Snags, Red Shirts & Culture: Unpacking the Bunnings effect
From the iconic sausage sizzle to its team of red shirts and partnerships with Vegemite and Bluey, Bunnings isn’t just a brand...it’s a staple of Australian culture. Recently named Australia’s most trusted brand by Roy Morgan, the warehouse giant is supported by a seriously deliberate marketing machine focused on community engagement. Recorded live on the shop floor, this episode of The CMO Show sits down with Justine Mills, General Manager of Marketing at Bunnings, to unpack how a hardware store has become part of Australia’s cultural fabric.
This isn’t about glossy campaigns or influencer deals. It’s about why the person in the red shirt knows more than any brand ambassador ever could and how Bunnings has built systems to let real frontline expertise lead the marketing. Justine dives into the Red Shirt Content Creator program, how everyday team members have become trusted creators, and why its inhouse content engine, Hammer Media, works not just as a retail media network, but as a credibility generator. You’ll hear how Bunnings captures real in‑store moments and resists polishing them into something unrecognisable. No hype. No hard sell. Just useful help, delivered in the same tone Australians have trusted for decades.
For CMOs navigating growth and authenticity in an era of performance metrics and attribution, this episode breaks it down: how do you scale without losing soul? How do you drive a sector without feeling corporate? And how do you make marketing feel less like marketing and more like part of the community you serve? It’s rare look at how one of Australia’s most iconic brands earns trust, keeps it, and proves that the most powerful marketing strategy still starts on the shop floor… preferably near the snag stand.
####
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.
####
Mark Jones
How's this for a good problem to have? You've got a big national brand, and you're hyperlocal. How do you keep those two things in check? Well, the answer might have something to do with sausages. Hello and welcome to The CMO Show. My name's Mark Jones. Thanks for joining us. Guess where we are? We're here in Bunnings in Frenchs Forest, Sydney. My guest is Justine Mills. She is the general manager of marketing of all of the Bunnings stores.
I'm sure you've visited many. And we sat down for a conversation about community marketing, about national brand marketing. We talked about social media and how to do things that are a little bit on the edge. And most of all, the strategy, the mindset that she brings to running marketing for an organisation like this with so many touchpoints, so many different channels. Let's get straight into it. Justine, thank you so much for joining us on The CMO Show.
Justine Mills
Thank you for having me.
Mark Jones
And I just want to say upfront, this is the most dressed up I have ever been in Bunnings. You, on the other hand, fitting in perfectly?
Justine Mills
Absolutely. I love this.
Mark Jones
Tell me about the Bunnings story. Nine consecutive quarters being the most trusted brand. I think for any brand, that's incredible. The obvious question is to ask about what you think is behind that from a marketing point of view. What's the key, do you think, from a marketing success there?
Justine Mills
Yeah, so the key is our team. So it is the team who are in the stores every day who build that trust with our customers. So we have team members who are greeting you. So the second you walk in the store, there's a red shirt there that's saying hello to you, and that is happening day in and day out.
So just being able to build that trust with the customers is what's essential. And then we're pulling that through in everything we do. So for marketing, those team members, who you see in your local store, are also the people you see on our TV ads, and in our emails, and on our socials.
Mark Jones
And I'm sure you do auditioning for that, or how does that happen out of interest?
Justine Mills
We do. Yes. So what happens is we do casting calls. We rotate where we do it. So we do metro, and regional casting. We go around different states, and the whole idea is that then you get the full diversity of our team. So last year we had, I think it might have been around 400 team members across Australia and New Zealand, featuring our TV campaigns.
Mark Jones
Now you're from the support office you were telling me-
Justine Mills
Yes.
Mark Jones
... which also means that you also spend time on the floor.
Justine Mills
We do. We do HammerTime-
Mark Jones
HammerTime.
Justine Mills
... in store.
Mark Jones
That's the best name ever.
Justine Mills
It is a very good name. So we do that around five times a year, if not more. And the whole idea around that is getting to know your store, your team, as well as your customers, and really hearing from the experiences on that shop fall floor around what's going on.
