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Insuring the Future: Balancing Heritage and Innovation in Customer Experience

Episode Six

Insuring the Future: Balancing Heritage and Innovation in Customer Experience

Insuring the Future: Balancing Heritage and Innovation in Customer Experience

'Doing the basics brilliantly' in the insurance category

Michelle Klein, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer of IAG, prides herself and her team on “doing the basics brilliantly” while providing an innovative experience for customers.

Customer expectation

Speaking to Nine CMO Liana Dubois on the latest episode of the Talking Media podcast, Klein said: “The experience and expectations a customer is looking for in your brand or business to deliver are usually quite straightforward.”

She noted that customers want clear information, and the ability to trust that a brand or company will deliver on its promises and provide excellent service.

Escalator theory

Klein explained that the relationship with customers is an “ongoing exchange and interaction” and built a picture of customer expectations as an escalator.

“Just as you think you’ve defined the ultimate experience for a customer in your category, something changes in technology or the world that makes that expectation go one step up on the escalator.

“Now you can book a taxi on your phone, you can see the world’s greatest hotel network in Airbnb on a single app, and easily live in somebody’s house without having to ever meet them. Even though we’re in insurance, those expectations of the experience apply.

24/7 job

“We’ve got to start by fundamentally looking at what we do, what we say we’re going to deliver, and do it really, really well.”

Dubois acknowledged that customer service “is a 24/7 job” and every touch point and engagement contributes to the consumer’s experience of a brand.

Klein agreed and noted that consumers now have greater access to businesses through innovative tech and social media channels where customers can share feedback and frustrations.

She said: “It’s trying to think about the life of the customer that’s 24/7 and also digitalised, so adapting your business model delivery towards that is so important.”

Human touch

Dubois pointed out that, unlike her category of media and content, “insurance is low interest until it’s high emotion”.

Klein agreed and emphasised the importance of the human touch for customer experience in the insurance category.

She noted that insurance can be a “set and forget”, “transactional and rational” purchase until it is needed, which pivots the customer experience to a human and highly emotive one.

“I’ve been talking about this quite a lot lately, the conversation around AI and AI-enabling and simplifying and making things more efficient and effective. In those moments, that’s really where you want to speak to a human being. You don’t want to talk to a chatbot.”

Transparent and authentic

Dubois asked Klein about finding the balance and boundary between leveraging data effectively and efficiently to create personalised experiences while being mindful of privacy legislation, particularly as an insurance company.

“If people understand why you’re collecting their information and how it’s going to make it better for them, ultimately it’s easier for them to want to give it over to you,” Klein replied.

She noted filling out forms and saving the information so that it is pre-filled for next time as an example.

She also cited being upfront and transparent about why this information is being collected, and positioning some of the marketing consent as a benefit, like being informed of special offers or new products.

“I think it’s really important to create the usefulness around data collection and privacy standards that you are living up to. It’s also about making sure that people understand that a personalised experience is the expectations escalator.

“When you use Netflix, Apple Music, Amazon, it’s highly personalised to you, and therefore if you can look at your business and say, well, how might we explain why personalisation in our business is more impactful for the customer experience, you can create a net positive, and that exchange becomes more valuable.”

Dubois and Klein also discussed transparently and authentically showing up for consumers, referencing the NRMA Insurance's broadcast partnership with Nine of the Olympics and Paralympic Games.

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Art Meets Science: Can Data and Creativity Coexist in Modern Marketing?

Episode Five

Art Meets Science: Can Data and Creativity Coexist in Modern Marketing?

Art Meets Science: Can Data and Creativity Coexist in Modern Marketing?

MMM and data that proves growth vs. common sense and optimising to remarkable outcomes over risk reduction

Mutinex co-founder Henry Innis and transformation consultant Tom Goodwin go head to head on “dirty” data, market mix modelling, channel planning and optimising to backside covering, versus relying on common sense, customer insight, context and risk taking to drive growth. They agree on one thing – but not much else.

Harnessing data at the start

Mutinex co-founder Henry Innis is rapidly scaling a media mix modelling platform that gives marketers a better read on how their marketing investments are driving incremental growth.

The alternative, for the last decade or two, has been marketing’s “obsession with shiny metrics” that he says are essentially meaningless. “When you correlate them to the P&L they do absolutely nothing, and that has caused huge issues with marketing’s credibility.”

Transformation consultant Tom Goodwin agrees that the “obsession with measuring absolutely everything we can” is a problem: “We’re just looking at dashboards, we’ve lost interest in our consumers’ lives, lost interest in the broader context.” He thinks there is “enormous value … in knowing what data to ignore” and not becoming reliant on data to justify decisions at the expense of common sense – and a degree of risk taking.

Innis says the key to harnessing data is using it at the start of a process, not the end.

