Perth-based marketers, influenced by the macroeconomic climate, are investing in brand marketing ahead of performance in 2023.
Rebecca Hargrave, head of brand, marketing and communications at Synergy, said on stage at AdNews' Perth L!VE Synergy is investing 70% of budgets into long term brand building.
"The problem we solve for at Synergy is slightly different to many others in the room - as, particularly in the residential space, we don't have a natural competitor," Hargrave said.
"But that doesn't mean we don't need to advertise or don't need to communicate with our customers. So for us, it's not about the cheering campaigns that you see particularly at the moment in winter from some of our gas friends, it's more around how do we build our brand for the long term?
"How do we get behind the meter, which means into people's homes, so they can understand the important role that Synergy plays, particularly in this transformation of the energy sector."
Sam Tomeo, head of marketing at Harvest Road, said inflationary prices within the food category has dictated Harvest Road's media investments into brand.
"Most people probably have seen what's happened in the beef category, how expensive specialty cut meats have become, so a lot of the work we've been doing is around how do we build more value in our brand or demonstrate more value in our brand?," Tomeo said.
As a result, brand marketing has allowed Harvest Road to become more resilient to the current double-digit inflation in beef costs.
"So we've been doing a lot of work [in brand], rolling out new campaigns in the domestic, but also international markets which has been tricky for us.
"We've got markets across China, Thailand, Thailand, Indonesia, so we have to navigate the cultural challenges around the consumption of beef, whether it be Indonesia which is a heavily Muslim country, versus Thailand where there are less barriers to entry."
Kate Jennings, director of brand and marketing at Curtin University, said as a result of COVID Curtin shifted more into brand marketing.
"We shifted from sort of pure recruitment and product messaging into brand in our core markets [overseas] - and we've seen the upside to that because our international numbers are looking fantastic," Jennings said.
However particularly for a University, who markets to youth audiences, there are challenges to brand marketing.
"Youth audiences don't like ads, two in three of them are blocking ads if they can, they're skipping ads if they can. So our job is to play in the spaces that they're in and find ways to [advertise] in a real and authentic way.
"[For example] we know that we need to experiment with the creative economy, but it's finding the right way to do that, in an authentic way, that stays true to who we are."
Thank you to our supporting partners for Perth L!VE: Boomtown, Nine, Longreach Media and MiQ. And friends of AdNews: Perth Advertising and Design Club (PADC), The Western Australia Marketing Association (WAMA) and The Independent Media Agencies of Australia (IMAA).
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