Chair, board director, business advisor and marketing thought leader, Andrew is the Chair of Australian Pork, and a Non-Executive Director at Foresters Financial, GrowthOps, BirdDog, Hypetap, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and OzHarvest. He is also a Senior Advisor at BGH Capital and the Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the University of Sydney, and has been the Senior Advisor to KPMG's Customer, Brand and Marketing business. Prior to this he was the CEO of two of the country's largest communications agencies, Publicis, and Ogilvy, where he was a trusted counsel to many of Australia's most iconic brands.

Andrew regularly writes and speaks about the future of marketing, in a world where both consumers and technology are ever-evolving. He has been named as one of LinkedIn's Top 40 Australian influencers, recognised by Campaign magazine as one of the Top 5 Agency Leaders in Australia and New Zealand, and the winner of Australian Marketing Institute's Sir Charles McGrath Award for his significant contribution to the field of marketing.

Andrew is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) from Monash University

Hi, uh, I'm Andrew Baxter. I am the founder of the 24 hour business plan. Uh,

it was a business setup only a year or so ago, uh, through the midst of COVID.

We had a lot of people asking me, um, could I help them look at their,

their strategic plan or their business plan? Uh,

I was surprised how many people don't have a business plan, uh,

four outta five Australian, small to medium size companies. Don't have one. Uh,

I was very lucky to run some of the large, uh, uh, you know, um,

communication groups in Australia. I saw a lot of companies who,

uh, had done this well and not so well.

I saw a lot of our own companies in the businesses I worked in who had done well

and not so well. So, uh, I, I call this my accidental business.

I had no intention of setting setting it up, but, uh,

we've had a lot of fun doing it.

Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

No problem at all.

So over the past two years,

we've seen so much change. Uh,

COVID has impacted business, uh, that in effect has, you know,

impacted supply chain, which has impacted industries and consumers.

We've had issues around the world, uh, in terms of, uh,

equity relations,

but we've also been told that with change and with challenge comes opportunity.

I'm curious, what do you see from where you're sitting as new opportunities

for brands as they're looking to accelerate their growth over the next few

years?

Yeah, look, I think first and foremost, this whole change piece is interesting.

One of the studies I saw that goes back to the last decade is that

habits form in 66 days. So if you think about that, that there's,

there's been some misnomers about, you know, is it seven days, 21 days?

You know, people go on diets and they think they can do it for three weeks. Uh,

but the research says that 66 days now many people around the world have been in

at least one,

if not two and some have been in three lockdowns for longer than 66

days each time and therefore new habits form

with consumers in that time.

And I think if I put my old marketing hat on one of the things I talk about, uh,

when I'm,

we're going through these business planning processes

well, have your consumers changed? And often the answer is yes. And then I say,

do you want that ch is that change good? Because if that change is good,

that they might have switched to buying more online,

and that means you make some more money or more margin, or it means that,

you know, people are buying at a supermarket more often, uh,

if that's good for your business, then keep pushing and keep, um, uh,

I suppose, compounding in a good way that change.

But a lot of people for a lot of businesses in a lot

hasn't been good and therefore they need to almost reverse that change

in the consumer. So that's a tough thing to do is to, uh,

think about it that way to go well, you know,

if we wanna change things back to how they were, uh,

where we were doing really well as a business, how do we turn that around, uh,

you know, what do we need to do from a business point of view to change that,

uh, whether that be from a distribution point of view,

it might be from a sales point of view or marketing point of view. Um,

so that's that I think's the first thing for me is that there's a lot of change.

I mean, clearly we've had a big change towards digital, um, people online,

shopping. I think there was this, you know,

there was a lot of younger people that were very okay and, and, you know,

were certainly buying a lot online already. Uh, I think

realized that it wasn't so hard and, uh, we saw lots of change going on there,

which was terrific. Uh, so, so I think, you know,

tho those were some of the biggest changes. Um, I, I

one of my roles, uh,

outside of my 24 hour business plan is this chairman of Australian pork. Uh,

we certainly saw the sales of pork go up. And, uh,

what we saw was that, you know,

all of a sudden people were rushing the supermarket shelves for beef and lamb

and chicken, and all of a sudden they've, uh, you know,

some things were left that they may not already normally buy. And,

and pork might have been one of those. They were very willing,

very quickly to try things and, and, and a lot of companies move quite quickly.

