One of Australia’s leading marketers, Chris Maxwell, believes marketers need to think about a broader approach to integrating with media partners. 

Maxwell, who is Consumer Connections Director of Carlton & United Breweries (CUB), told a panel this week at the Mumbrella Sports Marketing Summit that the brand was seeking to drive a broader business integration in how it deals with media partners, such as Nine. 

“Integration needs to be more than just what you see on the screen,” said Maxwell. “There have been a number of things CUB and Nine have done to better integrate our two businesses as a real partnership.

“I think we (as marketers) go through these relationships in somewhat of a transactional way sometimes but, for the first time in a long time, we have entered into a partnership almost like a long-term sponsorship deal where we have opened up the business to each other.”

Speaking about the nature of the integration, Maxwell said it was similar to the brand’s relationship  with some of its agencies.  

Sam Brennan, Nine’s Director of Sales – Sports, said that as a media partner Nine spent a lot of time trying to better understand the business objectives of the brands it is partnering with. 

“We do a lot of work trying to understand the aspirations of brands,” said Brennan. “But what we find, from both a broadcast and a business perspective, is that brands often are trying to better understand our business as well: eg. why do we produce things a certain way, or what are our core metrics?”

Brennan also cited the recent promotion of Lizzie Young to the position of Group Content Strategy Director as an example of how Nine was seeking to drive a broader integration strategy with its partners across a variety of platforms.  

Lizzie Young Promoted To Nine Group Content Strategy Director

“We have to make sure we have the right structure in the business and also the right people,” he said. “If you look at something like Lizzie Young’s promotion into a content strategy role in our business it really highlights that we don’t just produce TV, we make content that means something to people. 

“It has to be content across not just linear TV but across the multiple platforms we are trying to reach people on.”