“That is really important. I’ve seen a number of great creative campaigns that tested well, but they didn’t have enough media [investment] behind them to cut through – and that was the fundamental reason why they didn’t perform,” says Innis.

“It’s very helpful to have that sort of conversation, because it’s very easy to misdiagnose why things didn’t work and then react in a way that probably takes you down the wrong path. So use data to ground you at the start. Don’t use data to define where you go at the end.”

Data success has many fathers...

Goodwin’s not convinced that mining data can pinpoint why a brand is growing.

“My sense has always been that there are so many variables, and such poor quality of data collected about things that really matter, that while it’s possible to aggregate it. And while it’s possible to try and control for those variables, it’s pretty much impossible to get much meaningful data in terms of causality or inference or correlation from that stuff.”

A fabric softener, for example, will be sold into shelf space with some extra above-the-line spend. “They might have new packaging at the same time, a sponsorship of a sports team, then they might have a bit of a price promotion going on. The reality is, you’ll end up in this situation where there are perhaps 10 or 12 different variables. For instance, the economy, their competitor might do a price increase, a famous person they work with goes to prison,” says Goodwin.

“I’ve been in so many marketing meetings where 25 people will take credit for all of the success, but the moment something terrible happens it’s always the weather’s fault, or the macro economy.

“Most of the data we get is not particularly high resolution. Most of it is measured in fairly different ways. Most of it’s quite dirty. I think it’s possible to find lines of best fit, and it’s possible to infer things from it, But I don’t know if the quality of that data is so sufficient that we wouldn’t have been better off just drawing upon our own common sense.”

Innis is entirely “pro-common sense” but disagrees. Across the 65 large brands the firm works with in Australia, data may be non-standardised, but “most data isn’t that dirty”.

“I agree that causality is really hard to find in in any kind of correlation-type approach, but any kind of market mix model is an observational technique where we’re looking at one week, the next week, the next week, and at what happened in that week, what didn’t happen – things like that,” says Innis.

“If you get enough observations of something, you generally get a pretty good idea of what’s working and what isn’t . Could you do that 20 years ago with a regression model out of Excel? Of course not. But the world has moved on considerably.”

Juice versus squeeze

Speaking more broadly – i.e. not squarely about market mix modelling – Goodwin questions whether marketers might have lost sight of the woods for the trees.

“We can pay a lot of money for extra data, a lot of money in fees for platforms, a lot of money to technology companies to allow us to do new things.

“We now have all these meetings where we’re asked to present our data before we make any decisions. If you took all of that as a holistic approach and compared it with really good marketers 20 years ago, are they doing a better job? I’m not entirely sure they are, that the juice is worth the squeeze,” says Goodwin.

“People are afraid to make decisions. People feel like they need to create entire presentations full of data supported arguments to do things which are quite obviously common sense. And I think we’re entering an environment where we’ve lost quite a lot of intimacy with consumers. Instead, people spend all day looking at dashboards and making promises about what the return on ad spend will be.

“We’re in an environment where any discussion with data behind it looks more sophisticated, robust and progressive. I’m not too sure we should be confident that those arguments are more enlightened and more likely to lead to successful outcomes.”

Channel stupidity

But both Innis and Goodwin agree that talking about single media channels versus the plethora that actually contribute to growth is a fool’s errand.

“The thing I consistently see is it’s not one channel. Advertising is a cumulative effect of many things being active to then change a result over time,” says Innis.

Meanwhile, he believes the Mutinex data consistently shows the folly of overspending on lower funnel “performance” media to try to drive sales, “particularly when times get tougher”.

“In order to capture demand efficiently, you have to generate it efficiently,” says Innis, i.e. with brand investment. “What the MMM shows quite consistently is that if you just chase the bottom of the funnel it’s generally a pretty dangerous road to go down to generate long-term sustainable growth.”

Goodwin thinks music is the best analogy for ad campaigns, with media channels the various instruments that make up the whole.

“When you realise that marketing campaigns are like music, you realise that quite a lot of the conversations we have are quite stupid. It’s a bit like saying, ‘which is more important, the lyrics or the sound?’” he suggests.

“Someone says, ‘I think the lyrics are more important, so we should have twice as many lyrics,’ which is ridiculous.

“So the difference between streaming video and broadcast video [for example] is of no meaning whatsoever. A much better way to think about the modern media environment would not be to think of the media channel. It would be to think of the moment of the context of consumption. Are people sitting back? Are they paying attention? Are they open to new ideas? Does it feel premium? Are they trying to do something? Is it a place where they’re trying to do transactions? We need to think much more in terms of the broader context of the media, not the channel itself”.

Optimise this

Goodwin continues, saying: “My concern is that, generally speaking, the industry is much happier to make terrible music that appears to have followed all the best practice, appears to have been liked by all the focus groups, appears to stick to the same logic and the same rules of the past.

