How Nine turned Customer Data into a 200% Revenue Opportunity
What happens when one of Australia's largest media companies stops treating audience data as separate silos and starts seeing every customer as a single connected individual?
In this episode of The CMO Show, Mark Jones sits down with Suzie Cardwell, Chief Data, Product and Technology Officer at Nine Entertainment, to unpack the transformation that has reshaped how Nine understands audiences, serves advertisers, and drives growth.
Suzie reveals how Nine unified consumer data across its publishing, streaming and broadcast brands to build a powerful single customer view, creating richer audience intelligence and unlocking entirely new commercial opportunities. The result? More relevant customer experiences, smarter marketing, stronger advertiser outcomes, and more than 200% growth in data-driven advertising revenue.
For marketers grappling with fragmented customer journeys and increasing pressure to prove ROI, this conversation offers a practical roadmap. The discussion also explores some of marketing's biggest challenges and opportunities: privacy reform, AI adoption, personalisation at scale, agentic workflows and the growing importance of customer intelligence as a competitive advantage. Along the way, Suzie offers candid lessons on securing stakeholder buy-in, leading organisational change, and driving AI adoption across a workforce of nearly 5,000 employees.
If you're a CMO, marketing leader or digital transformation executive looking to future-proof your organisation, this episode delivers a masterclass in turning data from a back-office asset into a front-line growth strategy.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Niall Hughes, Kirsten Bables, Syd Le, and audio engineer Ed Cheng. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones:
One of the interesting things about marketing transformation that's going on around the world is the fact that it hits so many different parts of your business at once. Of course, we know all about data. We know all about our databases, the interfaces, and the different teams that are impacted by change. As a CMO, the challenge is not just understanding all that work that's to be done, but how do you keep up? What does it take to really understand all the layers that are at work inside your organisation and still stay on the front foot?
Hello, and thanks for joining us on The CMO Show. My name's Mark Jones. It's great to have you with us today. The CMO Show is brought to you by Impact Institute in partnership with our friends at Adobe. And of course, we're here again at Summit in Vegas, Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, which is an annual show that they put on. We get to speak to some amazing people such as Suzie Cardwell. Now, Suzie Cardwell is the chief data, product and technology officer at Nine Entertainment in Australia. Of course, this is an incredible organisation that has many, many touch points and reaches almost all of the Australian population with all of its different media products. Of interest to marketers too, of course, because lots of marketers book their advertising, seek to reach their customers through the Nine Entertainment Network.
So I sat down with Suzie to talk about what she's done to transform the organisation from the data layer up. And it's a really fascinating story that involves both technology, human change, and also what it takes to really think through all of the stakeholders that are involved in doing a project like this. So let's have a watch and a listen to the conversation I had with Suzie.
Suzie, thanks for joining me.
Suzie Cardwell:
My pleasure.
Mark Jones:
Now, you're at the Nine Network as it used to be, now it's just Nine now, isn't it?
Suzie Cardwell:
It's Nine Entertainment now.
Mark Jones:
Nine Entertainment.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes. We're a broad staple.
Mark Jones:
You're the first chief data officer.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
And your role's also expanded. But before we get to the expansion bit, tell me about the work that you've been doing.
Suzie Cardwell:
So as you say, Nine hadn't had a chief data officer up until about three years ago when I joined. And so newly created role and created very much in recognition of the fact that we have an enormous store of value in our data, and particularly in our audience and consumer data. But at the time that I joined, that data was being used in kind of very disparate and siloed ways. So we had the publishing team thinking about the Sydney Morning Herald subscriber or the AFR subscriber over here. We had the television team thinking about a 9Now viewer over here. We had the Stan's team thinking about a subscriber over there without much recognition of the fact that that could very well be the same person.
So we were talking to that person two or three times in a day or a week without any recognition of the fact that there would be an opportunity to join that up. So that was the sort of first thing that we looked at when I came in.
Mark Jones:
And just to jump in, can I ask, what was the trigger? Did somebody wake up one day and go, "Hang on a minute." Or did you turn up and say, "Hang on a minute"?