Mark Jones
So, staying with the trust thing for a minute, the problem with being number one is you've only got one way to go. I mean, you've got to stay there, right. Nobody wants you to.
Justine Mills
Yeah.
Mark Jones
You'll figure to yourself, "How do I stay there?" So I'm interested from a leadership point of view, when you're in the position you're in, what does it take to keep the momentum going, to build the trust, maintain the trust?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So it's just continuing to do what we know is the right thing to do by our customers. And it is just really protecting that trust, being sure of what our values are as a business, and that team culture, and just making sure that all of that is together and we are delivering the best customer experience. That's all you can do.
Mark Jones
How would you describe the Bunnings tone of voice?
Justine Mills
The Bunnings tone of voice?
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Justine Mills
So helpful.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Justine Mills
Approachable.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Justine Mills
I would also say a bit funny.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Justine Mills
And just really knowledgeable around DIY.
Mark Jones
Yeah. I ask because in marketing, of course, tone of voice, the style of a brand, all these cultural things are always important, but with Bunnings, there's an Australian cultural identity thing, which must be kind of fun from a marketing point of view to be part of that story. But I'd love to hear about how you think about it. What's the mindset that goes into it? Because it's fun-
Justine Mills
Yes.
Mark Jones
... but it's also strategic.
Justine Mills
It is. It is. And it has to be approachable for our customers. So whatever you're experiencing in the store has to be translated into everything we do from a marketing standpoint. And I know I keep talking about that, but that is truly what happens. And it has to translate across not only what we're doing in our above-the-line, but it also has to translate in digital.
The interesting thing is social is a different platform. So you can probably flex that brand personality a little bit more than what you would in a video on YouTube, which is around DIY advice. Our magazine, it's more around the advice. So the tone there is slightly different. So there's a general one, and then it flexes depending on who the audience is and what channel we're in.
Mark Jones
What's interesting to me, too, is how you keep it local and community-focused. And you were telling me that you get people in stores to help produce social content for you.
Justine Mills
Yes, we do.
Mark Jones
But you've also got that national brand identity-
Justine Mills
We do.
Mark Jones
... and reputation to protect. So how do you get that right, the mix between the two?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So we'll start with the Red Shirt Content Creator programme. So that was launched probably three and a half years ago. And the idea behind that was that there's a lot of products, as you can see in our stores. There's a lot of new products that come in. There's also a lot of trends that happen and hacks, and our customers come in and ask for it.
And in our marketing team, we might not hear about it straight away, but the team in stores do. And so the idea is that they can identify these, what we call aisle finds, so great new products. They can talk to customers, understand what those hacks are that they're doing. And then what they do is they produce the video, I guess you could call it. They edit it and then they send it into the marketing team, and we'll push it through our social channels.
So across Australia and New Zealand, we have a hundred of those red shirt content creators, and it's kind of like our own personal influencer programme. And it's just a fantastic way, not only to ensure that our brand is authentic and it links back with our red shirt philosophy, but there's also that piece around, it's just a great opportunity for team members to experience what it's like to be in marketing as well.
Mark Jones
And so that brand consistency piece is then coming through in the, you're not allowed to just post direct from the store. It's got to go through the team.
Justine Mills
Correct.
Mark Jones
Right. So that's the other part of that, yeah?
Justine Mills
Yes, that's right. So will only ever be posted from the AU or NZ Bunnings accounts.
Mark Jones
Tell me about Hammer Media.
Justine Mills
Hammer Media, yes.
Mark Jones
Best name ever. According to my research, 14 million monthly website visitors. Firstly, retail media is an exploding part of the media marketing landscape, right?
Justine Mills
It is. So we launched Hammer Media a year ago. So it's our first birthday this month.
Mark Jones
Congratulations.
Justine Mills
Thank you. It's very exciting. And so the idea behind it is we have the magazine. Our magazine is the number one home and lifestyle magazine in Australia. It's been around for six years now, and there was advertising in it. So we already had some element of retail media happening, but then we saw a big opportunity to really dial that up, and it's an opportunity for our suppliers to connect with our customers.
