The view from the road
Welcome to an end-of-week update from Unmade. Today: We took the temperature from the marketing industry across six states. Here’s what we found.
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What’s on the market’s mind: Regime change, a tough 2025, and the damage done to diversity
That was really quite something.
As regular readers of Unmade will know, we’ve been on the road. Across 15 days - starting in Hobart on Wednesday November 6, and concluding in Melbourne this Wednesday the 20th - we toured the six states.
The format for Compass was simple: In each capital city, we found a nice pub, asked four or five interesting speakers to join us on stage, and, in front of an audience, had a conversation about what’s been going on in the industry.
As you’ll hear from our podcasts of the discussions, the themes might have been similar, but the direction of every conversation was different.
Additionally, at three of the events, our headline partner Boomtown hosted a closed-door session called CMO Confidential, which I facilitated. These CMO Confidential sessions took place under the Chatham House Rule, which means the speakers cannot be identified although it’s okay to talk about the subject matter.
You could say that we’ve just run nine focus groups about the state of the industry. So across Hobart, Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, this is my take on some key themes.
Platform scepticism
Privately, many marketers expressed growing scepticism about the effectiveness of their spend with the digital platforms, Meta and Google in particular. They question the attribution tools provided and whether the ROI results being credited to the platforms are accurate. Some brands are losing the blind faith they once had in the platforms.
Telstra sets the agenda
Telstra was a favorite across the board, not just in Sydney, where CMO Brent Smart was on stage. Many marketers and agencies love the boldness of Telstra’s strategy. Telstra was most likely to be mentioned when questions were asked about favourite work in 2024.
Economic pessimism
With the exception of Melbourne, where more (but not all) marketers were optimistic, most of those within the industry are nervous about the coming year. While recognising that this has been a down year for advertising spend, nobody is ruling out 2025 being even worse.
A change of government
The political mood music changed this month. On that first night of Compass, just as we were picking up our microphones in Hobart, it was becoming clear that Donald Trump was going to be the next US president. There were communications lessons to be learned on how the public had been so misunderstood by pollsters and Democrat campaign strategists.
At each subsequent edition of Compass I began to ask the same yes / no question: Based on the changing vibe (and not answering with what you want to happen, but what you actually think will happen), is Australia about to see a change of government? The answer from the vast majority was the same: Yes.
In other words, in every state, the people who understand Australians for a living believe that we are now just a few months from Labor losing power after just one term in office. Zoinks.
Campaign grief
The most common choice when we asked speakers to nominate the industry’s losing moment of the year was the Campaign Brief debacle when CB published its spread on top creative talent and featured 100% men. The issue was not just that publishing decision, but what it said about the state of creative agencies and the contribution of Campaign Brief to reinforcing the glass ceiling over the years.
We’ve already uploaded two of the podcasts, with the rest to come over the next few weeks, so you'll be able to hear the full conversations for yourself. But perhaps most striking is the fact that regardless of where we were in the country, the industry agrees about more than it disagrees.
When Compass came to Perth:
Nine lifts Unmade Index
The Unmade Index moved up for a fifth consecutive day and back above 450 points yesterday, rising by 0.72% to 450.7 points.
The index was lifted by Nine which rose by 2% and back above a $2bn market capitalisation for the first time in a month. Fellow TV stock Seven West Media was down by 3%.
Southern Cross Austereo’s price continued to ricochet, back up by 5.5% yesterday.
This week has also seen Aspermont’s fading market capitalisation ($8.9m) take it down to the smallest stock on the Unmade Index. Yesterday Aspermont was overtaken by out-of-home company Motio which rose 11.4% to a $9.6m market cap.
Time to leave you to your Friday.
I’ll be back with Best of the Week tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
