A lot of production this past year was done remotely or under severe Covid restrictions, meaning limited people on set or fully remote oversight. Rosemary Martin admits this was a little nerve wracking for her team at flybuys at times, but the results have spoken for themselves.

The trend for brands to become the publishers of the future is already a reality at Adore Beauty. Each week, Adore publishes between seven and ten articles online, a few 10-to-20 minute videos on Youtube and hundreds of social media posts as well as multiple high-rating podcasts.

If there’s one hefty learning Paul Connell has picked up about marketing effectiveness since joining Naked Wines, it’s to reject binary arguments of performance versus brand, functional versus emotional.

It’s safe to say before last year, Kate Whitney had never had to manually pack meal kits. “When our Melbourne facility shut down for a few weeks and we moved all of our production to Sydney, teams were asked to close their computers and help pack boxes for customers in our facility,” the Marley Spoon chief marketing and growth officer says.

It’s been a momentous 18 months for Carolyn Bendall, starting in a new CMO role in a completely new sector, while locked down and working completely remote for almost the entire time.

Every inch of Jeremy Nicholas’ CMO50 submission this year showcases the cross-functional collaboration, influence and trust he’s built as Telstra’s chief marketing officer. From brand repositioning to work progressing the telco’s sustainability agenda, personalisation across the customer journey and the decision to make payphones across Australia free to use, connection across the organisation is the fuel firing marketing successes.

Online auction house Grays sells wide-ranging goods, from wine to electrical, home, cars, caravans and boats, industrial equipment and real estate.

Setting up Mars Pet Nutrition Australia’s own ‘Advance’ pet food direct-to-consumer (DTC) store has certainly been a first for marketing director, Emily Dowling. The decision to place DTC within marketing rather than sales is also a first for the FMCG business.

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 significantly impacted local EXTRA® sales because consumers associated gum with freshening breath outside the home.

​This year, Nicole Papoutsis decided to take a big creative risk and not back down. “Tenure can often work against you to do things differently and in a conservative category there is so much more to lose when you get it wrong, but I got the buy-in, backed myself and my team 100 per cent and it’s definitely paying off,” she comments.

Andrew May’s favourite moments over the past year are embedded in how his team has developed, rather than a specific campaign or project milestone.

Suncorp Group’s Mim Haysom has a mantra for her team: What gets measured, gets done. And it’s this approach that’s helped ensure effectiveness from marketing’s efforts over the past year.

If the last two years have taught H&R Block’s Louise Cummins anything about marketing effectiveness, it’s the need to keep coming back to basics.

David Nicholls was attracted to the PPG business because he thought the paints market was ripe for disruption.

In mid-2020, Mimecast marketing director, Dan McDermott, kick-started an ‘account-based everything’ (ABE) program - pointedly not an ABM – to fulfil a key ambition of moving upmarket from small-to-medium business clients to winning more enterprise accounts.

Effectiveness can be a challenge when you’re working in an ecommerce, trade-focused retail business like The Iconic, admits CMO, Alexander Meyer. With than a thousand brands across a variety of channels, daily campaigns, quick pivots and even quicker decision making are a stark reality.

WWF’s Regenerate Australia program is the largest nature regeneration initiative in Australia’s history. The five-year plan aims to raise $300 million to restore nature from the unprecedented 2020 Australian bushfires and future-proof the country against further climate disasters.

Celebrating Australia’s indigenous culture by developing a brand platform that challenges the norm and leverages both cultural enrichment and abundance of experiences has certainly been a big marketing milestone for Ana Sofia Ayala over the past year.

“You can't rely on data alone to give you a story, but you can't tell an effectiveness story without data,” says Menulog’s marketing chief, Simon Cheng. “In other words, marketing is both a science and an art. The art component is more effective when supported by the science.”

When Sweta Mehra joined ANZ as CMO four years ago, marketing was predominantly focused on brand and communications. As the company created products and services, her team was tasked with making sure customers and non-customers were aware of them.

Before Jenni Dill started at The Arnott’s Group in locked-down July 2020, business had been in ‘sale’ mode for two years. However, she joined after a new CEO had just taken the reins, and there were great ambitions for the future.