaching her seventh anniversary in the role. Why?
In her mind, it’s the deep sense of “responsibility” and “purpose” she feels towards Australia and Australians, and because she simply “really loves” her job.
We reckon it’s because she’s bloody good at it.
Coghill took charge of Tourism Australia in 2019 after the late Lisa Ronson moved to Coles. Since then, Coghill helped mastermind Australia’s far-better-than-average recovery from the COVID pandemic. She’s also kicked Tourism Australia up a gear with the launch of ‘Come and Say G’Day’ part two.
The campaign took the animated Ruby the Roo and the too often overlooked Louie the Unicorn from part one but honed in on five key markets (the UK and US, China, India and Japan) with unique executions.
It featured Nigella Lawson, actors Thomas Weatherall and Yosh Yu, Sara Tendulkar (daughter of Indian cricket legend Sachin) and, of course, Robert Irwin.
The resultant work formed a collection of films that took Australia’s key brand codes (the Sydney Opera House, Great Barrier Reef and the kangaroo, to name a few) and tweaked them for each market. We loved it. But did everyone else?
“It landed really well,” Coghill told B&T. “I know from our testing with consumers it does and from looking at the Australian general public’s commentary on social media about it. From a media perspective, because we have a known property with ‘Come and Say G’Day’, people understand what it is.
“It was a clever shift to go local into five key markets and pull talent so we could resonate locally. Some of the best feedback I’ve had is from the tourism industry, they really appreciated the care to make sure we are connecting with the priority markets.”
“What a privilege it is to be able to tell this story. I love Australia so much. I’m so grateful for my time and experience here and, for me, being able to share that with the world is pretty incredible.”
Coghill’s stakeholders include consumers at home and abroad, tourism operators locally and around the world and even Australia’s federal and state governments, and the state tourism bodies.
“It’s a big balancing act. It’s a little stressful,” she said, laughing.
“But what a privilege it is to be able to tell this story. I love Australia so much. I’m so grateful for my time and experience here and, for me, being able to share that with the world is pretty incredible.”
But Tourism Australia is not standing still. Cultural relevancy is high on the body’s list of marketing priorities for 2026 with the Ashes taking place over summer just gone, musical talent visiting Australia (most recently Bad Bunny) and more.
That said, Coghill is the first to admit it got “lucky” with Irwin’s Dancing with the Stars win in the US.
Where it isn’t getting lucky, however, is in the experiential work it is creating. For instance, it launched the ingenious ‘G’Day Dogs’ pop activation in New York. Adam Ferrier even took to national TV to sing its praises.
And as consumers eschew picture-perfect social shots for more realistic and heartwarming personal stories, Tourism Australia is adapting. Coghill also notes how expensive paid media has become in recent years, another factor in its recent shifts and showing her commitment to providing value for the Australian taxpayer.
Despite the myriad of stakeholders, channels, executions and markets that Coghill needs to keep abreast of, she keeps a laser focus on the one true objective of her, role–generating growth for Australia as a country. That’s not a mission to be trifled with given one in 13 jobs is tied to tourism and tourism is the country’s third largest export.
“It’s why I love meeting our [tourism] operators and spending time with them. It grounds what we do. I tell the team that every decision we make has to be contributing to driving results for the tourism industry. We aren’t doing stuff to chase awards or accolades. We’re doing it because it will make a difference to the tourism industry. We are single-minded about this.”