We have all of our loyalty programmes, so we know who our customers are, which is really helpful for them. And so we've got screens in store. We now have a Bunnings Trade magazine as well because we've got two audiences that we're talking to, our warehouse customers, which are DIY, and then our trade customers. And then we also have our email programme, and we also now have our DAB radio station called Tradio, which is for our Tradies as they're driving every day, which is very cool.
That's in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane at the moment. And then on the SEN Network, we also have the Tradio Commute Radio Show, which runs 5:00 to 6:00 AM. And the idea here is it's just giving our suppliers the opportunity to connect with our customers, and it's a win-win. So, really trying to help them drive sales of their products.
Mark Jones
Tell me about the strategy you have for the retail media programme. How are you trying to build it out?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So the idea is really working with our suppliers to understand how they want to be communicating to our customers. So that's one of the beauties about The Block. So we partnered with The Block last year. We're doing it again this year. And what we've been able to do through that is bring our suppliers on board, so then they can showcase their products in real-life examples through the contestants' houses.
And then what we've also been able to do in partnership with Channel 9 is bring The Block through all of our own channels. So there's now a dedicated section within the Bunnings magazine, which is around that. Then our suppliers can link in their products and their brand stories. So, for example, British Paints. "Here are the paint colours that this contestant has used in this house, and this is why it works." So you can really start telling their brand stories in our environment. So what we're doing is just really trying to find those opportunities for our suppliers.
Mark Jones
Tell me about measurement. How are you figuring out what works and what doesn't?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So measurement is, I think it's one of the biggest things with retail media that everyone is still trying to figure out. We look at sales uplift when it comes to also The Block. We're looking at brand recall and how long a brand is being present on the programme and things like that. So, depending on the channel, there's different metrics that we're using, also based on the campaign objectives. So if it's an awareness, let's go for reach, but if it's really around that conversion and website advertising, let's look at sales uplift.
Mark Jones
So I wasn't there myself, but you had a rave apparently at a store here in Sydney. It was a social post, it took off, a Sydney DJ.
Justine Mills
Yes.
Mark Jones
It's interesting to me that a company like this would actually flex into an outrageous dance in a Bunnings store. Can you tell me how that happened and what impact it had?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So it was a social media post, and it just kept building momentum.
Mark Jones
It was TikTok, right?
Justine Mills
It was TikTok, and it was a remix of the Bunnings Jingle, which is pretty amazing that people want to do that with our jingle. And then what... the invite was thrown out. "Would you host what we call a warehouse party?"
Mark Jones
Okay.
Justine Mills
And we went, "Let's do it." But the one thing we did learn is there's no playbook as to how to host a party, a warehouse party of that scale, inside a warehouse. So it was amazing to see how our teams all came together to pull this off in such a short period of time, had to learn ticket sales and every other piece of logistics that went with this warehouse-
Mark Jones
Clearing spaces.
Justine Mills
Yeah. We had to find a location. So it was originally going to be Sydney, and then we went with Victoria as well. So it was at our Preston warehouse in one of the car parks there, which was great. We needed a perfect weather. We got that. But I think the key thing with that is if you know your brand, you know your customers, and you're really clear on it, you can sometimes flex that brand and stretch it a bit more.
Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Yes, but it did pay off in the end. The momentum that came off that and the connection we had with those younger customers, especially the renter cohort, was fantastic. And I think off the back of that, we've also done other things, and we've used that same brand guideline to go, "Well, how far can we flex and when does it feel right for our brand to play in a space?"
So if you look at it, we did Hammerbarn, which is collaboration with Bluey, and that was fantastic. So we've done that for two years. First year, there was rebranding of seven of our warehouses. Second year, we did more of a scavenger hunt where you could find the characters throughout the warehouse. There was brand and merch and all of those kinds of things. Then we flexed into The Block and did that. And then we've also done the mini bears. I don't know if you saw the-
Mark Jones
I have.