We certainly advertised a lot of easy to use pork recipes very quickly,

and people seem to come back.

So it's those sorts of little changes that I think people need to promote. Um,

uh, um, you know, through, through, through that.

You talked, uh, earlier about

people doing more shopping on online, you know,

the growth of eCommerce you speak about, you know, your work with, uh,

Australian pork.

Are there specific industries that

you think are poised for

explosion explosive growth over the next little while as a result of everything

that we've been through over the past couple of years?

Oh, look,

I think there's some that grew through COVID and will continue to grow quite

well. I mean, the, the food industry, you know,

had probably struggled a little bit leading into COVID, um,

particularly some of the package, the larger, uh, package boots companies.

They certainly saw a huge amount of growth.

I think they're poised to do a lot more product development and, uh, new,

new product development. You know,

now that they've got ahead of the curve a little bit, I I'm expecting, um,

you know, people in those large corporations to be trying more things.

I think we certainly are seeing a shift toward, uh, in a good way,

the environmental and climate friendly, uh, production of food,

uh, around the world. And you're seeing large companies,

not like the Nestle's moving into that space fairly rapidly, uh,

which is terrific. Um, so I, I think then there's the,

there's a lot of other companies that'll, you know, come back out. I mean, they,

they sort of almost, their sales dropped off immediately, you know, the travel,

the travel and tourism industry, you know, got hit really hard,

but we're seeing just this week in Australia, this is the first holidays,

really in a couple of years where people are confident enough to travel well,

the airports are jam packed. It's taking two, two people,

two hours to get through security. Um, you know,

there's certainly not as many planes back on as there were. Uh,

there's certainly, um, those industries are affected by getting staff, um,

in terms of, you know, it's tough just to get enough people, um, to, to,

you know, to have on the plane,

whether they be pilots or stewards or whether the security people have got

enough, you know, enough of their team members.

So I think we're still seeing quite a big, um, people shortage in many,

many industries. Uh, you know, we, we don't have that transient,

uh, workforce that exists. Uh,

usually when you've got people traveling around the world,

backpackers coming in and out, you know, people coming and,

and wanting to live in a country for six months and then going home again,

I mean, that hasn't happened for a couple of years, so that,

that additional workforce isn't here and that's affecting many industries,

including the food industry as well. Um, so,

so I think there's some of the big ones, but I look,

I'm certainly expecting that travel and tourism industry to bounce back.

People are looking for a break. People are looking for a holiday. Um,

you know, I think, I think the university sector was interesting when you think,

you know,

that went to almost a complete online for almost a couple of years and,

uh, and you know, young students, they quite like that on campus experience,

you know, first, second year university, that's a big part of, you know,

growing up. And so a lot of them are wanting to get back on campus now, but,

but, but I think the unis thought, um, that there'd be a lot, uh, you know,

certainly they were hit quite hard in the year one,

but I think a lot of people came back, you know, it was still a good education.

So that industry seemed to, uh, seemed to bounce back reasonably well.

And then look, I'm just thinking, I mean, O other, you know,

certainly people spending a lot more time at their home, you know, the old DIY,

um, you know, wanting to do things and, and update their home, you know,

into their gardens and things like that. You know,

when people had more time at home,

they got into some of those good habits as well. So, yeah, it is interesting.

Um, you know,

we're still seeing when we're going through the 24 hour business plan,

I think we've done that in the last 12 months for over 12 industries. And, uh,

you know, even things like the construction market, you know, again,

was quite affected by having people on the ground and being able to be on site

to build. But there still seems to be a lot of confidence out there,

both in residential and commercial, uh, real estate as well. So yeah,

look, it's, it's,

that's a wide spectrum of different industries I've chatted about, but, um,

you know, there's,

many of them have been through their ups and many of them have been through

their downs, if that makes sense over time.

Yeah. When you're speaking with your clients,

how do you, how, how do you help them plan

for change that they don't know is coming?

And what I mean by that is nobody saw, you know,

that COVID was gonna happen in middle of March, 2020.

Uh, and what that would mean for the entire supply chain,

what that would mean for health and what it would mean for industries like, uh,

food or, uh, travel.