Suzie Cardwell:
No, I think there were a few triggers. So the first was definitely from the commercial team, from the advertising sales team saying that, "Look, our advertisers have a huge demand for our audiences and for us to be able to segment our audiences in really smart and in some cases, niche ways. So we need to be able to bring all of that together." And then on the other side, at the same time, the marketers in each of those different areas that I just spoke about were kind of saying the same thing. If we had a greater understanding of what our Sydney Morning Herald subscriber was watching over on 9Now, then we could start to tailor some of the content and some of the experience that we're giving them on our platform based on what we know they like on that platform. So there was a groundswell across those different areas.
Mark Jones:
And what appealed to you about the role, the opportunity?
Suzie Cardwell:
Oh, well, look, I mean, obviously Nine is an iconic brand in Australia and our stable of brands are iconic in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald just turned 185 years old a couple of days ago.
Mark Jones:
Amazing.
Suzie Cardwell:
It's the oldest piece of media or the oldest media brand that we have in Australia. And then of course, across to the television stable, 70 years of television, we were one of the first on air in Australia, and then Stan across in the streaming subscription space. Again, first locally owned Australian streaming subscription service. So the breadth of the assets and the quality of the content across all of those assets is hugely appealing. And then thinking about the audiences and the consumers that come to those assets and how we start to really deeply understand those audiences and then create value from it was obviously very exciting.
Mark Jones:
Great opportunity.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
You also added to the data component of your role, the product and technology. So what's all that about?
Suzie Cardwell:
Well, I think we've been successful in consolidating all of this data and creating this single view of the consumer, and most importantly, being able to work with our business partners across all of those different areas to show how they can extract value from that data. And with that, I guess the importance of data and insight has really kind of grown in the organisation. And our chief digital officer in Alex Parsons and our CEO in Matt Stanton absolutely recognised the centrality and the importance of data.
So when they were thinking about some of the other areas that we can start to, again, transform and expand on, a couple of the other areas that sort of came into the picture were, first of all, all of our advertising technologies. So the booking systems and programming systems and the CRM for the sales team and all of those things that help us monetize our content and help our advertisers reach our audiences, they require a transformation, they require an overhaul. And obviously at the base of all of those systems is data. And then, so we're about to undertake, or no, we're in the process of undertaking a really large lift of all of those platforms and all of those capabilities, and we're really trying to make it as easy as possible for a marketer, for an advertiser to come to us, find the audiences that they need to target and buy those audiences and activate their campaigns.
Mark Jones:
Got it.
Suzie Cardwell:
And then the kind of third area is in our platform infrastructure area, which is another team that's kind of come into the portfolio. So they're the teams that look after all of our cloud infrastructure. We've got a big partnership with AWS and another big one with Google Cloud. And again, the basis of all of that is data and connecting up data sources and making data work. So that was kind of the rationale.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. That sounds like a big job.
Suzie Cardwell:
It is. It is. But I love it.
Mark Jones:
No, it's really good.
Suzie Cardwell:
And I feel very privileged to be able to do it.
Mark Jones:
Something I hear from C-suite leaders and CMOs consistently is the importance of having clean data.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
Right? So I would be remiss before we move on to ask you about the general cleanliness, if you like.
Suzie Cardwell:
The general cleanliness and health of the data.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, of the data.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, exactly.
Mark Jones:
It sounds a bit awkward, doesn't it? But getting it right and bringing all of these systems together has got to be one of the most critical things in the AI age in particular.
Suzie Cardwell:
100%. Yeah. And again, that was one of the first parts of the strategy that we sort of addressed when I came in was, first of all, we needed to consolidate all of our data. So we had data warehouses and data stores, seven or eight of them across the organisation in disconnected areas. So we bought all of that together. And in doing that, that allowed us to take a look at a whole lot of that data and understand, do we still need it? Are we collecting the right thing? Do we need more of it? All of those kinds of questions. So that was kind of the first piece.