“For a lot of people it’s better to do something logically and in a way where they have something that’s not them to take the blame than it is for them to just make better music and to have taken a risk.”

That annoys him.

“We’re moving towards an environment where we’re trying to optimise for the reduction of risk, rather than optimise to do something remarkable.”

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VOZ and VOZ Streaming: The Future of TV and Streaming Measurement

Episode Four

VOZ and VOZ Streaming: The Future of TV and Streaming Measurement

VOZ and VOZ Streaming: The Future of TV and Streaming Measurement

'We changed the way we engage with the marketplace': OzTAM CEO on getting the industry on board with VOZ Streaming

"We knew there was resistance to the change of VOZ because systems weren’t ready and people weren’t confident. There were a number of different obstacles,” Karen Halligan, CEO of OzTAM, told Nine CMO Liana Dubois on the Talking Media podcast.

Getting everyone on board

OzTAM announced that VOZ will become Australia’s trading currency on December 29, 2024, following its introduction in January. TV network annual rate negotiations for CY25, which start in Q4 this year, will be based on VOZ Total TV data.

Halligan explained that the OzTAM team spoke to the agencies resisting the change and listened to their concerns, particularly about the new system’s readiness.

“We asked them what they would need for this to be a success and how could we get them on board. I think my consultancy days helped. It was a bit of good old basic change management,” she added, referring to her time at KPMG.

Halligan noted that the feedback has been great and applauded the efforts made by the MFA, its member agencies and leaders – Sophie Madden and Linda Wong, for their support through training and change management workshops.

“I was thrilled earlier this year when we had the photo shoot with the MFA, the IMAA and quotes from Josh Faulks from the AANA and our partners that influence the success of this supporting the change.”

Actions speak louder than words

Halligan said contracts for VOZ Streaming were sent out to people and agencies looking to get involved in the first trial before Christmas.

“We had one contract back in less than 48 hours remote from one of the Holdcos in their enthusiasm to get involved in VOZ Streaming.

“They say actions speak louder than words. We’ve got another signed this morning from another Holdco, so that suggests what we’ve been doing is working and the interest is definitely there.”

The future of measurement

As a self-professed television enthusiast, Dubois asked if it was a watershed moment in moving past legacy measurement structures with television into the future.

“I really agree with that,” Halligan said. “Even if I just crystallise the fact that we’ve been working with an open market third-party software supplier where all of our data goes into multiple partners and agencies get to choose how they use our data and how they evaluate for better decisions.

“It means that we can now run reach frequency across linear and BVOD together. Before we could do that, but we had to upload files manually.”

Halligan noted that OzTAM is in one of the few countries that have collaborated with multiple partners in the distribution of this data, unlike the USA which defaults to Nielsen and the UK with Kantar.

“Here in Australia, we’ve got a different approach. That means agencies can pick the best way to receive the data and the information in real-time with partners that suit their needs, and they can make better buying decisions quickly.”

Advice to marketers

Dubois asked Halligan what her advice was to marketers or people in media looking to diversify their skill set and embrace the change.

Halligan directed them to the education assets and training modules on the VOZ website for self-education.

“Our role as OzTAM is to serve the industry. So if people have any questions, if you want presentations, we have been trying to cover as much ground as possible, road-showing out to the market and talking to as many people as we can.”

The discussion also saw Dubois and Halligan talk about the impact and application of having greater granular data on the creative process and where AI is in the VOZ and VOZ Streaming discussion.

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Power of Audio: The Art and Science of Sonic Advertising

Episode Three

Power of Audio: The Art and Science of Sonic Advertising

Power of Audio: The Art and Science of Sonic Advertising

‘An authentic-sounding audio ad is far more powerful than a visual ad’: The secret to engaging listeners through sound

There's one key secret to the success of Ralph van Dijk and Andy Maxwell from Earmax Media, a pioneering business helping brands leverage audio and podcasts to engage and build loyalty for brands.

Your ears don't lie to you.

Intimacy of Audio

During a fascinating conversation with Liana Dubois on the Talking Media podcast, the trio explore the power of audio, particularly in advertising, and how sound engages listeners on a deeper, more intimate level compared to visual ads.

"Our ears are our best bull**** detectors," van Dijk told Dubois. "And in an environment where authenticity is such a vital currency in communication, an authentic-sounding audio ad that is engaging and relatable is far more powerful than a visual ad because the audience is actually the co-author.

"They're listening, they're involved, they're creating pictures in their mind, so you've got them. They're participating. That's if the creative is good, obviously."

Sonic cues to build brand recognition

Van Dijk, who is also the founder of Resonance Sonic Branding, gives examples of some of the most successful sonic cues which have helped to build brand recognition and trust in some of Australia’s most iconic brands.

