Arnott’s CMO Rewards Agency for Effective Work: “Extra Skin in the Game” for “Business-Changing IP”

Arnott’s chief marketing officer Jenni Dill incentivises effective work by rewarding her agency partner, Saatchi & Saatchi, yearly for the business results an unchanging brand platform is driving year-on-year. 

She plans to use the two-year-old ‘Life’s Little Moments’ platform for at least five years, which makes remunerating the agency trickier than if she were to regularly buy new work. 

“Lots of people think new year, new budget,” she told the crowd at SXSW Sydney. “Let's make a new ad. No, no. If we need new bits, we'll make a new scene. We'll make a new product that goes into the overall campaign. But we are running this campaign for hopefully the next five years.”

As Saatchi & Saatchi MD Toby Aldred told LBB after the session, “The agency is rewarded year in, year out for a platform that delivers great results. It gives the agency extra skin in the game to build for the long term, recognising that what we offer is genuine, business-changing IP.”

‘Life’s Little Moments’ won the Grand Effie in 2023, after launching in 2022. Within the first six months of its launch, the work had driven a gross profit ROI of $2.60. That jumped to $2.87 at the 12 month mark, and $3.36 within 24 months. The FMCG category average is $0.75. 

The brand and agency are expecting the next set of results next month; they expect that ROI has grown again. 

It’s led to a 1.6 percentage point increase in market share growth. Jenni said, “To be able to deliver something that not only beats the top quartile, but starts getting into the top 10% in your first 12 months, was pretty spectacular.”

“When I know I'm going into my leadership team or my board and I'm asking for more money, I can demonstrate the results that we've delivered,” she added. “It builds a lot of credibility.”

Getting to that platform required sacrifices. When the brand was emerging from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, it had to hike prices. 

“We never, ever, ever have taken price lightly in our business, but we got to the point where we just had such unsustainable cost increases that we had to.

“And we knew that having some brand work that worked hard and really pulled on those emotional heart strings was going to help.”

To carve out the budget she needed, Jenni took “half the campaigns off the air”, and doubled down on campaigns that were working. 

“These tough calls didn't make us a lot of friends within the business. 

“In the nature of making those decisions, we got to a place very quickly of needing a big platform, of needing something that would stand the test of time. 

“If it was a one year flash in the pan, it wasn't going to do what we needed to do in terms of that continuity and that efficiency and effectiveness.”

She needed a platform that would last at least half a decade, and she needed it to be made in three months. That was the timespan between briefing and being on air, Jenni explained. “That’s very, very fast” for a big brand campaign.

To ensure the time was used correctly, the agency debated the brief upfront with the marketing team. That debate “meant that we had a really good amount of time to do creative development.

“That allowed us to get to the work faster. And we in fact bought the work in the first meeting, not six meetings down the track.”

Jenni also revealed Arnott’s is exploring how to bring iconic Arnott’s products to more markets. 

“We do know that we are in roughly half of Australian suitcases when you go overseas,” Jenni said.  

“Roughly half of Australians take at least one packet of Tim Tams with them … We also believe there's an opportunity to go and sell Tim Tams around the world. So we're testing and we're building a strategy. More to come on that one.”