Disruption under the radar Hotels have been done. Taxis have been done. Most travel has been done. Retail has pretty much been done, or is being done. Dating has most definitely been done. TV is still being done. News has been done. Power is about to be done. Since the advent of eBay and then exaggerated by the arrival of social media, disruptive platforms that have reshaped our everyday lives have changed the way we buy, sell, live, love and entertain ourselves.
marketingmag.com.au
24 FEATURE
But does that mean disruption is done? Not a chance. Five of Australia’s brightest entrepreneurial sparks list five things each – businesses, industries and trends – that deserve your attention.
MARKETING JUNE | JULY 2015
41817_24-29_feature five by five.indd 24
15/04/2015 3:18 pm
Simon Dell Managing director at TwoCents Group
1
Co-ignition (recruitment)
@marketingmag
Co-ignition was born out of one of the core problems with recruitment: the cost. A UK-based platform that is launching in Australia concurrently, Co-ignition allows employers to place a job free of charge and then invite recruiters to bid on how much they’ll charge to fill the role. Immediately, the software disrupts the typical recruiter and employer relationship and, while the cost and speed benefits are obvious for the employer, the recruiter is accessing many more potential clients without the costly and timeconsuming business development.
2
WeldConnet (welding)
How much welding equipment is there in Australia? A lot. And how is that tested? Well, mainly individually and with paper forms, checklists and invoices. Well, Weldconnect is changing this with an app that automates the entire process and also allows users to purchase consumables for the industry from its online store. Thousands of man-hours are saved across the board.
3
“Deals in your email? So 2014.” – Simon Dell
PartsCheck (smash repair)
When you’ve smashed your car up, a smash repair centre normally spends hours upon hours ringing suppliers to get the best deals on the pieces they need. PartsCheck not only automates this entire process, it also lets the end user pick the best prices from all the different possible suppliers with the click of a button. PartsCheck is an Australian company, originating in Brisbane and with global interest already.
4
GlassTerra (underground mapping)
If you map things underground – think mining, construction and so on – the only way you can show your handiwork is for the person to whom you’re showing it to have the same software as you. And there are probably about 100 different software platforms. In comes GlassTerra, which can present the underground mapping on one simple system irrespective of where it was made, disrupting the very messy systems being used at the moment. Conceived and established in Brisbane, GlassTerra is due for launch in Australia mid-year.
5
RocketBuy (retail offers)
How would you feel if a retailer sent you a message encouraging you to come in and shop as you walked past the door? Well, if it wasn’t something you wanted, you may not be excited, but the shopping target market is reacting well to RocketBuy, due to launch in Australia in June. Beacon technology is changing the way we get messages to phones and the development team from MenOnTheMoon has created a product that takes full advantage. Deals in your email? So 2014.
THE DISRUPT ISSUE
41817_24-29_feature five by five.indd 25
15/04/2015 3:18 pm
Sacred cows Rob Grant sits down with A2 Milk Company’s Susan Massasso to discuss the meteoric rise of the milk brand that never discounts.
Although the A2 Milk Company was founded relatively recently, the origins of its success go back further. As a university student, Dr Corran McLachlan researched the effects on people of the different types of proteins in dairy products. Previous research had discovered all cows originally only produced milk containing one type, the A2 beta-casein protein. Over time, a genetic mutation meant a new A1 protein appeared in herds. It started in Europe and eventually spread globally. McLachlan identified a correlation between people drinking A2 milk and improved health. Specifically, many people, though certainly not all, who think they are intolerant to lactose, the sugar in milk, are not. It is sometimes just the A1 protein that disagrees with them. Once McLachlan realised this discovery had commercial application, he partnered with New Zealand businessman Howard Patterson and founded the A2 Milk Company. The two originators were hardly typical of those starting a grocery brand and certainly not a dairy business. As Massasso recounts: “They weren’t marketers, they weren’t farmers, they weren’t manufacturers and they didn’t have a lot of milk to
sell. The origins are more similar to a Silicon Valley IT business than a co-op.” The principles of IT start-ups are also part of the DNA of A2 Milk: agility, speed and collaboration. In the early days and for most of the early 2000s, A2 Milk focused on technology, research, patents, trademarks and global intellectual property licences. “The company started as a technology business. It had no intentions of originally being a brand,” says Massasso. “It started from the kernel of an amazing, profound discovery that was quite disruptive and became an IP (intellectual property) business. The real turning point was around 2004 to 2006 when there was a distinct shift in the strategy. It evolved from being an IP-led business backed by a brand, to a brand-led business underpinned by a significant portfolio of science knowledge.”
Harnessing the right people (and cows) The research-based, academic origins of A2 Milk also guide the audiences with which it engages. Health professionals, such as general practitioners,
THE DISRUPT ISSUE
41817_40-45_brand.indd 41
15/04/2015 11:36 am
80 BEST OF THE WEB: MOST SHARED
Understanding code is a fundamental part of working in digital, writes Mark Yeow, and marketers would do well to learn. Here he tests out his arguments.