Brands like McDonald’s, Woolworths and Bunnings use distinct sonic branding to immediately trigger brand recall in the listener’s mind.

That power extends even when listeners are distracted, because our ears are still tuned to the sonic cues.

“The poster child for this industry is McDonald's,” van Dijk told Dubois. “So I probably don't even need to hum it.

“In Australia, Woolworths have been extremely consistent, so we work with them and we're updating the Fresh Food People melody in all sorts of genres.”

He added: “Bunnings is an incredibly consistent brand. [There was a] crazy idea to use that instrument in that way, but we don't think of it anymore, we just instantly know it and it's been the most consistent brand.”

Focused and engaged

This idea of trust through sound is also built through podcasts and the unique relationship in this one-on-one medium where listeners are highly engaged.

This creates a more receptive environment for advertising.

Maxwell explained that podcast listeners actively choose content they want to consume, and they tend to be more focused and engaged.

“This is content that people are actively seeking out,” he said. “It's not like you're choosing between TV channels. It's a very specific thing that you want to know more about or you want to engage with a host.

“There are endless options out there, so to pick out your favourite five podcasts you're really going out of your way to find that content, and 75% of people listen to learn something new.

“So these are people that are super-engaged, really attentive, and that is why in going back to the creative it's so important that you reach them - one in the right context and two with a creative that is not shouty.

“I feel like some radio ads are designed to cut through the other radio ads that you're kind of forced to listen to.

“...whether it's through an authentic host-read or 30 second ad or slightly longer ad, if it's in the right place contextually and it's a good creative, you do typically give it a chance.”

Ad samples

In the podcast, the three experts then go on to highlight what works with sound in adverts and podcasts and the ways brands and individuals can connect authentically with listeners, build lasting brand memories, and engage their audiences in a very personal, very focused way.

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Inside Nine’s Travel Trends Index: Empowering brands with data-driven insights

Inside Nine's Travel Trends Index: Empowering brands with data-driven insights

In the ever-evolving landscape of travel, understanding the preferences and behaviours of Australian travellers is crucial for delivering content that resonates far and wide. To get to the heart of these insights, Nine recently launched the Aussie Travel Trends Index – a survey meticulously crafted to explore the travel habits and aspirations of Australians.

9Travel Editor, Kristine Tarbert, gives us an in-depth look at how this survey was conducted, the key findings, plus what it means for content creators and marketers alike.  

The method behind the insights

The Aussie Travel Trends Index stems from a robust survey conducted across Nine's diverse audience - spanning TV, digital, print, and radio platforms. Highlighting the breadth of respondents and with a focus on understanding the heartbeat of Australian travel, Kristine explains:

“With over 1,100 respondents, the survey was carefully weighted to ensure a nationally representative sample of Australians aged 18 and over. We asked a range of questions - everything from spending habits, to favourite travel spots and beaches as well as honeymoon and camping destinations.

The goal was twofold: firstly, to ensure our content aligns with the top interests of our readers, and secondly, to equip our commercial team with data-driven insights to facilitate more informed conversations with our partners. By understanding what excites our audience, we can better serve both their needs and the interests of our advertisers.”

Shaping content with purpose: How insights drive cross-platform synergy

The ability to craft content that resonates on a broad scale, while still being finely tuned to specific audience segments, is a testament to Nine’s cross-platform capabilities. This is especially crucial in today’s media landscape, where delivering tailored content that truly resonates with audiences is key to maintaining high engagement.

“The survey insights are instrumental in shaping the content across Nine's platforms, particularly for 9Travel and the Today Show. By identifying the destinations and types of holidays our audiences are interested in, we can tailor our content to provide them with the inspiration and information they most need and want.

Whether a detailed guide to a trending destination or tips for planning a perfect camping trip, our content is perfectly aligned with our audience's travel plans.”

Diverse audiences, unique preferences

The results showcased a clear appetite for travel in Australia, with Eastern Seaboard locations amongst the most popular, and Tasmania a surprise winner across various categories. Delving into the differences between the 9Travel and Today Show audiences, Kristine revealed some fascinating distinctions.

“While there are similarities, each audience has its own unique appetite for travel. 9Travel visitors, for example, showed a greater interest in camping and are willing to spend a bit more on their adventures. Meanwhile, Today Show viewers show a stronger preference for classic destinations like the Gold Coast, especially those under 45.

Internationally, the USA, Hawaii, and Fiji were popular choices for Today Show viewers, while Europe remained the top choice overall for Nine’s audience.”

The most significant takeaway

In a challenging economic climate, one thing remains clear: Australians passion for travel is unwavering.

“Despite the current cost of living pressures, travel remains front of mind, and in fact a priority for many. The growth we’ve seen in 9Travel’s audience since we launched in February, having hit over 1 million users in June, is a testament to this. Our ability to stay on top of trends, and truly understand what our readers are interested in is second to none.”

