By James Manning, Alisha Buaya and Jasper Baumann
The rain didn’t stop attendees from coming to day two of SXSW Sydney, and Mediaweek is on the ground. Here’s what happened on Tuesday, October 16.
Day 2 at The Ideas Dome
The Tuesday session, From Mates to Soul Mates – Dating in the Digital World, was moderated by Kerrie McCallum, head of Travel, Food & Health at News Corp Australia.
McCallum introduced the session: “People are often confused about how well they know someone, after a few chats online (often, not even on the phone). It is not your fourth date when you meet for the first time after chatting online, so you are not compelled to engage sexually – but who knows when you know one another well enough anymore, and what the expectations are?
Kerrie McCallum and Amanda Gordon
“With captivating discussions on media innovation and emerging societal trends, there’s always something new to explore. In the digital dating world, there is often little privacy, as people share messages and discuss their potential responses with friends.”
Guest panellist was leading relationship expert Amanda Gordon, Adjunct Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology. The session was facilitated by Body+Soul and it’s recent 2024 Sex Census. JM
Technographics: The Growth Distillery reveals how tech use influences shopping habits
News Corp Australia hosted a number of sessions at SXSW presented by The Growth Distillery. For marketers wanting to learn about the purchase habits of their customers, arguably none were more important than learning about how tech understanding can make an impact on purchasing habits of existing and potential customers.
The Tuesday late afternoon session was well attended as the audience heard about Technographics – The most influential view of your customers…that’s hiding in plain sight.
Hosting the session was Dan Krigstein, director of The Growth Intelligence Centre & The Growth Distillery. Krigstein has also been busy this week, also hosting a series of 11 podcasts for The Growth Distillery.
Co-presenting with Krigstein, was Rikki Pearce, managing director of Verve Australia.
This session introduced Technographics, a study on how Australians’ tech use influences their shopping choices. The word fuses technology and demographics.
The presentation showed how this new approach enhances the customer journey design and captures shopper value. JM
The importance of news in the ARN business model
Mediaweek was lucky to squeeze in a couple of visits to the ARN House at SXSW on Tuesday.
First up was a podcast session with repeat ACRA-winning breakfast team Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller. They had just come off air from another award-winning breakfast shift and motored (Amanda by car and Jonesy on his motorbike) to what was a rain-effected Tumbalong Park. A small yet dedicated crowd gathered to hear the podcast. (The duo then fronted later in the day again for an ARN SXSW housewarming.)
Later in the morning, we returned for an intimate session on the importance of news to ARN. The small but influential crowd also included Seven West Media chief executive Jeff Howard who was eager to hear about the way ARN treats news across Australia. Howard is a former CFO of APN News & Media which at the time was parent company of ARN.
Fronting the presentation for ARN were two obviously very passionate news professionals – ARN head of news Fiona Ellis-Jones and KIIS breakfast news presenter Brooklyn Ross.
Brooklyn Ross & Fiona Ellis-Jones at ARN House (2)
The pair discussed why ARN serves as a trusted news source, how they have rethought news delivery through the likes of podcasting and the importance of mentoring young and upcoming journalists within the industry.
A key comment from Ellis Jones was “ARN sees news as a content driver, not just a compliance requirement”. JM
QMS with Jennifer Robinson at the Opera House
As the partner of the Advertising and Marketing Track at SXSW Sydney, QMS hosted an #OutoftheOrdinary dinner with prominent human rights lawyer, barrister, author and keynote speaker Jennifer Robinson.
Set in the North Foyer of the Opera House, overlooking the Harbour Bridge and the Harbour, guests were welcomed by QMS chief executive John O’Neill.
Other QMS executives on hand included Sara Lappage, chief operating officer, Tim Murphy, chief sales officer, Christian Zavecz, chief strategy officer Adrian Vendetti, strategic sales director and Tennille Burt, chief marketing officer.
Following dinner, Robinson spoke with Tennille Burt about her amazing journey with Julian Assange that ended with a private jet taking them from London to Canberra via a US court appearance on an island in the north-west Pacific Ocean. She also spoke about working with Amber Heard on a winning UK court action. She also spoke about the disappointment Heard later had in the US in another case with a different legal team.
Robinson remembered fondly her years at Bomaderry High on the NSW south coast. She said she still has a property in the area and the day before several appearances at SXSW Sydney she was out surfing near her Aussie holiday shack.
QMS guests left the evening with a copy of the uncensored version of Robinson’s book How Many More Women? JM
The future of work: The Growth Distillery podcast
Two sessions of The Growth Distillery podcast series Rules Don’t Apply on Tuesday. First up, the busy Dan Krigstein spoke with Noelle Russell, the chief AI officer from the US-based AI Leadership Institute.
Next up later in the day was futurist Ryan Patel on the future of work.
The Patel session covered the skill sets needed for managing staff at a time when workforces are starting to move back into the office after working from home was the norm.
Also, where we got it wrong with businesses going global. “We didn’t think global. The copy and paste approach doesn’t work,” said Patel.
Mediaweek will have details on the podcast sessions when they go live. JM
From spark to reality; the journey of a creative ideas
Sarah Bailey, author and VML’s managing director of Sydney and Melbourne, was joined at the front of the room by screenwriter Troy Lum, Rich Williams, group executive creative director at VML and senior podcast producer at Shameless Meda, Annabelle Lee.