Justine Mills
... unboxing.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Justine Mills
Yeah. So we did things like that, and it's just, you know what? Our customers, they're receptive to it. They love it. We love it. So just makes sense.
Mark Jones
What advice have you got for your peers in marketing that would be thinking about something that they would think of as brave?
Justine Mills
If you...
Mark Jones
Apart from just do it, right?
Justine Mills
Yeah, just do it. If you think it is right for your brand and you're doing it for the right reasons, absolutely do it.
Mark Jones
What's your advice for building up relationships with your teams, particularly in marketing teams? It's a pretty interesting time in marketing because there's a lot of change going on. And so it's one thing to have loyal team members, but it's another one to have a situation where people love their brand. So that's a common thing at Bunnings for everybody that I've ever speak to. What does it take to do that?
Justine Mills
Yeah. It comes down to having that, making people feel belonging in a business, and just being part of the team. So when we look at it, our team know the direction that we'd like to head in. They help co-create that. It's not a top-down, "This is what we need to do."
Everyone is on that journey. We celebrate the wins that we have, either individual wins or we do it across the whole team, and people also understand what their part did and how that feeds into a bigger, broader piece. And I think if you can get that all right, then it just speaks for itself, and the culture just keeps flourishing.
Mark Jones
So I'd like to talk about some of the purpose-driven activities. So supporting the FightMND partnership. There's other ones as well.
Justine Mills
Yeah.
Mark Jones
And also, of course, again, back to the sausages, lots of community organisations that you support. It's part of what you do. How do you get the balance right so that it always feels authentic? Because of course there's a real strong temptation to sort of [inaudible 00:18:00] these things. You could start crowing too much about the work that you do. I never see that from Bunnings.
Justine Mills
Yeah. I think one of the things with the local community piece is every store has an activities organiser, and their role is to really work with the community, their local community, to understand what the needs are. So they are the ones who run the kids' DIY workshops every weekend.
They coordinate the adults' DIY once a month. They coordinate the sausage sizzles and what communities get involved in that and any other broader community pieces. So there's that piece where we have a broader strategy around it, but then it is executed differently, and it will look different in every single store because it is run locally.
Mark Jones
So, advice, closing for marketers, people in your role, large teams, and thinking about how to stay consistent is one of the things that stands out to me. At scale, what's the mindset you bring to that that you would share to people?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So if the consistency works, stick with it. So for us, we've used red shirts in our advertising for 20 years now. We could have mixed that up. We could have gone, "You know what? Let's do something different." But it still works for us. Yes, we'll make little tweaks along the way.
So at the moment, we're looking at using more motion. So you might see instead of just a team member standing at a shelf talking about a product, they'll be walking through an aisle. That's an evolution of just our core comm strategy, and it's still working for us. So just stick with what works.
Mark Jones
Nice. Another question before we wrap too.
Justine Mills
Yeah.
Mark Jones
Before I was going back to the marketing effectiveness thing, can you give us an understanding of how you're seeing the performance of different channels right now?
Justine Mills
Yeah.
Mark Jones
And what ones are working? What are you looking at in terms of maybe changing any strategies, or how do you think about those sorts of things?
Justine Mills
Yeah. So we measure every campaign to look at its effectiveness from a creative standpoint, as well as a media channel standpoint. I think the key thing is just making sure the message is right for the channel that you're using. And I don't think that it's nailed enough in the industry. So for us, we've been doing a lot of work around specific channel optimization.
So, "Okay, what is the right format in social media? How long do we have that customer's attention for before they'll drift?" So we need to nail it up front. Out of home, well, you might have seven seconds. What can people consume in seven seconds? So just doing all of those things and then reassessing afterwards and going, "Okay, so were we more effective this time or do we need to go back to the drawing board and reshape it?" So we've been doing a lot of work in that space.
Mark Jones
We're here in Frenchs Forest, by the way.
Justine Mills
We are.
Mark Jones
Which is two, three stories.
Justine Mills
Three stories.
Mark Jones
Three stories. Apparently, the largest, if not very close to being the largest, Bunnings.
