Matt Oakley.
Matt Oakley, 303 MullenLowe Perth's Chief Strategy Officer.
Earlier this year, I set out to uncover what’s really happening in Western Australia’s marketing landscape. I spoke with leading CMOs, mapped the common challenges, and published my findings in The Evolving Role of the CMO - The Western Australian Perspective.
But what began as a one-off report quickly turned into an ongoing investigation. The more I spoke to WA’s marketing leaders, the clearer it became: change is not just coming, it’s accelerating - and nowhere is this more evident than here in the West.
Yes, many of the pressures are shared with the East. CMOs everywhere are juggling an ever-expanding remit: rapid advances in technology, rising growth expectations, and the post-Covid complexity of doing more with less.
But in WA, these challenges take on sharper edges.
In WA, it’s a painful truth that CMOs often have to contend with a talent shortage. Despite population inflows since Covid, WA continues to lose marketing talent to bigger brands and budgets interstate and overseas. Lifestyle appeal does bring some outsiders in, but not enough to close the gap. CMOs are often left to pick up the slack, stretching both their teams and themselves.
When it comes to stretching themselves, the WA CMO also must encourage a degree of stretch within their organisation. So, as well as maintaining the right balance between long- and short-term thinking, they see their role as being vital in agitating for change amongst their peers and the wider organisation. Many don’t have the luxury of innovation or R&D budgets. They don’t have digital or technology teams helping them keep pace with change. Instead, it is the CMO who is bringing fresh thinking into the organisation, all the whilst ensuring business goals are being delivered.
There’s also a unqiue cultural complexity. WA’s marketers must navigate deep cultural nuances. The divide between metro and regional audiences is stark. And while the East-West split may be subtle, it is very real. CMOs here must be fluent not just in “Australian” audiences, but distinctly Western Australian ones.
It’s not just the cultural landscape of WA that brings complexity, but the stakeholder landscape too. Having worked with large multinational brands, I’m all too familiar with the need to socialise thinking with different markets/regions and marketing functions (e.g. brand, digital, channel). But here in WA, there’s a unique blend of stakeholders to consider (particularly the owner/founder dynamic), which means CMOs must clearly demonstrate the thinking behind their thinking, and also the impact of their efforts.
And of course there’s market volatility. In WA, volatility is magnified. Budget constraints hit harder, and the pace of change is relentless. CMOs are expected to adapt on the fly — and they do, often stepping into the role of change agent, running toward challenges rather than away from them.
Across my conversations, one consistent theme emerged: the scope of the CMO role defies neat definition. As one leader told me, “Every role I’ve had, I’ve taken on things you’d argue wouldn’t traditionally fall under a CMO.”
From this, two distinct CMO archetypes are emerging: those who exert influence across the organisation, and those whose influence remains within their immediate remit. Neither is inherently better - but the distinction highlights just how varied the modern CMO role has become.
The takeaway? WA’s CMOs face the same shifting currents as their peers elsewhere, but with a unique intensity. Their success will depend on adaptability; the ability to respond not just to change, but to a uniquely Western Australian version of it. If they can, marketing will continue to be one of the most powerful levers of growth for organisations in this state and beyond.