Leveraging the Travel Trends Index for campaign success

For brands looking to connect more deeply with their target audience, the insights from the Travel Trends Index are a goldmine. Whilst informing Nine’s content strategy across platforms like 9Travel and the Today Show, we can also equip brands with the knowledge needed to craft effective campaigns that truly align with the current travel landscape. Whether it’s tapping into growing interest in domestic travel or aligning with the top international destinations, these insights empower brands to make more informed decisions.

Source: Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service July 2024, Age 14+, PC/laptop/smartphone/tablet, Text only, Brand Group, Travel (News Only) Tier 2 Category, Audience (000s), Avg Mins PP, Page Views (000s).

Looking to connect with Nine's travel enthusiasts? We'd love to hear from you.

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Innovation + Highflyer Supplement

On Sale: Friday 28th February

For our annual innovation issue of AFR Magazine we're planning a deep dive into the world of motoring.
At least three features in the main section of the magazine will be dedicated to motoring trends, including the state of the market for EVs, what's happening in motorsports, the cutting edge technology that's coming to showrooms, and people driving the automotive industry forward. With plenty of input from the Financial Review's motoring expert Tony Davis, Innovation in 2025 will be a sure hit with subscribers.

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Source: Roy Morgan Research, All People 14+ for the 12 months ending September 2024. All audience data is based on the last 4 weeks averaged over the 12 months to September 2024. *This figure includes: nine.com.au, SMH Print & Digital, The Age Print & Digital, AFR Print & Digital, Brisbane Times, WA Today, Domain Digital, Good Weekend VIC & NSW, Sunday Life VIC & NSW, Domain NIM VIC & NSW, AFR Magazine, Fin! Print Platforms include: SMH Print, The Age Print, AFR Print, Good Weekend VIC & NSW, Sunday Life VIC & NSW, Domain NIM VIC & NSW, AFR Magazine, Fin! Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service September 2024, Age 14+, PC/laptop/smartphone/tablet, Text only, Brand Group, News Tier 1 Category, Audience (000s), Audience %, Avg Mins PP, Page Views (000s)

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9Travel a new nine.com.au vertical

An all-encompassing travel experience that caters to both men and women, 9Travel provides budget to luxury travel options and advice that caters to the mass market in Australia. With a focus on popular destinations like Queensland, New Zealand, Bali, Fiji, and Hawaii, plus a selection of cruising, short trips and weekend getaways, 9Travel offers something for every jetsetter. Elevate your marketing campaign through the power of digital today.

In Conversation With Kerri Elstub

Kerri Elstub is one of the rarest types of employees that can be found in 21st Century Australia: the loyal kind.

Now in her 23rd year at Nine, Elstub cut her teeth for a few years in talkback radio before switching employers for the first and only time in her life.

“I’m a Nine person through and through,” she tells B&T proudly. “I spent about 18 years in television and absolutely loved it. Everything from the TODAY show, Weekend Today, to the Kerri-Anne Show and then A Current Affair.”

She made the jump to digital six years ago and is currently the Director of nine.com.au, home to Nine’s suite of websites including 9honey.com.au, 9news.com.au, WWOS.com.au and Nine’s TV show sites.

// HOW DID YOU FIND THE SWITCH FROM TELEVISION TO DIGITAL?

I think both are fast-paced, the television world and the digital world.

A Current Affair is truly the best training ground in the world for any journalist. My six years there were some of the best of my life. I think it puts you in really good stead because A Current Affair knows its audience and it knows Australia. I think I was able to bring a lot of that across to digital and put on a different lens – a consumer lens – which I hadn't seen a lot of in digital before.

That is especially so now with interest rate rises and cost of living pressures – issues that are just as valid today as when I started back on A Current Affair 12 years ago.

// SIX YEARS INTO NINE.COM.AU, HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING IT?

It’s a privilege to run this part of the business. Digital is such a massive part of what Nine does as a company. It is ever-changing, ever-expanding.

We are sitting in verticals from news to sport, lifestyle to entertainment, property, and now the e-commerce and affiliate marketing sites we run. We touch every part of people’s lives with Nine’s content, so it’s an exciting space to be in. Add the Olympics deal on top and nine.com.au is in a truly unique position to succeed.

// What parts of the broader Nine business do you collaborate with most?

We work with a lot of the broadcast brands such as 9News, TODAY and A Current Affair because we look after their websites and online content. We also work closely with 9Now, Stan, Domain, Drive, and all other parts of Nine.

// Nine.com.au has a way to go to catch News.com.au.

We have a huge audience around the country. More than 10 million Australians visit us each month.

Yes, we have some big competitors, but I’m focused on our sites and what we do well.

