Host: Nadia Cameron - Editor - Marketing | Associate Publisher
Brand evolution: It’s in the sights of every marketer, but how do you honour the legacy while seeking a new narrative that grabs attention, signals distinctiveness, and builds loyalty? How do you prove it’s worth investing in brand not just demand internally? What team structures and measures are better for driving a brand-led marketing approach? And what does it take to avoid what Mark Ritson calls “the pornography of change” in your creative and brand execution for the sake of it, versus innovating to ensure continued cultural relevance and commercial success?
Joining in this final episode in the CMO Awards podcast series for 2025 are three of our finalists and winners – Michael Hill CMO, Jo Feeney, Reflections Holidays CMO, Pete Chapman, and Allianz Australia general manager of customer strategy and marketing, Laura Halbert – who have made brand their mantra and mechanism for commercial success.
Each of these marketing chiefs is in a different lifecycle stage of brand maturity. Yet similarities in ingredients are in evidence: Capturing then leveraging data and customer insight, identifying and sticking to brand values, recalibrating media spend, committing to long-lasting creative and content that oozes distinctive brand assets, multi-year horizons, whole-of-company buy-in, baseline metrics and commercial smarts.
Take Reflections Holiday, a relatively young brand representing 40 holiday parks in Australia. As the business has transformed its operating model and committed to becoming a social enterprise, building brand has taken centre stage. Under the moniker, ‘Life’s better outside’, Chapman has been flipping category perceptions on their heads and stridently seeking engagement with a more discerning outdoors audience that puts nature, not novelty, first. From only 10 per cent of budget going on brand versus performance, it’s completely switched the other way. Last year, Reflections also underwent a rebrand complete with new positioning and brand look.
The new brand strategy made for some exceptional – and ironically, short-term – results, Chapman says. These include 10.1 year-on-year, topline revenue growth between February 2024 and February 2025, a +15.9 per cent lift in NPS, and a 20 per cent increase in loyalty club membership.
