According to Nielsen, 40 per cent of FMCG brands sold in supermarkets in the last 12 months were done so on promotion, up from 30 per cent in 2009. The research says that 48 per cent of these sales would have happened anyway, regardless of whether the product was on promotion. That’s $11 billion in sales discounting that didn’t need to happen.

That’s money that’s being diverted from advertising spend and product innovation, both of which are needed to drive the longer-term health of individual FMCG brands and the category as a whole.

The small business owner who has just spent $100,000 on a radio campaign and the multinational who has invested $50 million in marketing in the past 12 months have the same question: How do we know our investment has worked?

Tourism Tasmania’s ‘Feed your curious’ campaign is the first entry in the running for a share of the $2 million worth of out-of-home media in the 2018 national oOh! Unmissable Awards.

The awards have been launched this week and will recognise the best integrated campaigns across the oOh! network of out-of-home assets.

Three $500,000 media packages are up for grabs to national campaigns that use two or more oOh! environments with native content. There are also three $175,000 single market campaigns to be awarded which combine an oOh! environment with native content.

oOh!’s group revenue director, Phil Eastwood, said in addition to the $2 million worth of media, the judging panel, which will be chaired by the former chairman of Publicis Communications ANZ, Andrew Baxter, will award the creative lead of the best campaign of all the winners with an all-expenses paid educational trip for two to the SXSW Conference and festivals in Austin, Texas.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has arrived and many of us have 30 or 40 interactions with it a day, often without realising. Your Google search or Facebook feed; the ad that pops up on your computer that seems to know what you want; your Twitter trends; Siri and Google Home. For marketers, it’s a big – and complex – opportunity.

KPMG Australia has appointed former Publicis Communications Chairman and Publicis Australia CEO, Andrew Baxter, as Senior Adviser to the firm’s entrepreneurial Customer, Brand and Marketing Advisory (CBMA) business.