How are companies planning? How are you, uh,

helping companies plan for these events that are really hard to plan

for?

They are hard to plan for one of the exercises we do right up front of our

sessions, uh, without we, before we even get into it,

it's almost a bit like an icebreaker type session. Uh, we say to people, look,

imagine it's the end of year party in three or four years time,

and things have gone extraordinarily well.

And you're on the back of a big boat on the Mediterranean you're popping

champagne, cos the world's incredible.

It's been the most successful three or four years your company's ever had what's

happened. And very quickly people come back with quite unstructured and, oh,

well we hired some great talent and we won three major clients and, you know,

we, we increased our prices or whatever it might have been.

I then asked them the opposite look, it's four years time,

we're standing around the kitchen,

eating drive biscuits and having a cup of tea for our Christmas party or for our

interview party. Hasn't been so good. What happened? And then,

you know, all of a sudden,

they all start thinking through what some of the biggest things that might

affect them are. Um, I think sometimes when we get a,

a lot more structured in our thinking, we, we don't widen our thinking too much,

but when you, you put it out there like that, um,

and we get all sorts of answers on that second one. Oh, well, geez, you know,

supply chain might be worse than it is now,

or there might be a second pandemic and this is what would happen or there might

be, you know, XYZ. So all of a sudden you're just framing it up in a,

quite an open way to enable them to think outside the box. Um, and that,

that we find is quite genuine, but it's very hard.

We do very much get them on a three to five year horizon.

We're trying to make them visualize what success looks like in that

time. Um, you know, we work through a framework that, that,

that enables you to tell your strategy to everybody in your team and externally

in a storytelling way, because often you, I mean,

every,

a lot of companies have purposes and visions and they have statements about

their culture and their values and their behaviors,

but often people can't remember them. I, I, I, I say that, you know,

unless you're a very good actor or actress,

you can't remember more than 10 words in one sentence. So,

so sometimes we get very worthy and write these 25 word statements

that no one can remember past the sixth word. So vision, you know,

using that sort of technique, short and sharp to be going well,

what does our business stand for over the next three to five years, uh,

who are our customers over the next three to five years?

Are they have the same customers as we, as we've got now,

are they different customers with those customers?

What might they need from us as a business over the next three to five years?

What, and are those needs different to now,

which means we might have to tweak our product or service,

or we need to add some more services or products to our portfolio.

So it's just thinking through that extension. Uh, we very much get people,

as I said onto that three to five year horizon, uh,

through a lot of those sorts of things, you know, why are we different?

You know, why are we gonna be different over the next three to five years?

And we spend a couple of sessions, 2, 2,

6 hour sessions working through all of that.

What does our growth plan look like? You know, if we wanna double our business,

what options do we have if business,

as usual is only gonna get us a third of the way there where's the other two

thirds coming from. So it, it, it's quite an interesting process.

As soon as we land on some agreement around a lot of those things,

we then get back into executional mode for the second two sessions. We then go,

okay, if that's our three to five year plan, our strategy, our purpose,

our vision, what our customers might need,

why we're gonna be different over that time, how we're gonna tweak our product,

well, products and services. Well,

what do we need to do in the first 12 months to get us on that journey from a

marketing point of view, business development, operations,

our client relationships, our strategic partners, um, you know, our, our team,

you know, our people, our culture. So, so then it gets quite granular.

So we go from big, big thinking, visualizing success,

being able to tell that what, what that strategy looks like as a story.

And then we bring it right back to reality. What do we need to do? Uh,

and it's fascinating. Uh,

and people aren't quite sure to your point what all that might look like,

but when you work through a process, um, as a team,

and I think that's really important when you do this,

when you work through a process as a team, um,

it really does align and focus you going forward.

Yeah. Andrew, this has been fascinating. Thanks so much for, for sharing.

You know, sometimes you think about, you know,

how do we plan for worst case scenario doesn't mean it's gonna happen.

Doesn't mean that there's going to be a worse case scenario,

but I think it means that you are better prepared to handle some

of those worst case scenarios. So thank you so much for, for sharing.

I really appreciate it.

This has been a very insightful discussion and thank you.

No worries at all. Love doing it.

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