Stories by Brad Howarth

Few organisations have been able to match explosive growth in data volumes with their capacity to turn that data into something useful.

In mid-2019, one of the most significant changes to how Australians interact with their financial services providers kicked off with barely a whimper.

As a young girl, Joanne Katsos would marvel at the strength of the timbersports competitors at the Royal Melbourne Show as they chopped and sawed their way to glory. Little did she know that as an adult she would find herself in the role of marketing director for the Australian operations of an organisation that is one of the world’s key supporters of timbersports.

The sheer volume of digital channels available to marketers has brought a corresponding level of complexity to the task of creating and delivering content suitable for each, making the goal of ‘write once, run anywhere’ increasingly difficult to achieve.

Building a brand from a blank sheet of paper can be a difficult ask, especially when the product you are selling is mostly made from blank sheets of paper.

In February this year, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned two television commercials. While far from being the first ads to ever be banned, they were the first found to violate new rules prohibiting the depiction of men and women in gender-stereotypical activities.

For some motorcycle owners, their bike is their life. For others, it is just the cheapest means of getting from one place to another. For group head of ecommerce at MotorCycle Holdings, Elliot Schoemaker, the diversity of motivations held by motorcycle owners presents a clear challenge in creating and promoting content that will bring would-be buyers to the company’s showrooms.

When it comes to winning the approval of customers, handing out money can be an effective strategy – although perhaps not a sustainable one.

Social media managers spend a lot of time worrying about the expectations of their external audiences. But they’d also do well to worry about their internal audiences.

One of the challenges of bringing any advanced technology to market is that it can sometimes be ahead of customers’ ability to use it. That problem is further compounded when the technology is capable of solving problems clients are not yet aware they have.

Picture a Venn diagram containing the words ‘fast’, ‘cheap’ and ‘good’ in three separate circles. Conventional wisdom suggests the best any organisation can hope to achieve when designing a product or service is two out of three. If you want something fast and cheap, it won’t be good, or if you want something good and fast, it won’t be cheap, and so on.

Australian consumers are known for their love of sport. But for any new team that wants to build an audience, establishing a brand among so much competing noise can be a difficult challenge.

The science of psychology has long and deep associations with marketing, but it also offers a lot to marketers as leaders within their organisations.

The desire to take brands into new territories can be hard to resist for marketers, especially when the reasons for doing so are compelling. But it is also possible to extend a brand faster than customers can adapt.

Today’s marketing teams are filled with specialists in fields such as data analytics or the use of specific tools, and the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening to increase the need for dedicated professionals. But perhaps AI might also be the tool that finally lets marketers get back to doing marketing?