Navigating the Initial Hurdles of MMM Onboarding
The experience of bringing an MMM platform into a business depends largely on data preparedness and internal culture. The shift causes natural hesitation, as it’s often very new and very different to long-held operating models.
For Terri Golder, Head of Marketing at Honda Australia, the initial 90 days were challenging, largely due to internal data struggles and a lack of coordination. While the agency-managed data integration was relatively easy, getting internal data points was where things became difficult, complicated by numerous sources and quality issues.
…we had so many different data sources and it started uncovering a few quality issues…
— Terri Golder, Head of Marketing, Honda Australia
Michael McCash, Head of Customer Growth at Aussie Home Loans / Lendi Group, was initially hesitant due to a previous, slow, and archaic MMM experience. However, his business also faced a complex data challenge during onboarding, stemming from a major organizational transition.
We'd gone through a really big transition where Lendi had amalgamated and joined with the Aussie brand… getting that historic data became difficult, but not impossible.
— Michael McCash, Head of Customer Growth, Aussie Home Loans / Lendi Group
In contrast, Katherine Martin, Head of Media & Partnerships at Freedom Australia, had a smoother experience. Freedom’s goal was clear: unifying their channel performance into a single source of truth for ROI and aligning their two different agencies and internal teams. She felt the process was smoother than expected and involved less drain on internal resources.
I thought there would be a lot of drain on resources… but the onboarding team really helped manage that across all of our agencies, as well as our data team.
— Katherine Martin, Head of Media & Partnerships, Freedom Australia
The Critical Role of Stakeholder Engagement
The biggest differentiator between a smooth and chaotic onboarding was the pre-project alignment and education of internal stakeholders.
Terri Golder reflected that in hindsight, the project should have been managed like any other major initiative, with a formal kickoff session, timelines, and a comprehensive stakeholder engagement plan. By overlooking this, the process was delayed because internal departments did not understand the purpose or value of the tool. She now advocated for early engagement, from a top senior leadership level down, to explain what the tool actually was and the value it could bring to the business. This helped avoid people interrogating and unpacking the data after the results were presented.
Katherine Martin’s successful, well-managed process was secured by involving key senior leaders, including the CEO and Head of Data and Intelligence, in the partner selection process from the start. This ensured everyone understood their role and the required deliverables, setting the groundwork for an efficient rollout.
From Gut Feel to Conviction: The Big Payoff
The ultimate value of MMM was its ability to move marketers from making decisions based on “gut” and “vibe” to clarity and conviction grounded in evidence.
Michael McCash stressed that “money follows metrics”. MMM empowered marketers with the data needed to prove the effectiveness of their work against the prevalent addiction to last-click attribution. This clarity allowed his team to make much more informed decisions, basing their most recent 12-month media plan on the new insights. For Aussie Home Loans, this data-backed approach enabled a successful shift to a brand-building focus, resulting in a five-basis-point increase in unprompted awareness in less than 12 months.
For Freedom Australia, MMM provided the numbers to prove their gut feel that screens (TV) were the backbone of their business. The data showed that baseline sales had started to decline after they broadened their channel mix, allowing them to confidently refocus investment back into high-performing channels and divest from others.
Finally, for Honda Australia, the tool delivered insight beyond media contribution, showing the impact of externals like pricing and product. This enabled the team to transform subjective arguments about marketing effectiveness into scientific discussions, informing broader business areas like sales planning and forecasting.
In Summary
The first 90 days of MMM were not just about building a model; they were about shifting the entire business on how it thought, planned, and made future decisions. Once past the initial onboarding stages, the clarity provided by MMM drove conviction, giving marketers a louder voice and allowing them to back bolder decisions with facts and evidence.