And then the second piece, and a big part of the reason that I'm here today at the Adobe Conference was in looking at the right systems and platforms to put on top of that store to allow us to really work with the data in far easier ways and to then activate that data. And so we installed Adobe Experience Platform with the Real-Time CDP and that, going to the health question and the cleanliness question, that's really allowed us to make sure that our data is recent, is up-to-date, is relevant, is secure, is privacy compliant, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so we work with partners and we look for those platforms that really help us to do that in a native way without us having to necessarily build too many other kind of governance capabilities on top of that.
Mark Jones:
A lot of marketers, CMOs think about first party data.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
It's kind of the gold dream, right? You want to get the first party, you want third party. You want to really know who these people are and how far are you along that journey and what are you learning
Suzie Cardwell:
Well, so first party data is at the core of everything that we do. So we are incredibly privileged to have direct relationships with Australians across all of our digital platforms. So across our platforms in publishing, in streaming, in podcasting, we have somewhere in the region of 94% of all Australians age 14 and above come and touch us on one or more of those platforms every month. So 17 to 18 million Australians every month. And so we're in the very privileged position of having access to scaled first party data.
Now, the importance of that then for the marketer is that we can give them access to that scaled first party data. We can find those audiences who are likely to be interested in a medium-sized SUV because we know they've been reading reviews about it on The Age or the Sydney Morning Herald. We can find access to the fashionistas because we know that they love watching fashion content on 9Now. We can find the sports fans who are the absolute rugby fanatics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So for marketers, that access to... Our goal is to provide them access to as much and
And then aligned to that, where marketers have their own first party data, and of course every marketer is focused on building that up, we provide them the ability to match their first party data with ours. And we do that obviously with a heavy emphasis on privacy compliance. We do it in clean room environments. Again, the Adobe Real-Time CDP has a way for us to do that within that environment if the customer is also on the CDP as well. So the ability to match those two groups together and for you to take your intenders or your lapsed buyers, match it with ours and then we can find them and target them directly across all of our platforms. We'll find them for you on 9Now, we'll find them for you on the publishing assets on Stan, et cetera.
Mark Jones:
So that CDP, so the content delivery platform?
Suzie Cardwell:
Customer data platform, yes.
Mark Jones:
So the customer data platform you're talking about.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
It sounds great, and I'm just thinking of the listener being like, "Yeah, but that sounds hard and not easy or quick."
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
So can you give us some insights into what it took to get to that level of sophistication or maybe you're on the journey still?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah. So we have had that in place now for close to two years, well over 18 months anyway. And you're right, it takes the building of some in-house expertise to be able to implement that. So we have a team of data product, data engineers and data science who all work together to help look at that solution and how we architect that solution and how we implement that solution. Obviously we work closely with our platform partners like Adobe to make sure that we're architecting it in a best practise way.
Mark Jones:
That's right. So what about the impact or the result?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah. So, well, we're seeing impact across the board. I guess if we take a look first of all at the products that we have built for our advertising partners, so the targeted advertising capability and the outcome based reporting capability that we've built off the back of that. So we segment our audience and we have a set of fixed segments and then we do dynamic segmentation for our clients as well. And that, as I say, allows our clients to find intenders in their category, finance, auto, retail, fashion, you name it, we've got those categories.
And we make those really easy to book onto a digital campaign. So just in the way that a marketer might go and buy a Google targeted campaign or a Meta targeted campaign, we want them to be able to have access to the same sort of segmentation, the same sort of audiences. And so that has... And so that then led to us taking a look at the sorts of reporting and outcomes that we needed to help our marketers drive.
And we know that our marketers, they don't... Less and less are they looking at old media related metrics about reach or about impressions or even about clicks. They're looking for outcomes. How many people did I move into a consideration set? How many people did I move from consideration to website visit? How many people did I move from site visit to purchase? So they're looking for those outcomes.
So we've built a suite that allows us to report on those outcomes. So we can work with you to tell you how many people came to the website, to your website, after being targeted on 9Now or on Stan. How many people made a purchase? How many people walked into your retail outlet as a result of being targeted? We've got full reporting capability.
Mark Jones:
Okay.
