Inside Nine's Big Ideas Store

Nine's Big Ideas Store returned this year for its sixth year, tackling everything from greenwashing, cancel culture, and finding the sweet spot where technology and creativity deliver results in a world grappling with AI to how investing in brands during a cost of living crisis will deliver results and the rise of the super consumer aged 45 years and older

The theme for 2023’s edition of the Big Ideas Store is "go big or go nowhere", a theme best exemplified by this afternoon’s session, The Great Debate: You Can Be Cautious or Creative, You Can’t Be Both. 

Nicki Kenyon, director of Powered, said that the theme wasn’t only reflected in the lineup for the event – among sessions like Why Brands Need Big Ideas in 2023 and Giant Slayers: The Big Ideas Helping SMEs Win Big – but also internally within the Powered team itself. 

“We have 120 multidisciplinary specialists who are marketing strategists, production experts, measurement experts - we are giving them permission to be brave, and to develop big ideas that are not purely dependent on big budgets,” said Kenyon. 

“It’s about letting people be creative in the best way possible to be as innovative and creative with what we can offer as far as Nine’s ecosystem to deliver a result for a client, no matter what size they are, no matter what size their budget is, bringing to life the best of audio, total TV and total publishing.” 

Michael Stephenson, Nine’s chief sales officer, said that of the 800 people in the sales team and the 5,000 people at Nine around the country, big ideas can come from absolutely anywhere. 

“Every year we do two things - we have hackathons, both commercial and technology, and of course, we have our Powered Sprints,” said Stephenson, referring to Nine’s client focus sessions. 

“When we have a Powered Sprint for a client, it's not the most senior people and it's not necessarily the most obvious people. It'll be a group of people handpicked from different parts of a team or business, because they might just have a great idea. That's something that I'm really proud of.” 

The Beta Events space in Sydney where the Big Ideas Store is taking place has been redesigned, with the event now happening across two floors. On the first floor is a lounge area where attendees can network, as well as where the Powered Sprints will be held, while the second floor will feature the main sessions. 

Another change for this year’s event is a shortened schedule. Toby Boon, Powered's director of client strategy, insights & effectiveness, said that the shift of moving the event from two weeks down to just one week was informed both by internal and external feedback.  

“Two weeks is a long time for us to keep the momentum, it's a long time when we're asking people to come and spend time with us here physically in person and even on the live stream, it's a big ask to keep that up,” said Boon. 

“Having three sessions on some of the days means that we'll likely have people who are able to be here and stay here. That’s part of the redesign of the lounge space downstairs from an installation space into a space where people can hang out, grab a cup of coffee, spend some time in between sessions.  

“What we found though, for us and hopefully for people watching, is it creates a bit of a bit of energy and things will be a bit faster paced.” 

Stephenson (pictured right) said that his brief to Kenyon and Boon this year was that the event needs to be both bigger and more impactful. 

“This is not an exclusive Sydney-only event, so what the guys will have the ability to do, because this is a week and not two weeks, is take our Big Ideas Store brand into other markets, engage more of our own people internally.They don't just have to consume this content by the live stream, they can actually physically experience it,” said Stephenson. 

Stephenson said that everything Nine does for the Big Ideas Store every year is curated and the times that we are operating in today are vastly different to what they were 12 months ago and even more different to what they were two years ago, which informs the topics covered in 2023’s edition. 

“The economy's tough, there's inflationary pressure everywhere, people are being more cautious - so what role does creativity play in the decision making starts to form the basis of that thinking?” said Stephenson. 

“We don't have all of the answers, but we're just trying to guide people and give them a sense of confidence that the decisions that they're making and the things that they're thinking about are what other people are thinking about as well and that we can hopefully be their partner in that decision making process. That was really the genesis for where this has started.” 

Boon said that two years ago, Nine held a session on sustainability and what it meant for brands, and that while it was a “great session”, it was “fairly gentle”, dealing with topics like if sustainability is something brands should be doing and what sort of areas to focus on.  

“Having worked on the discussion guide for this year’s greenwashing session, it's a different tone - it is now focusing on the conversation that's needed in the moment,” said Boon. 

“I feel like there's something in every single session; strategists will get a lot out of the coming to the research pieces, but hopefully so will a broader range of people as well. We have almost as many creatives on the panels and registering to come to sessions as we have media agencies.” 

Stephenson said that Nine has also been quite specific in terms of marketing the event to the industry, specifically focusing on the younger end of the market.  

“What you will see when you come to some of the events is the room is packed full of people who've got between two- and five-years' experience, so we start to encourage their own thinking,” said Stephenson. 

“You saw that recently at Think TV’s RE VISION. That was not just the people who we were marketing to, in terms of the crowd of attendees, but also the people that were speaking. It wasn't myself and Seven’s Kurt [Burnette] and others; it was all the people who in our business are 25 to 30, who are thought leaders and connected with a different market and a different audience and I think that's really, really important.” 

Stephenson said that with the work Nine has done in the last 12 to 18 months as a company around aligning and communicating its purpose as ‘Australia's media company’, it does believe that it has a responsibility to have an opinion and have a point of view.  

“The whole reason behind the Cultural Conversations sessions and trying to communicate what we believe are the hot topics in advertising and media right now is us putting a line in the sand saying, ‘we have a responsibility as Australia’s media company to have an opinion’ and then we'll debate that opinion with all our agency friends and clients,” said Stephenson. 

“The outcome of that is we won't be standing here talking about the power of our television, radio, digital publishing assets - hopefully people know what they are – but if out of this and out of the work that we do with the Powered Sprints we then get the opportunity to talk about how we can create even bigger ideas using all of those assets with real clients with real problems, then that’s pretty good.” 

Kenyon (pictured right) said that Nine isn’t worried about disagreements among panellists or controversial ideas being raised – especially in the session happening tomorrow morning, presented by Initiative, that’s titled Culture Shock: Grey Matters and looks at the risk of cancel culture for brands – because diversity of thinking is the “most powerful and important attribute to bring to any professional and personal conversation.” 

“We have intentionally handpicked the topics, the speakers and the panellists to give them a stage to talk about differences of opinions,” said Kenyon. 

“It will be animated, it will be interesting, it will be thought provoking, but we have not said, ‘this is the brief, stick to it’. We’ve just said ‘this is the topic’ and in fact the conversations that we've had in preparation with some of the panellists have been fascinating on their own.”