Personalization vs. Connection
Jessica Gilby opened the session by clarifying that she was focused on creativity beyond the asset, discussing an idea system rather than an asset kit. She observed that while marketers are now seeking advocacy and culture, there was a significant drop-off in following through with bold ideas due to a persistent reliance on short-term performance levers.
Gilby posited that personalization is the “antagonist to creativity” because, by optimizing to the nth degree, brands miss the opportunity for shared community and cultural connection. This contributes to a 50% drop in emotionally led creative over the last decade.
However, the data is starting to justify bigger swings. Gilby noted that some of the new Mutinex data and trials showed that idea-led campaigns had two to three times the ad stock (impact beyond campaign activation) and could drive up to a 250% lift in revenue in retail trials.
I think that, you know, personalization is really the antagonist to creativity, right? You're personalizing to the nth degree and creating so much more, you miss out on that shared community or that cultural connection with consumers together.
– Jessica Gilby, General Manager – Digital, News Australia
Advocacy as the New Creative Platform
Gilby defined advocacy not as a simple ad format, but as building an idea network that competitor brands cannot quickly copy. She cited the NRMA Insurance “Saving the Bruce” campaign in Queensland as the purest form of this. Despite attempting to out-spend rivals and sponsoring major sports teams, NRMA couldn’t penetrate the market. The winning insight was uniting Queenslanders around a common cause: fixing the Bruce Highway, Australia’s most dangerous road.
The resulting campaign was multi-faceted, leveraging News Australia’s editorial assets to lobby the government. The consumer win resulted in $7.2 billion worth of government funding for the highway, creating a halo effect for the brand that lifted purchase intent by 13% and favourability by 47%.
Gilby also referenced a creative execution with Subway that proved even mid-sized ideas work, focused on making the “Size Matters” creative platform distinctive and unmissable during the lunchtime window. This campaign showed a 31% exposure-to-conversion rate into store purchases.
The Auto Battle: Creativity vs. Price
Dean Norbiato confirmed that Kia, which successfully leveraged brand investment through and post-COVID, was now facing external factors like the “Chinese EV blitz” and a hyper-competitive market (Australia has 71 different auto manufacturers compared to 42 in the USA). While new entrants rely on tactical, price-led strategies, Norbiato stated that relying solely on price is risky, as new competition will always enter.
Kia’s brand investment had already created a moat, shifting their average purchase price from $27,000 to $47,000, attracting a materially different customer. Norbiato emphasized that even when forced to move into a more retail-focused ecosystem, the principles of creativity and distinctiveness must be imbued in the comms.
He summed up his point with these words:
If you are only built on price, then you will only be as good as the price that you can lead with, and there's always new competition coming in.
– Dean Norbiato, General Manager – Marketing, Kia
Norbiato noted that early Mutinex data was already showing a significant impact on good creative versus standardized performance-based creative. For Kia, the platform’s value lies in understanding the contribution to the business, which is fundamental to earning a seat at the table.
The Creative Multiplier and AI’s Homogenous Trap
Addressing the future of creative measurement, Norbiato emphasized that creativity has the ability to multiply and “effectively cheat” your marketing principles. He noted that their early analysis suggested it was beneficial to freshen up ads (not letting them “marinate for four years”) to capture a new spike and new ad stock, provided the brand has the capacity to do so.
Both panelists were skeptical of AI replacing human creativity. With the audience taking part, Norbiato demonstrated that prompting ChatGPT for a tennis tournament tagline produced the “homogenous middle,” such as “Game set electric.”
Gilby noted a related complexity in publishing: 51% of all traffic is non-human. Publishers now face the challenge of producing beautiful, engaging content for humans while simultaneously creating bland, rigorous HTML5 content required by crawlers to be cited. This change in production strategy would be crucial…