Every marketer wants to make work that works. It’s the entire point of the game, to some extent.
That said, it isn’t easy to make category-cracking marketing communications. The 20 inductees in our CMO Power List, presented by atn, all manage it. But there is a small coterie of CMOs taking it a step further. They’re investing in ideas that will work for years, not weeks or months, and in some cases, perhaps even decades.
Some are doubling down on the idea of compounding creativity, the idea that marketers take their buns out of the oven too soon and don’t give their creative ideas the time to wear in, let alone wear out. The idea is now supported by significant in-depth research from System1 and Les Binet. Professor Mark Ritson has also called it “the most significant thought” in advertising of the last decade.
Others, meanwhile, have crafted enduring brand platforms and guiding principles that transcend traditional advertising and engage in long-term advocacy building. In this first weekly article picking apart the themes, similarities and differences that define the nation’s top marketers, we look at those thinking bigger about their campaigns.
Mim Haysom, Suncorp
There’s perhaps no better place to start than with Suncorp’s longstanding marketing chief Mim Haysom.
The insurance giant’s ‘Resilience’ platform came into being before COVID turned our world upside down. It has taken many different forms, too. From the celebrated ‘One House To Save Many’ campaign to the more recent ‘Haven’ product and campaign that delivered personalised, informative advice to every single Australian on how they could make their homes safer from the growing number of extreme weather events we’re experiencing.
“We’re the leaders. We went to market with it first and we’ve been talking about storm season preparation for many, many years but probably we really lent in and made this biggest impact with the ‘One House’ campaign in 2020,” Haysom, who joined Suncorp in 2018, said.
“But now, with the technology capabilities we have and the partners we work with, we’re being able to drive that prevention work forward,” Haysom added.
“We look at different metrics for campaigns. We do all the traditional tests for awareness, consideration, new business units and quotes. But there are a lot of behavioural metrics we put against campaigns that are a success factor for us. If we can change behaviour to make our customers more reslient that’s a win,” she added.
The work extends beyond the core Suncorp brand too, with Haysom pointing to the AAMI ‘Driving Test’ as another example of this preventative, resilience-driven work.
And winning is not an uncommon feeling for Haysom or the team at Leo Australia, with whom so much of this work has been produced. In fact, Suncorp would be awarded the ‘Long Term Results’ and the Grand Effie at the fastidious award show last year.
Haysom also recently told Brent Smart, Telstra’s marketing chief and fellow CMO Power List-er, that she wanted to be the most effective marketer of her generation (see that above). We wouldn’t bet against her.
Jenny Melhuish, ALDI
ALDI’s Jenny Melhuish joined the supermarket challenger back in January 2023 from Westpac. She entered the role and inherited the ‘Good Different’ brand platform.
It’s a testament to Melhuish’s understanding of marketing fundamentals that she hasn’t changed the idea, created by BMF, which has worked with the grocer for nearly 25 years. In fact, it just keeps getting better.
“’Good Different’ isn’t just a line in our marketing, it’s how the business actually runs,” Melhuish told B&T.
“It’s baked into our operating model. We’ve just hit 25 years in Australia by staying true to our values: consistency, simplicity and responsibility.”
The ‘Good Different’ proposition extends from the supermarket’s Special Buy section (pizza ovens and power tools, anyone?) right through to its creative marketing communications.
When its two incumbent, market-leading competitors choose to play it safe – if ALDI had released Coles’ Christmas ad, the starring basset hound would likely have stood upright and sat at the table with the rest of the family, perhaps engaging in a game of charades between courses – the German chain chooses to go bold.
“Our campaigns are always based on a nugget of an idea that’s usually very simple and very rational. From there, we use humour to embellish it, but it always has to stay relatable. We’re never weird just for the sake of it. We want customers to resonate with the weirdness and see a bit of themselves or their truth in the absurdity,” said Melhuish.
Sticking to this way of working is a feature, not a bug.
“Long-term brand consistency shouldn’t be labelled a trend, and it’s still massively underappreciated. Compound brand building beats short-term thinking every time,” Melhuish added.
Shaun Briggs, Specsavers
You might think that Specsavers’ work with its long-running (more than 20 years in some markets) ‘Should’ve Gone To Specsavers’ campaigns is boundary-pushing and challenging. But for marketing chief Shaun Briggs, the situation is almost reversed.
“I don’t think we ever really push the boundaries. We understand the brand. We understand where we get really good social permission to play, and then we go and [play],” Briggs told B&T.
“We definitely do different things. But I would say they’re relatively safe. Playing with the brand, not executing things properly, mucking around with the logo, they’re not really risks. If we weren’t an established brand and people didn’t know who we were, it would confuse people. We don’t take risks; we like to spot opportunities and jump on them.”