Take lifestyle, for instance. Six years after launching, our women’s lifestyle network 9Honey is still the most engaged lifestyle website in the country. People spend more time on 9Honey than on any of our competitor sites. That’s what we want as content creators and that’s what advertisers want too. Big numbers don’t mean anything if people don’t spend real time engaging with your content.

// What do you think is your secret sauce?

I have an incredible team of editors who know their audience and their product. We’ve always said that people come to us for news and stay for everything else.

People are suffering with news fatigue at the moment, which is a trend we are seeing globally. People are increasingly looking for different kinds of content and that’s what we provide.

Across Nine, we call our product offering Total Publishing. Our content is complementary, not in competition with our stablemates like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review. We consider our brands to be superbrands.

To use a travel analogy, we talk about filling every seat on the plane. So no matter what your budget, what your destination is, there’s a different brand within Nine’s Total Publishing community to fill that need. And we’re certainly seeing a lot of interest in the travel space and lifestyle in general. Sport too is on the rise with the Olympic Games coming to Nine over the next decade.

// How do you decide which vertical to enter?

It’s a combination of trusting your gut, knowing your audience and speaking with the commercial team. I consider myself to be a soccer mum from the suburbs, first and foremost.

I feel that I know our audience because I am our audience. I know what’s being discussed at the school gate, I know what my husband, who is a builder, is telling me, I know what my girlfriends are talking about, and I’ve got teenage kids and 20-year-old nieces.

So I know what they’re consuming. I know what their lives look like, I know the platforms they’re on. I think about all those things and have the right conversations with the right people before we look at spinning up those sites.

// How important are TV shows to your content?

There are probably 20 TV show websites within the entertainment category that we run.

But that’s the unique thing about nine.com.au. We get to represent all those mega TV brands in the digital world.

The recent series of Married at First Sight was a perfect example of how our audience is so hungry for content on the couples and how they’re doing throughout the season. We’re also focusing on how Karl and Sarah are setting the agenda for the day on TODAY and how Ally Langdon is breaking stories on A Current Affair.

Really, that is our unique selling point: we have the content and the access that our competitors want. They are following us. They’re writing up MAFS. They’re writing up who Ally has spoken to on A Current Affair or what Ben Fordham has said on 2GB (Nine radio). To be able to work with and digitally represent the best content in Australia makes my job the best job in media.

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In Conversation With Cosima Marriner

Cosima Marriner started her career as a journalist at the epicentre of one of the great fevered moments in our history.

Working as a freshly graduated journalist on what was then Kerry Packer’s Australian Personal Computer magazine in 1999, Marriner found herself reporting on the frenzy of the dotcom boom as well as the near-certain doom of the Y2K bug. It was a crazy world of stupendous valuations for worthless businesses and prophecies of doom that never came to pass. It was also a foreshadowing of where her career would lead.

Like most journalists who graduated from those heady IT publishing days Marriner has certainly gone on to bigger and better things. In a recent interview with B&T's Editor-in-Chief David Hovenden, Cosima talks about jumping from the magazine world in Sydney’s Park St, and buckling up for a 20-year stint at the then Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald before recently being appointed managing editor of the Australian Financial Review.

// SO HOW ARE YOU FINDING THE SHIFT TO THE FINANCIAL REVIEW?

I really like it. I was at the Herald for a very long time and did a variety jobs.

So it’s been pretty refreshing and invigorating to go somewhere which is still in the family. It’s not different culturally, but different enough to be stimulating. Also, the great thing about the Financial Review is that it has a very defined audience and market niche. It makes it a lot easier when you’re trying to achieve new things because you’re not trying to appeal to everyone. You have a specific reader in mind as you’re writing.

// Do you think that readership has changed a great deal?

It’s definitely changing. The audience is getting younger, and it is different to the previous Financial Review audience, which was very corporate and career-path orientated.

We still have a chunk of those in professional services, legal and the like. But we also have these new investor types that are dabbling in crypto or whatever. They just want to grow their wealth independently. They’re entrepreneurially minded people with a slightly different mindset to our traditional audience.

The other thing that’s very interesting is the growth in our female audience, which I am particularly focused on.

More and more women are taking key leadership roles in business and politics. You saw the success of the Teal movement at the election. The Federal Labor cabinet has 10 women in it, Woodside, Telstra, Optus – they’re all big companies that are run by female CEOs now.

A lot more women are investing in the stock market. There is a huge market there that we need to capture and represent and appeal to.

// There hasn’t been a single woman appointed to an ASX 200 board for two years. So, there’s a lot of work to be done on the equality front.

I think the Financial Review has a key role to play in accelerating that change. Showcasing female achievements, female views. Proving that it’s not just all men in suits. I think it sort of becomes a bit of a virtuous cycle.

