Tracy Hall

I'm Tracy Hall. I'm currently a marketing consultant. I've worked with some of the world's biggest brands, including Virgin Mobile, eBay, GoDaddy, and have consulted for some of Australia's fastest growing tech companies like ZipPay and AfterPay.

There are three forces of disruption that I've witnessed that have really made an impact I think for marketers and advertising.

One is the categories themselves being disrupted. We're seeing that across transport, across accommodation, across fintech. From a consumer point of view they're expecting disruption and that's changing the landscape. In fact, I think they're demanding it, which is forcing companies to really focus on it as a core value.

Social media is obviously a key disruptive force that we've all seen over the last ten to 15 years. And the way that we're interacting and using those platforms, using social media platforms as marketers has changed and handing over the control of the content to our consumers. And that's quite a scary thing to do. But if you've got the right product in the right service and you're doing the right thing from a transparency point of view, then you should have nothing, nothing to worry about.

And the third force of disruption that I've really thought about is purpose and the role that purpose plays in our community and in our culture. I think consumers are expecting and demanding purpose. Employees are demanding purpose. And no longer can we support brands or work for brands that don't have this at the core of their businesses.

One of the challenges I'm focusing on from a marketing point of view at the moment is thinking about the role and purpose of culture. What are the cultural conversations that are happening around us? How do they impact our brand? How are they impacting our consumers? And how do we play a role in that that's authentic to our own brand, that resonates?

In terms of diversity, inclusion in advertising and marketing, I see some great progress. I think the intention is there. I don't always see the execution following. In some cases I think and feel it's a little tokenistic.

What is really interesting to me is brands who have inclusion and accessibility at the heart of what they're doing. Not just in terms of who they're showcasing in their advertising, but how they're building products, how they're building service and making that accessible. I think the conversation is happening and people are more aware. I do honestly feel there's a little way to go.

The ideal marketing structure that I've worked with has been a hybrid model, where you have an in-house design team potentially, where you've got high, high volume, fast paced requirements, limited budget, and one where you rely on external agencies for different pieces of work. And then also internally from a global perspective, where you have shared services so channel experts that service multiple markets from within an organization. And that hybrid model has worked really well for me in the past.

The advancements that we've seen from a technology point of view because of COVID have been awesome to watch. I think the brands that have accelerated are the ones that could tap into that technology quickly to be able to adjust to the changing circumstances. One thing that has really been interesting to me from a COVID perspective is what we thought we knew 12 months ago has completely been turned on its head. So where TV was dying, it made a comeback. When people were having to stay in, free to air TV and TV advertising actually had a resurgence. The way that marketers thought about moving from a digital to a more traditional approach was quite an interesting thing to watch.

The role that marketing technology is playing for me as a marketer is super interesting. Obviously, there's a Martech stack which is evolving by the minute. Keeping your head around that, keeping across all of those changes.

What's interesting to me is innovative thinking as well as technology. So putting the human element beside the technology, the technology can only get us so far, and there’s only so much variety that you can get around that. It's where you couple that with really interesting thinking about how you get the best from technology, where I think you have an edge as a marketer.