Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing

For Expedia Group country director and marketing activation lead, Philippa Durant, completing an MBA culminated in three leadership pillars reflecting her own personal brand: Kindness, passion and creativity. For Monash IVF head of marketing, Stuart Matthewman, securing a new formal tertiary qualification meant being uncomfortable – especially when squaring up to financial acumen – but also turned into growth and ultimately, compounding learning. And for Fitness and Lifestyle Group EGM of marketing and PR, Sara Dunseath, time at Harvard studying corporate revitalisation – “after a kick up the bum from my CEO” – fostered adaptability, confidence and relevance.

These three marketing executives join Mi3 Publisher and CMO Awards program leader, Nadia Cameron in the first of our new series of CMO Awards podcasts for 2026 to explore how formal knowledge is power, and why these mid-career learning experiences have proven of such benefit professionally and personally. There’s no doubt the pressure is piling on marketing executives to be constantly learning and adapting their skill sets to suit rapidly changing marketing, business and customer environments. And it can be exhausting, all three agree – especially when there is such scrutiny of marketing ROI and an onus to know how to always deliver success. But surprisingly, taking the time to tackle formal learning in courses that first appeared to be outside the boundaries of the marketing function gave them renewed energy to tackle tasks at hand. Even more significantly, it elevated their own respect for the very discipline of marketing itself in organisations today.

Tune into the conversation here.

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Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large

Despite a multi-year boom, there’s an abundance of retail executive teams around the world disappointed with their retail media network initiatives - largely because of a misleading valuation method influencing what retailers think they can extract in advertising terms from their physical and digital store media assets.

That’s one key finding in the first global report from Sonder on the owned media sector – that is, companies and brands with large customer bases which commercialise their publishing, retail and digital assets with suppliers, and increasingly advertisers beyond.

Sonder estimates owned media has a commercial potential of $573 billion – the global advertising business (paid media) is forecast to hit 1 trillion by 2028 or sooner.

But the bullish performance of retailers operating as media networks, partly fuelled by Amazon’s digital advertising romp, is masking some big challenges and a few open field revenue opportunities for some in commerce media, a derivative of retail media for telcos, airlines, financial services and others, says the Sonder 2026 Global Report on Owned Media.

Andrew Lipsman is a former e-marketer analyst and currently a founding advisor and strategist at Colosseum, a specialist commerce and media advisory founded by the former president of Best Buy Ads, Media & CRM, Keith Ryan, in the US.

Lipsman joins Sonder co-founders and report authors Jonathan Hopkins and Angus Frazer to unpack some wayward market developments slowly correcting and some new players shaking up the owned media model: ”There does seem to be a significant misconception here that e-commerce is way bigger than it actually is,” says Lipsman on one of the report’s findings that retail media networks and advertisers are locked on retailer digital assets - dwarfed in spending and customer volume by physical retail. Marketers are not following the money, say Lipsman and Sonder.

Listen here for the full lowdown.

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Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large

When Jo Boundy greenlighted the second series of CommBank's financial wellbeing series The Brighter Side on Paramount 10, she expected good things but maybe not as good as the audience engagement levels turned out. The bank’s The Brighter Side TV series garnered 2 million viewers. Tailored social content, which was “double stacked” in production with the TV series, reached another 8 million in social media and Boundy says 80 per cent of people who watched the show “took an action to improve their finances … so we're seeing when the content is relevant, when it's utility, when it connects with people, it's really making a difference.”

And Boundy is tantalisingly close to tagging her brand content program as a full funnel silver bullet. “It is such a critical piece in the full funnel tool kit,” she says. “It’s a really cluttered market so we have used our content to help build that consideration and then it ultimately goes through to conversion with customers.”

It’s the latter point around creating compelling, relevant brand-originated content across rapidly changing formats and distribution channels that Nick Smith, Managing Director of content agency Medium Rare, says has spawned a “nuanced shift” from in-house “content ecosystems”, often led by corporate affairs teams or viewed through the lense of performance marketing. "That’s a company-centric approach,” says Smith on how corporate content ecosystems are typically run. “We’ve got to get particular messages out on our own channels and it’s lined up with the calendar of business objectives and all the things we want to tell the customer.”

“Brand worlds” flip the content model to start with what “a consumer is doing in the real world,” says Smith. “It’s a different content approach than just talking about products.” Boundy says it’s a welcome shift – content starts with designing first for a customer problem or need.

All of this new thinking and brand content trends has been captured in News Australia’s recent 2026 Future of Brand Content report – among the headline statistics is that brand content consumption is up 11 per cent. Trust and the relevance of brand-originated content among consumers increased by double digits.

The former adman and CEO of WPP ANZ, Mike Connaghan, jumped from advertising to content when he was appointed to run News Australia’s commercial content division, which includes Medium Rare, Storyation, Suddenly and Visual Domain. Connaghan says the likes of CommBank, Qantas, Chemist Warehouse, Coles and Bunnings are all firing with their brand content programs. He agrees with Boundy that they drive results through the funnel to purchase, rather than just mid.

“They’re creating mini publishing businesses for themselves,” says Connaghan. “We also work with Chemist Warehouse on the House of Wellness. It’s a media conglomerate. They have a huge print presence, they advertise very heavily through News Corp newspapers, they've got their own radio, they've got their own podcasts, they've got their own TV shows, all of which we are helping them with. It's a really powerful platform for them. So the sector is in high demand and high interest. Having people like Jo and Commonwealth Bank step into the breach in financial services has only really stirred more interest.”

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