Suzie Cardwell:
So this outcome-based suite aligned with that targeting capability has seen us drive enormous growth into data related advertising revenue. We've had, over the last sort of two years, we've increased that revenue by over 200%. So we've got-
Mark Jones:
So it sounds like-
Suzie Cardwell:
We've got some of the runs on the board, I guess, in terms of proving that value.
Mark Jones:
Is that an ROI on the project cost yet?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes, absolutely. It has paid for itself well and truly.
Mark Jones:
Okay.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
So that's got to be pretty appealing. I'm interested, and it's probably very hard for you to answer this question, but the quality of your data compared to the Meta and the Googles that you mentioned, but I do wonder, because on behalf of the listener, the viewer.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, of course.
Mark Jones:
They're going to say, "Well, is your first party data any better?"
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, of course. So look, we would say yes it is.
Mark Jones:
Of course.
Suzie Cardwell:
And we'd say that for a number of reasons. So first of all, all of our digital experiences either require the consumer to authenticate, to come and sign in and tell us who they are.
Mark Jones:
You're familiar with the digital product, with 9Now, right?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, that's exactly right. So 9Now, our free streaming product and Stan, obviously our subscription streaming product, and then our mastheads, the Sydney Morning Herald, AFR, The Age, et cetera, et cetera, same thing. If you want to get access to that content, you need to sign up and you need to tell us who you are. And we ask for obviously email address and name and a few demographic kind of related questions, gender and year of birth.
Mark Jones:
Okay.
Suzie Cardwell:
And with that kind of basis, we then start to capture information about what they're doing when they come to us-
Mark Jones:
As they're using the products.
Suzie Cardwell:
Every time. As they're using the product every time they come to us. So we're building up a very rich profile of the sorts of things that they like to do with us, what they watch, read, listen to. And those signals can be really powerful indicators of intent, of product intent. As I've said, reading about car reviews is a signal that someone is potentially in the market for a car. We then overlay that with data from selected partners to kind of give us that enriched view. So we overlay-
Mark Jones:
What's an example of that?
Suzie Cardwell:
So we have a partnership with CommBank iQ who give us transaction related data. So debit and credit card spend, we're able to match their consumers with our audiences, again, in a de-identified privacy compliant way, to understand people's spend patterns and people's behaviours. That then allows us to segment according to those. So for particular brands, they can target their competitors' customers or they can target their lapsed customers based on the last time that they spent, et cetera, et cetera. And then we have a couple of other partnerships like our location partner who allows us to kind of understand where people go based on how they were targeted. So that kind of richness really allows us to give our marketer, I would say, superior audiences and superior audience information.
Mark Jones:
You mentioned the clean rooms a little earlier, and of course that's, I imagine still software doing... It sounds great, by the way, clean room, right?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, clean room.
Mark Jones:
Right. I love the imagery, but there's a process there where you're de-identifying and you're analysing.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
How does that... We're getting delightfully technical by the way, but how does that work? Because I think that's the point of trust that's required for the consumer and the marketer.
Suzie Cardwell:
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So a clean room allows us to bring two separate sets of data, our data and our client's data into effectively, think of it as a neutral third party environment that then goes through a series of mathematically kind of related processes to de-identify the data on each side, to turn an email address on each side into a series of numbers, for example, and then to match those numbers together. So you end up with a set of data that doesn't have any personal identifiers associated with it. Those numbers can then be taken and sent back out to an ad server, for example, and match to the numbers on their side, and then targeted. It's obviously a far more technical process than that, but it boils down to being able to strip out that personal information and still be able to match audiences together and still be able to target them without necessarily being able to see individual email addresses.
Mark Jones:
And is there an AI role in all of that or is it existing tech?
Suzie Cardwell:
So that's existing tech. So it's old AI. It's machine learning.
Mark Jones:
It's machine learning. Okay.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, exactly right.
Mark Jones:
I like that. Old AI.
Suzie Cardwell:
Old AI.
