Photo by DAMIAN SHAW.com

Startups are renowned for being able to build brands off a shoestring budget – a talent that at times has left established competitors scratching their heads about how they can rise to prominence with such small budgets.

Craig Davis is now learning those lessons first hand. The former chief creative officer of Publicis Mojo is now heading up marketing for a small but exciting Australian startup, the parcel delivery service Sendle.

He describes the experience so far as being like an MBA in the new ways of brand building. Given how successful many startups have been in stealing attention (and revenue) from big-spending established competitors, it may be an experience that more up-and-coming marketers might want to see featured on their resume.

You can read more about Craig and the lessons he is learning in this article for CMO.com.au.

All marketing is about people – surely? As with all things related to digital marketing, the term ‘people-based marketing’ means much more than what it seems. While much of the marketing world works on probabilities – buying ads in a certain program at a certain time will ‘probably’ reach a certain audience, people-based marketing aims to be very specific – reaching actual (although usually ‘anonymised’) individuals whose attributes have been pre-determined through some form of opt-in system. To learn more, take a look at this article I wrote recently for CMO.com.au.

Its easy to forget that all the tools and methodologies that make startups successful are equally available to existing organisations – if they choose to use and master them. So it was great to see an example of a government agency adopting the agile development methodology in conjunction with its digital agency when it came to revamping its core website.

You can read more about the agile partnership between Tourism Victoria and its agency IE Digital in this story for CMO.com.au. For Tourism Victoria, embracing a new way of working together delivered greater transparency into the development process, and ensured that it knew exactly what it would be getting for its money.

I’ve been watching the ‘smart cities’ movement for a while now, as town planners have grappled with the question of how to use technology to make our cities better places to live. Often the discussion has taken a very technical turn, and got caught up in discussions around the deployments of Wi-Fi networks and sensors.

Cities are inherently human places however, so it is refreshing to see Adelaide City Council put its people at the heart of its smart city strategy. Technology does not usually form a major part of destination marketing (at least beyond the media used for its dissemination), but you can read more about how Adelaide is using technology attract and retain citizens in this story for CMO.com.au.

Taking money is ultimately the most important part of the sales & marketing cycle for for-profit businesses. So with consumer expectations of customer service continuing to rise, its no surprise that many companies are now turning their focus onto smoothing and improving this vital process. Companies like Uber and Airbnb are showing the way in terms of making the transaction process all-but-invisible, and new tools and services are extending that capability to an increasing variety of transactions. You can read more about trends in payments in this article for CMO Australia.