// Weekend readership is a success story for the AFR.

Speaking as a former editor of a Sunday paper, the great thing about the weekend is having an audience that has the time to sit back and engage with a print product in a way they don’t during the week. AFR Weekend has really captured that trend, and COVID turbocharged growth in our weekend audience.

The beauty of AFR Weekend is that you not only have the C-Suite reading and engaging with our content
like they do during the week, you also have their partners. You get both members of the couple reading,
making decisions together about holidays, cars and investments. You have a broader offering in AFR
Weekend because you have a broader audience.

The editor, Andrew Burke, has done a great job in capturing the best of core Financial Review content, which is general business, politics, investment news, but also a bit of a lighter tone. Going with longer reads, wrapping up the week, including stories about the culture and the zeitgeist.

So it’s a good mix of core Financial Review with a broader remit, which resonates with readers. Two-
thirds of people who read the weekend AFR print edition buy it from their local newsagent so they have
to make a trip to get it, which is a great testament to the quality of the product.

// You’ve got a new inserted magazine, Fin!, as well. Tell me about that.

All credit goes to Matt Drummond the editor of AFR Magazine who came up with the concept of a new lifestyle magazine and managed to get a chunk of advertisers on board, which has underwritten it. It’s a great magazine doing fantastically well.

// What’s the proposition between that and the historic AFR magazine?

It’s much more lifestyle oriented – fashion, design, travel, style. And our digital audience data tells us that our subscribers really want that lifestyle content. It’s very well read and it improves subscriber retention. When we look at all our audience data we see that lifestyle content is one of the key drivers of conversion to subscription.

Readers that are into the lifestyle content are less likely to churn, which is very important. So we need to create more of this content. During the pandemic we shut a lot of our bespoke magazines and concentrated on the core ones. Fin! is the first new magazine product post-pandemic that we've done.

// What’s next in the pipeline? You must have a long list of KPIs in your new role.

Yes, the thing that attracted me to this role was the focus on subscriber growth and business development.

The good thing about the Financial Review is that it has done so well during the pandemic, but there are still so many growth opportunities available to us. If you want authority and trust you can’t beat the Financial Review. It’s just a question of prioritising what we should do first, and then what we should do next.

We want to give people bigger opportunities, more 360 opportunities to engage with the Financial Review, with more events, more lists, more podcasts, and more innovations like the NFT cover we did for the Power List in 2021.

Without giving too much commercially sensitive information away, we're going to expand our very successful events business. You’re going to see more summits this year. We’re going to be focusing on mining, workforce, investment and cybersecurity.

We’re also going to expand our successful lists business. And as part of that, which dovetails with the sharper focus on women, we’re going to extend our Rich Women list franchise, expanding the number of women that are included on that list. And we’re also going to create some additional content around that. The other focus for us is the B2B market. A lot of our growth during the pandemic came from the B2C segment, so we’ve now got a huge opportunity to drive B2B subscriptions. They’re natural Financial Review subscribers and they’re much less likely to churn. So we’re doubling down on targeting particular segments within that B2B audience.

We are also expanding our podcasts. We have recently launched two new podcasts – Chanticleer, featuring Australia’s most influential business columnists, Tony Boyd and James Thomson in conversation, and The Fin, a weekly news podcast hosted by Lisa Murray. Next year there will be new seasons of Julie-anne Sprague’s How I Made It, our very successful podcast from within the Rich List brand. And then we’ve got our Tech Zero podcast, which is all about how companies are adapting to reach net zero. That reaches a very powerful audience and has also been very successful from an advertising point of view.

Explore The Australian Financial Review here.

Find out how your brand can leverage the power of Nine's Publishing assets to drive business outcomes. Request more information.

Meet AFR Weekend’s Andrew Burke

Rethink Ink
Meet AFR Weekend Editor,
Andrew Burke

“We set out to provide worth to our readers every weekend." AFR Weekend’s Andrew Burke discusses how to give your readers what they need to know and what they want to read.

In B&T's ongoing Rethink Ink series, we chatted with AFR Weekend editor Andrew Burke. In his seven-year tenure, AFR Weekend has grown to be one of the most read newspapers in Australia, enjoying significant print and digital growth despite the pandemic. And As Burke reveals, its success isn't all about insider stock market tips.

We all know the AFR during the week, but is the weekend edition all for stock market addicts who can’t switch off? The “money never sleeps” brigade?

It’s interesting and it’s hard to measure this stuff. My impression, which comes from a lot of readership surveys we’ve done, is that people read the weekend edition of the AFR as much for the investment advice as the news and political analysis.

The weekend gives people more time to read things such as our news features section that they might not have time for during the week. We’ve also got the Weekend Fin down the back of the newspaper and it's a larger, colourful section that always comes back as people’s favourite thing to read.

