Getting Fresh with OMD Clients

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• Last Friday, as part of the Think Fresh, we invited 3 of our clients to talk to OMD about the future of their business and the challenges they’re facing.
  The session was a great and feedback from OMD staff has called for more of it!
  
• We kicked off the panel with Leigh Miles, Category Manager of Spreads at Fonterra. Leigh gave us a very entertaining look at the Dairy Category.
  

Leigh talked to the importance of staying in touch with bigger consumer trends with the example of how butter was the bad guy of spreads in the 90’s but a shift in health trends where consumers want to know what’s in their food has seen a return to butter as the natural alternative to margarine.

• Leigh also discussed the growth of private label brands in our supermarkets as a major challenge for the Fonterra business. He believes that there are two advantages that brands have over private label that need to be leveraged to stop consumers going to the dark side:
  1. The ability to invest in marketing a brand
  2. Putting resource into innovation

Next up, Nikki Clarkson, National Marketing Director at Austereo told us about their future challenges and what they’re doing to future proof the business.

• Austereo is facing challenges not too dissimilar from ours when it comes to how we use technology for communications and remain relevant. With the old adage, Content is King, Nikki’s challenge for the future is how Austereo maintains the distribution of content effectively across any channel in which radio can be heard or viewed.


• To future proof the business Nikki talked about nurturing current talent and always being on the hunt for the next big thing. They have dedicated talent hunters hanging out in comedy clubs, scouring talent shows, attending comedy festivals and listening to tonnes of demo tapes to stay in touch with who could be the next Hamish and Andy.

Finally, Cratis from Open Universities Australia gave us a brilliant overview of how their business has grown in recent years and talked his big challenges:

• Finding more of the right distribution partners such as MyCareer and Seek are key to growing their business
• Cracking the creative challenge around getting the tone right for a busy adult audience and improving the overall customer experience is crucial to their ongoing success

We hope to make the client panel an ongoing program at OMD so look out for more of it in the near future.