Mark Jones:
Very good. Now tell me about the editors, the journalists, the content producers, people not unlike yours truly, how are they using this platform? Can they use it to improve content, to think about understanding their audiences in different and better ways?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes. Yes. So the short answer is they can. So we have been working with our newsrooms for a long time to start to surface information for them about what their consumers are reading or watching on their particular brands. And so, we have a set of dashboards that the editors and journalists now live and die by. They reference multiple times a day to understand what's being consumed, and they make decisions about how to or whether to follow up on a particular story or a particular angle based on a lot of that data.
Mark Jones:
So that's sounding real-time to me. Or close to.
Suzie Cardwell:
It's very close to real-time. It's close enough to real-time to not know.
Mark Jones:
Okay.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah. Yeah. And so that has really transformed over the last sort of four or five years, the way that they think about what they produce. And that obviously is something that takes time and it requires leadership to explain why it's important for them to look at the data and to understand consumption and-
Mark Jones:
It's the human change problem.
Suzie Cardwell:
It's the human change problem 100%. And then it requires enablement within the newsroom. So there are specific roles within the newsrooms that just help the journalists really understand the data and dive into the data. And then, in my team, in the data team, I've got two specialist roles that just work hand in glove with those roles as well to make sure that they're getting access to the right data and more data as they need it.
Mark Jones:
I'm just having a little quick flashback to like more than 20 years ago as a journalist and it was like six monthly surveys done by a third party research company and there was like a three-month delay to get any information and then you go through it and-
Suzie Cardwell:
You're lucky if you saw something from Ipsos, yeah.
Mark Jones:
Right, exactly.
Suzie Cardwell:
That's right. Yeah.
Mark Jones:
So wow, that's an entirely different universe. So let's now talk about some of the privacy, the issues, the privacy reform, the News Media Bargaining Code, there's AI content compensation issues that are still ongoing. So there is a whole nother layer of complexity for you to deal with. Can you, for the person who has no idea what we're just talking about, would you mind just quickly explaining what I just said and then the implications for you?
Suzie Cardwell:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of, I guess, kind of regulatory sort of issues there that really marketers still need to be aware of and to be thinking about. So on the privacy front to start with, as most Australian marketers will be aware, we've been talking about privacy reform for years. I think I had my first privacy reform discussion with a legal team in about 2017. And the first tranche, as it's called, the first round of legislation that came through, was probably a lot lighter than we had expected. There is a second round that is due probably within the next 12 months, although as I say, timelines keep shifting.
Mark Jones:
And what are you arguing for?
Suzie Cardwell:
Well, so from what we understand, that legislation will look at a number of different things. So it'll look at tightening up consent, so tightening up how marketers and media organisations like ours get consent from the consumer to use their data in certain ways. So we think that'll be tightened up. And we also think there'll be things like organisations that hold data will have to offer the consumer the right to be forgotten, which basically means we'll have to delete them from every database that we have.
Mark Jones:
And all the backups.
Suzie Cardwell:
And all the backups and all of those kinds of things. Now, when you think about that, that is actually not a small thing to do because we need to be sure that we've got every single record of that person in our various different data layers and that we can actually extract that and delete it. So for marketers, that's going to be a big change and that's going to be something that they're really going to have to think about in their CRMs and in their CDPs.
On the second lot, on the bargaining code and then on AI compensation, those two things for us are really about getting compensated by the platforms, by Google, by Meta, by TikTok, et cetera, for the content that they surface, for our content that they surface in their platforms and that they show ads against, that they monetize. And it's really just about a fair exchange of value from them to us.
And so we believe that wherever our content is being referenced in an AI overview on search or in any of the AI chat applications, we should be compensated. And so from a marketer's point of view, there are then questions about how their content is being shown up in those experiences and whether they want their content to be shown in those experiences or what content they want to be shown in those experiences. And again, whether you're being disaggregated by those experiences, because if your content is showing up and then you're not getting a site visit or a click or some sort of action from the consumer off the back of that, then they're taking your content and they're using it without a fair exchange.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. And we've got wasted budgets, all that sort of stuff.
Suzie Cardwell:
Wasted budgets, all of those kinds of things. So I think for us, but for the entire industry, that question of compensation from those AI platforms is really important.