The conversation centred on the creative process and the challenges of writing screenplays, books, and advertisements within today’s commercial, political, and cultural climates to bring their unique ideas to life.
Williams shared that in the early days of his career, there was a bigger appetite to run an instinct and, if that failed, to move on. He said: “It was a different time. You put your ad on TV, and everyone sees it; happy days.
“Now we will, a client will give us a brief. Its strategy will break that down into pulling something really interesting out of it that’s very practical and rational. The strategy will give us some, hopefully, a nice human insight. They’ll pull something, a twist on it,” he said.
“That’s what’s given to creative and we have to analyse that and make sure it’s a springboard for us to think of it. We will spend however long on it and then we present it to the client. “
Williams added they will whatever time they need for it can take up to two years from when we get the brief until it gets made. “It’s this layers of approval. These days, it can be two years from when we get the brief until it gets made. It’s this layers of approval.”
“Once it goes through all the layers of approvals, often there’s boards and different organisations that need to approve it. Then there’s a gamut of research that’s and sometimes global approvals, sometime’s there’s budget changes, concept changes.”
Prime Video’s Primeville Sweet Spot
Prime Video was back for another year at SXSW Sydney with an edible experience, ‘Primeville Sweet Spot’ at Fratelli Fresh Darling Harbour. Guests went on a walk-through of all of the streamer’s shows and movies while grabbing a sweet treat or two.
The activation led with tiramisu from the new Amazon Original series The Office, followed by a doughnut from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and banana macarons from Despicable Me 4
Hot cocoa cookies were up next from the film It Ends With Us before entering the Hayu glam zone. Rounding out the experience were jello shots on the dance floor of Kings Cross from Paramount+ series The Last King of the Cross. – AB
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Unleashing the power of first-party data: secure collaboration and insights with Amazon Marketing Cloud
James Luty, AWS+Ads, technical business development, APAC Lead from Amazon led this discussion focused on Amazon’s advertising strategies and the integration of its first-party data.
Prime Video has 200 million subscribers worldwide and just over 4 million in Australia. Luty shared that 53% of viewers in Australia have three or more people in the room, and 81% watch on large screens and emphasised the potential for brands to engage with customers at scale and also the importance of large-screen platforms for branding.
Luty then introduced Darren Stein, CEO of Annalect, an agency part of the Omnicom Media Group that helps agencies make smarter data-led decisions.
Stein mentioned that many brands are not utilizing their first-party data to its full potential and highlighted the importance of having clear use cases for data, while having a balance between visionary and granular approaches.
“I got in trouble for saying this earlier in the year, but I’m going to say it again. I think the marketing profession, through automation in the platforms, has gotten lazy,” Stein said
“I’m not saying people are lazy, the craft has gotten lazy. Marketers need to understand the insight, pull it through to a campaign of some sort, and not just let a platform buy an audience that looks close enough.
“The platforms are brilliant, and they’ll speed up what you do, but don’t let them do everything for you.
“I also think the marketing profession needs to stop focusing on what’s broken or what we used to have, and start focusing on what’s still possible, what hasn’t changed and what’s actually better, even if it has to be different.” – JB
Climate change needs a rebrand – can advertising save the planet?
Arielle Gamble, co-founder & CEO of Groundswell Giving led a panel including Andrew Davies, Dan Ilic and Kiranpreet Dhillon discussing the role of advertising in climate action.
The panel highlighted historical and contemporary examples of climate advertising, including a look into the 1980s, which saw oil companies like Exxon and Shell discredit climate science and hire PR firms to spread doubt amongst the public, delaying climate action.
The discussion also covered recent initiatives, including Ilic’s billboard campaign in Times Square in 2021, which raised $80,000 to criticise Australia’s climate policies.
The panel emphasised the need for authentic brand stories, effective behaviour change strategies, and the importance of cultural and corporate accountability.
“I think advertisers need to draw up the guilt and the sadness in storytelling around climate change,” Dhillon said.
“After the big C (Covid), Australians and many other people around the world have been emotionally and mentally exhaused by all the causes that are reporting their attention. Our audiences are consuming content more than ever around world issues in a very scary way.
“Unfortunately, they’re exhausted and they are just going to turn off their blind eye when they’re being told they should care again. While these tactics worked back in the day, now, there’s a really good case to start telling your story in a way that people are engaged and not take the classical approach that used to work.” – JB
Accenture | The Future of Marketing
It was a full house at the Accenture lounge for ‘The Future of Marketing’ panel, with Mediaweek spotting new Accenture Song top dogs Melissa Fein, Sam Geer and Chris Colter even watching the discussion from a TV located just outside the entry doors.
The trio wrapped up their first week at Accenture Song in September after their wave-making departure from Initiative back in May. Fein and Geer are now both managing directors, media at Accenture Song APAC, while Colter is managing director, media strategy.
The panel featured Gen AI lead, APAC at Accenture Kunal Shah and Joanna Robinson, CMO at THE ICONIC discussing the transformative impact of agentic AI on the marketing landscape. The panel also discussed how advanced AI systems with autonomous decision-making capabilities are revolutionising marketing strategies, driving personalised customer experiences, and optimising campaign performance. – JB
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Top image: Tumbalong Park – SXSW Sydney 2024