The fact that they aren’t risks speaks to Specsavers’ impressive consistency and steadfastness with what will be remembered as one of the smartest campaign ideas ever. The ‘Should’ve’ campaign launched in 2002(!) with this seminal piece of British advertising.
There is no narration, there are no features listed, and it is minimally branded. When other opticians (and, as is often forgotten, hearing aid providers) talk price, style, options and more, Specsavers’ restraint makes the difference and gets customers into its stores for sight and hearing tests. The campaigns disarm and create an enviable brand recall.
“The human truth that when you don’t see things properly, you make silly little mistakes is universal,” said Briggs.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are, but you get a new context every year. We did an airport ad [the Cairns Crocodiles-winning ‘Welcome to Melbourne’], we’ve done ads with John Cleese, we’ve done ads that don’t really make sense anymore because it’s 2025. You can constantly reinvent that same idea in this context. That’s where the freshness comes from. But the executions are always brand new,” he added.
It’s here where creativity truly lies. Being able to reimagine something old as something entirely new is challenging. Doing it year after year is remarkable.
Nicole Bardsley, Uber and Uber Eats
While the businesses we’ve featured thus far are long established players, Uber is a thoroughly modern, post-iPhone, gig economy business. But despite its digital always online nature, Bardsley and the rest of Uber’s marketers have shown they value the long game as much as anything else with big, eye-catching brand platforms.
Its Uber Eats arm launched the ‘Tonight I’ll Be Eating…’ brand platform in 2017, with creative agency Special, and it proved to be a runaway success. In 2023, Uber Eats would launch ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’, again with help from Special.
The work took an irreverent look at celebrities and has spawned campaigns with Andy Murray and more recently The Kid Laroi among others. Last year, it launched one of its biggest featuring Cher.
“That’s a lifetime career highlight to be honest! We’ve had some amazing moments over the course of the year and with [Cher] we’ve seen some really strong performance off the back of it,” Bardsley told B&T.
“We’re seeing the benefits of compound creativity. The platform is now into its fourth year and we’re seeing the results increase every time we run it. It has delivered our best brand attention and brand linkage scores across any campaign to date. It’s also delivered some of our biggest brand lifts off the back of the campaign… We’ve been able to continue to deliver double-digit growth in a highly penetrated market.”
It seems likely that Uber will be expecting similar results from its newer ‘Can’t Do That’ brand platform for its core mobility business.
Again, this has been created by Special. We can’t wait to see where this one goes.
Susan Coghill, Tourism Australia
Brand codes are central to long-running, deeply effective brand platforms, positionings and campaigns. No one knows that better than Susan Coghill, chief marketing officer of Tourism Australia.
Off the back of the bruising COVID pandemic, Tourism Australia needed to kickstart the recovery. With one in 13 jobs in Australia relying on tourists, this was a matter of deep national concern. ‘Come and Say G’Day’ was its answer and it was a hit, with Australia experiencing one of the fastest post-COVID recoveries in the world.
But rather than starting again, Coghill chose to iterate the campaign. Making it smarter and driving the brand codes harder, rather than seeking out something new and shiny.
“‘Come and Say G’Day is our big global campaign and it was a lot of work to evolve the strategy. We had a really successful launch in 2022 when we threw open the doors to welcome the world. But we though ‘What’s next? How do we evolve the story? How do we be more relevant in each of our key markets?'” Coghill said.
The evolution came through using the same campaign stars, Ruby the Roo and Louie the Unicorn, and adding some fresh faces in Nigella Lawson, actors Thomas Weatherall and Yosh Yu, Sara Tendulkar (daughter of Indian cricket legend Sachin) and Robert Irwin.
The core brand codes remained the same: G’day (thanks to Paul Hogan as much as anything else), the Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reed and the kangaroo. That might seem obvious, even trite. But confidence in knowing what your core audience, overseas travellers—not op-ed writers in The Guardian—want.
“It’s landed really well. I know from our testing with consumers, it absolutely does. I know from the general Australian public’s commentary on social media about it,” Coghill said.
“It’s because we have a known property with ‘Come and Say G’Day’, people can understand it and are more familiar.”
But there’s more than just aerial shots of landmarks. The camera pans into the Sydney Opera House to show punters enjoying a concert. There’s filming in Margaret River showing people enjoying the region’s bountiful produce. The shrimp—now correctly called a prawn—is still there.
But it’s because of that long-term association that ‘Come and Say G’Day’ works so well. It’s a campaign built over decades, not months, days or, God forbid, “moments”. And as Australians, we’re all better for it.