Justine Mills
Mm-hmm.
Mark Jones
What is it... I'm interested from a marketing point of view, how you tell the story of growth, because unlike many companies, there's a constant track record of growth, new stores opening. What does it take to launch a new store?
Justine Mills
Yeah.
Mark Jones
How do you tell that story?
Justine Mills
Yes. So we tell that story in the local area. So it is all around the local area marketing team who really drive that story for us. This one was a fantastic story because it is so large. It's exciting. People have known about it for a while. This one's also unique. It has a Beaumont Tiles inside the Bunnings warehouse, so very different. So, having to communicate those kind of things. And then there's also an amazing trade area right downstairs as well.
So just being able to communicate to every one of our customers. So we have that warehouse customer, what we're doing there. We also have our Bunnings Trade customers, and why should they come to this new store over another store? And then you've also got that piece around Beaumont Tiles. So how do we communicate that to our customers that we have Beaumont Tiles in here, and how do our friends at Beaumont Tiles communicate to their customers, "Hey, you got to walk into Bunnings." So mapping all that out.
Mark Jones
Yeah, so partnerships.
Justine Mills
Partnerships.
Mark Jones
Yeah, yeah. And you did one today. It's 1st of April, right?
Justine Mills
It is.
Mark Jones
Before we...
Justine Mills
Yes.
Mark Jones
Maybe to wrap up, that's a nice fun one.
Justine Mills
It is.
Mark Jones
I think by the time this comes out, by the way...
Justine Mills
People would have forgotten.
Mark Jones
Yeah. No, not forgotten. They won't be tricked.
Justine Mills
Yes.
Mark Jones
April Fool's Day.
Justine Mills
That's true.
Mark Jones
What did you do?
Justine Mills
So we did a collaboration with VEGEMITE, so two Aussie iconic brands, and we are famous for our Bunnings warehouse buckets. So we said that they were... there was going to be a limited drop of VEGEMITE in 10-litre buckets here at Bunnings. So we had both the VEGEMITE character and our bucket, just walking around the store on social media. So a lot of fun.
Mark Jones
I love the fact that you guys are not taking yourselves too seriously.
Mark Jones
Justine, as well, thank you so much for putting on a sausage sizzle for us downstairs.
Justine Mills
Oh my goodness. No worries.
Mark Jones
Very important question. Is it onions first and then sausages, or the other way around?
Justine Mills
So it's the bread, the onions, then the sausage, and then whatever sauce you want on top.
Mark Jones
I want to be friends with you, but I feel like it's the other way.
Justine Mills
Well, I guess you can do what you want at home, but that's how our customers like it.
Mark Jones
If you were a marketer thinking, I want to do a sausage sizzle equivalent, how should they think about that as a marketer? Because the sausage is already taken, right?
Justine Mills
Yeah, it is.
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Justine Mills
So I think it's a community piece, right. So all the funds raised go to local communities. So whatever that community thing is, it needs to be tangible. That's number one. And you need to... I think what works for us is it's so simple. It's consistent. And you also know that it is directly contributing to your local community. So it's just finding something that works for your brand, and that connects and is authentic with your community.
Mark Jones
That's great. Justine, thank you so much for being my guest on The CMO Show.
Justine Mills
Thank you so much for having me, Mark. Great.
Mark Jones
If there's one thing that I'm taking out of this experience, doing an interview here in Bunnings, which is the sense of fun that we all know is part of the Bunnings brand. Now, it's kind of hard for a lot of brands to own an emotion-like fun and to keep that in check with some very big, serious business goals, but somehow these guys managed to keep it going. And there's a real interesting mix of being able to run a big system that includes a lot of people. And a lot of that does come down to the team.
The way that this team thinks about themselves as team members, they talk about a support office and not a head office. Little things like that give you a clue into the culture that values people first. And that's probably the biggest takeaway for me as somebody who spends a lot of time with marketers. I hope you took away some really interesting ideas as well. And so that wraps up this edition of The CMO Show. Thanks for joining us. Until next time.