Mark Jones:
Okay. So it's a pretty complicated world that you're living in there, right? There's lots of it. So you got geo, you've got politics, geopolitics, technologies, all sorts of layers of stuff. What's the sources of inspiration and insights and places of learning that you get in your role? How do you keep across this? Because in order to get this right, I imagine it's helpful to have a north star or a reference point, other people that you're looking to for inspiration.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah. So look, I mean, we're so lucky that we live in such a connected world and in such a media rich world. So I listen to a lot of podcasts and there are a few kind of core podcasts that I listen to to really understand AI development and then developments more broadly in technology. Coming to events like this-
Mark Jones:
A bit like this, yeah.
Suzie Cardwell:
I think for Australians to be able to get to the US or to Europe and to start to see the scale of some of the things that are going on and some of the different and newer ways of thinking is really, really important and always come back with inspiration. And then obviously it's reading certain publications and certain blogs and things like that. And it's just constant self-education.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. What does it take to maintain the sort of learning mindset that you quite clearly have? Because on behalf of marketers that I know, some of them are interested and constantly learning and pushing into it, and it can be quite a challenge for others because if you're sort of head down on a project and working in a campaign, it's hard to sort of stay across everything. And that's a legitimate issue because of the speed of change at the moment.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, I agree. Sometimes it is hard to lift up and put your head above the surface for a moment. I don't know that I know exactly how to answer that question. I think curiosity and that learning mindset that you mentioned, I just think they're kind of prerequisites now. They're sort of table stakes for really anyone who wants to work in media or marketing. There's the pace of change, everyone keeps talking about it, but it is absolutely real and it keeps accelerating. And the only way that we keep up is to stay curious. The other thing I'd say is that I've got people who are far smarter than me in a lot of these areas who-
Mark Jones:
So it's a team effort.
Suzie Cardwell:
... who work for me and who I rely on to be keeping me up to date and telling me what I should be thinking about or what I should be looking at next as well. So it shouldn't just be on the... Don't just put it on yourself, I guess, is with the right team members, you can absolutely lean on them.
Mark Jones:
That's a great idea. Another part of this whole change conversation is the people. So classic change management for humans, and you've got a Gen AI Champions programme that I wanted to just briefly touch on. How important is that?
Suzie Cardwell:
Oh, it's absolutely critical. There's no doubt that people are the hardest part of any technology transformational change.
Mark Jones:
Yes.
Suzie Cardwell:
The technologies can always be learned. It's getting people to learn them and to be comfortable with changing their way of work, changing their workflows, changing the sorts of work that they do. That can be very challenging for people.
Mark Jones:
And what have you learned about what's effective to keep people-
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, so I think there are a number of different things, and it kind of has to operate at every layer. So first of all, any large piece of technology change or transformation has to be led from the top, and it has to be spoken about by the most senior person in the organisation kind of responsible for that. It has to be explained why the change is being made, why it is important for the organisation, and also for the individuals. So us as leaders, it's on us to really find the reasons and really clearly explain those reasons to all of our teams.
Mark Jones:
Tell great stories.
Suzie Cardwell:
Tell great stories. The second thing that I would say is what you measure matters, and so that's about setting the right goals and the right measures associated with any piece of large scale change. So as an example for us, with AI, we've got a really strong company mandate that every single one of our nearly 5,000 employees starts to use AI. And in our case, that's Gemini. We've got a big partnership with Google. And so we've set company-wide goals for that. We've set monthly targets. We report on that up to the CEO and to the board every month, and we've got a big goal by the end of the financial year to try and hit. And so-
Mark Jones:
And that's usage of Gemini?
Suzie Cardwell:
That's usage at the moment.
Mark Jones:
Yeah.
Suzie Cardwell:
Next year we're figuring out the metrics to sort of look at the outputs and how we are actually generating value, but the starting point was let's just get people using it.
Mark Jones:
Got it.
Suzie Cardwell:
And the executive team is KPI'd on that. So really putting in place the right measures drives outcomes. The right measures and the right incentives will drive outcomes. And then the third thing is just, I think, trying to stay empathetic and trying to really understand that change can be really hard for people, and sometimes we just need to hold their hand.