A
Mark Yeow Mark Yeow is content services manager at Text 100.
s anyone worth their salt will tell you, the future of marketing (and PR, and advertising) is digital. And anything digital, be it a website, app or social media analytics report, needs to be programmed in some way or another: ‘coded’, in the vernacular. So why do so few marketers know how to code? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s to do with how these disciplines are taught at university, where strategy is vaunted while execution gets swept under the syllabus. It could be that coding remains uncool among the artistic and creative types usually drawn to marketing (at least, until their geeky programmer friends make a million bucks). I’m not saying that every marketer should double as a software developer. However, a basic
@
Read more of Mark Yeow’s writing at marketingmag.com.au understanding and appreciation of code is very useful in this omni-channel day and age where integrated communications is best practice. Here are five reasons why.
1. YOUR CAMPAIGNS WILL ACTUALLY WORK Learning to code means understanding that digital has limitations. There are some things that you can’t do (like Flash games in eDMs) and there are even more that you shouldn’t do (like Flash games in general). A working knowledge of one or two programming languages, even basic ones like HTML or CSS, will expose you and your team to the limitations of the digital realm. That, in turn, helps you devise more practical campaigns with higher chances of success for your clients.
marketingmag.com.au
Every marketer should learn to code
2. WORKING WITH DEVELOPERS BECOMES THAT MUCH EASIER It’s not rocket science: being able to code helps you converse more fluently with people who do it for a living. Many of the most common issues with digital campaigns stem from a lack of understanding between the marketers devising the idea and the developers tasked with making it work. But a marketer who’s familiar with programming terminology will be able to brief their developers more accurately and better understand the issues they encounter.
MARKETING JUNE | JULY 2015
41817_78-83_blogs.indd 80
15/04/2015 12:06 pm
marketingmag.com.au MARKETING APRIL | MAY 2015
41817_86-91_Profile katharine.indd 86
15/04/2015 12:25 pm
87 MARKETER PROFILE
Tenacity meets technology Full of captivating stories, Katherine Nguyen is transforming Acer Australia and New Zealand as its head of marketing with her energetic and fun approach to serious, number-driven business innovation. Michelle Herbison delves into the details.
@marketingmag
M
ost candidates for a job would take it as a hint and move on if a company goes silent for two weeks after an interview, but not Katherine Nguyen. Acer’s head of marketing spent hours researching and coming up with a strategy for the company that she then boldly emailed through, hoping for a second chance. It worked – the hiring manager invited her for coffee, and when he offered her the job right there and then, she was so thrilled she spilled her drink all over the table in front of him. “My cup just spilled over. I was so excited, I couldn’t hold it back,” the petite and charismatic 39-year-old remembers with an embarrassed laugh, reliving the stress and panic she was feeling as a new resident of Australia desperate to get back into marketing. “I thought I couldn’t get it, but I got the job.” It was 2011 and the job was as a marketing specialist at Acer, from which she has since been promoted to marketing communications manager and now head of marketing. That tough determination she drew on to land her spot inside Acer’s Australian headquarters was certainly no oneoff. This vibrant, tenacious spirit has run through all the steps in her career, from putting on her best singing voice at Ogilvy pitches (she was dubbed the agency’s ‘most creative account person’), to spearheading GPS Amazing Racestyle campaigns to sell the new technology to motorbike riding Vietnamese, to turning sales training on its head by introducing gamification to Acer. Only a year earlier, Nguyen was touching down on Australian soil for the first time with a pregnant belly, a pre-
schooler in one hand and a huge suitcase in the other, with no job lined up and no local contacts. She’d left her job as head of marketing at Samsung in Vietnam following a doctor’s orders for her to wind down, and decided exploring Australia would be a more interesting alternative to sitting around at home. It wasn’t long before she got restless here, too, and started applying for jobs. Only four months after her second daughter’s birth, the single mother landed a job at Samsung’s agency, Cheil Communications. The catch was that she was living in Melbourne and the job was in Sydney. Perhaps attending the furthest possible university from home as a teenager (24 hours on public transport – and her family couldn’t afford to fly) set Nguyen up for the task of flying from Melbourne to Sydney every Monday morning, and back again on Fridays, for two months of her probation. Luckily, her mother visited to help with her two daughters while Nguyen bunked in backpackers’ accommodation and went to work every day. “I did everything I could, because I knew it was difficult to get the job, but after two months I was just an exhausted wreck,” Nguyen says, re-enacting the distress. “I walked into the MD’s office, and said, ‘Thank you so much for giving me this chance when you knew I was new to the country, but it’s three months’ probation and I don’t know whether I’m going to be able to stay. I’m so tired, I can’t do it, so I quit.’ The MD was just like, ‘No, you’re in. Bring your family here.’ So within a week I packed everything and moved everyone to Sydney.” Six months later when the Acer job came up, Nguyen was ecstatic at the chance to get back into client-side marketing.
THE DISRUPT ISSUE
41817_86-91_Profile katharine.indd 87
15/04/2015 12:25 pm