People buy it for what they want to know, but also what they want to read. That’s one of the more critical differences about what we do and the Monday to Friday edition.

Who is the AFR Weekend reader?

I’m quite proud of the fact that with the AFR Weekend we have a position that’s in the middle of the market in terms of where more financial newspapers lie.

Sure, we believe in the markets, and we play in that centre right, but we’re in the middle of the market, as far as politics are concerned.

On a political level we want to be credible, and you never want a reader to know what they’re going to read before they get there. From that respect, I think that’s something our readers value in the product. There’s independent critical analysis that’s not necessarily coming from one side of politics or the other.

If the bookies are to be believed, Albo looks a shoo-in at the next election.
I can’t imagine AFR readers being too thrilled about that.

You’d be surprised, but our readership is only marginally more skewed to the Coalition, by a few percentage points. Our view at the AFR Weekend has always been to take each of the party’s polices on their merit and never necessarily from a political party view. We just report what’s happening and from that we draw our analysis. It’s not like we’re preordained, just because one party comes up with a policy. We’ve been very critical of the government over lots of things recently.

A criticism of the AFR would be that it feels quite “male” in its style and reporting. How do you respond to that?

We’re very conscious to ensure there’s a balance in who we are interviewing. I understand that business and politics is often deemed as a very male pursuit and so we are active in trying to write about women as much as we can, never just for the sake of it. The anecdotal evidence is that a lot more women now read the AFR Weekend.

This all makes for a prestige environment for advertisers.

Obviously on the weekend you’ve got a lot more time to engage with the reader. Something I’m quite proud of is that 70 per cent of our readers aren’t subscribers. That means they’re going down to their newsagent every Saturday morning to seek us out. You always want more subscribers, but I’m proud that our readers want to seek us out, and with that comes reward for the brands that form part of our product. There’s a value exchange for a product when a reader must pay for it.

We hear about the “death of print” all the time. But the AFR Weekend’s numbers certainly tell a different story, print sales remaining surprisingly strong.

It’s a fact of life that people are carrying a little computer around in their pocket all the time these days. News is instant. But all the stories in Saturday’s paper are online on Friday afternoon, albeit behind a paywall, and our readers are still quite happy to go into a newsagent the following morning and part with $4.50 for the printed copy. I also think we have entered a period where print is being celebrated again by brands and creatives for its ability to cut through the digital tsunami and offer consumers escapism and a focus away from the always-on digital world.

Obviously B&T’s core audience is adland. How difficult can it be to take a print product like the AFR and try and sell its merits to 20-somethings in a media agency?

People read the AFR in the office, even more so now that they are no longer working from home as much. On the weekend people are reading it in their homes, and at the same time they’re making a lot of purchasing decisions about things like investing, holidays or cars, whatever. Those sorts of decisions are made by couples and that’s where AFR Weekend comes in. People are engaged with it around the coffee table, they’re less likely to be on the phone, on the laptop, on the emails. I like to think our content goes across the demographic divide in the house, the husband or the female executive. And so you get more eyeballs on these pages.

For all of COVID’s faults, it’s been a boon for people seeking out media. TV and radio numbers are up markedly. How has that played out for the AFR Weekend readership?

Broadly speaking, we’ve had large increases in our digital paying subscribers and that’s enabled us to hire 20 new staff in the last couple of months. In terms of print, we’ve held up our readership really well. We saw a print readership spike of 54 per cent during the height of COVID. What we’ve been really conscious about is delivering news about the pandemic that is relevant to people. You don’t want to scare readers, you want to provide worth to your readers.

Category: Digital & Publishing

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Upcoming Publishing Features

Australia’s Leading Publisher

In Conversation With Kerri Elstub

// HOW DID YOU FIND THE SWITCH FROM TELEVISION TO DIGITAL?

// SIX YEARS INTO NINE.COM.AU, HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING IT?

// What parts of the broader Nine business do you collaborate with most?

// Nine.com.au has a way to go to catch News.com.au.

// What do you think is your secret sauce?

// How do you decide which vertical to enter?

// How important are TV shows to your content?

In Conversation With Cosima Marriner

// SO HOW ARE YOU FINDING THE SHIFT TO THE FINANCIAL REVIEW?

// Do you think that readership has changed a great deal?

// There hasn’t been a single woman appointed to an ASX 200 board for two years. So, there’s a lot of work to be done on the equality front.

// Weekend readership is a success story for the AFR.

// You’ve got a new inserted magazine, Fin!, as well. Tell me about that.

// What’s the proposition between that and the historic AFR magazine?

// What’s next in the pipeline? You must have a long list of KPIs in your new role.

Meet AFR Weekend’s Andrew Burke

Find out how your brand can leverage the power of Nine's publishing assets to drive business outcomes. Request more information.

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