Mark Jones:
Correct. Well, people learn and change at different speeds.
Suzie Cardwell:
That's right.
Mark Jones:
And there's a lot of fear out there in general terms, right? Which affects people and their performance.
Suzie Cardwell:
Correct.
Mark Jones:
So it is a big business issue for you. As you think about the agentic world, obviously there'll be all sorts of agents that develop within Nine Entertainment over time, right? And so there will be ongoing changes. What's your thoughts about that future world that you've got to start really digging into?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, absolutely. So look, there's no doubt that agentic workflows are going to transform the way that we work. And I think we're probably seeing it play out in phases initially. We see the opportunity for agents to play that coworking role, that coworker role alongside the human to start with, and to create agents that can automate a whole lot of tasks, but still have the human in the loop to make sure that the output is good.
Over time, I'd say that's probably going to change. And as agents start to work with agents and we start to have to orchestrate how those work together, we're going to have to build in, I guess, new management skills, if you like, into our teams to be managing teams of agents and understanding how to do that.
Mark Jones:
Yes.
Suzie Cardwell:
So that I'd say will be the sort of next evolution. And then beyond there, who knows?
Mark Jones:
Who knows? Okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of work to be done there too.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
The last sort of thing that I wanted to touch on is to just connect all of your work back out to the actual marketing creative that Nine producers to promote its own shows, its own magazines, its own mastheads, its own brand, right? That's a whole nother part of the work that you and your team and the CMO and others, right-
Suzie Cardwell:
100%.
Mark Jones:
... are doing. So can you just sort of connect that thread for me from the data, the analysis, the journey that we've been on in this conversation out to how it might change Nine marketing?
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, 100%. Well, Nine marketing use all of the tools and the products that we've built for our advertisers for their own marketing. We've obviously built some more bespoke segmentation and some more bespoke reporting for them as well. And really, really deeply looking at some of their additional kind of outcome based points that they want to understand, but the foundations of what we've built for our advertising clients are absolutely used by our marketers.
I think the thing that we're going to see really speed up is for us, our marketers are really starting... Our marketers and our content producers are really starting to think about how they use that data to much, much more personalised experiences. And we've got the opportunity to start to create really great personalised feeds in your favourite masthead and completely personalised feeds on 9Now or Stan. So that's really kind of the next evolution for how those teams are kind of thinking about how this data can work for them.
Mark Jones:
That's interesting. Last question. How many stakeholders do you look after?
Suzie Cardwell:
Dozens.
Mark Jones:
Right.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yes, yes. Across the entire-
Mark Jones:
For CMOs and CDOs and others who are sort of thinking as they've been listening to you, it's sort of very similar to all the people I have to try and keep happy.
Suzie Cardwell:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh look, I mean, it's exactly the same for the marketers. We have to understand our business stakeholders' needs, the things that they are trying to achieve and why they're trying to achieve them, and then we need to work with them to help them formulate the strategies and build out the tactics to help them understand that. And you can only do that by spending time with them, by asking lots and lots and lots of questions, and usually I ask lots of really dumb questions, and getting a granular understanding of their business and what they're trying to do.
Mark Jones:
Well, Suzie, given all the people that you've got to keep happy and all the things that you have to learn, thank you for joining me on The CMO Show and have a great time here at the summit.
Suzie Cardwell:
My pleasure. Thank you, Mark. Really appreciate it.
Mark Jones:
Hope you really enjoyed that conversation with Suzie. As a former journalist who worked at Fairfax, which became Nine, that was quite a fun conversation for me to have a flashback to how things used to be, and we touched on that. And I think the lesson for marketers, if I can, is that we often have flashbacks to how marketing used to be, and it's really important to get that clarity on what was then and what was now. How deeply embedded are you in the practises that really matter to today, and how are you going to set things up for the future, particularly when it comes to agentic, as agentic completely redefines workflows, and it really defines what we can and can't do in marketing.
So some really great inspiration and ideas there, and I hope you've enjoyed the show and take away a lot of practical stuff to work with. So that's it for this episode of The CMO Show. My name is Mark Jones. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.