Former Mona CMO Robbie Brammall urges marketers to ease off the ‘performance marketing crack’

Former Mona marketing chief Robbie Brammall has called on marketers to win internal support for long-term brand investment and resist the pressure to rely solely on short-term performance tactics.

Speaking at the launch of marketer consultancy The Emma Logan Project in Sydney, Brammall challenged marketers to “make their brands both unignorable and memorable” and focus on securing buy-in from the C-suite to balance brand and performance marketing.

“The hard bit is gaining support for that investment from the C-Suite, especially as budgets come under pressure,” he told the room. “As an industry, how can we marketers better unlock that support?”

Now running his own consultancy, Brandango, Brammall reflected on his time at Hobart’s Museum of Old & New Art (Mona), where he said parts of the business were “purely on the performance marketing crack.”

“It took time to win internal support for investment in brand, and then it took runs on the board to convince them it was working,” he said.

He also spoke about taking creative risks, citing Mona’s first-ever brand campaign based on negative TripAdvisor reviews.

“David [Walsh, Mona founder] said, ‘I hate advertising but I like these, because they tell the f***ing truth.’ Visitation went up 25%, and the only people who threatened to sue us were Pink Floyd - asymmetric upside.”

The event marked the first of The Emma Logan Project’s quarterly CMO sessions, with founder Emma Logan saying it aimed to build “magnetic executive brands” through honest conversations among senior marketers.