Hayley Jenkins is the brand custodian and driving force behind this country’s largest superannuation fund, AustralianSuper.
Her brand vision is ambitious: to create a deep emotional connection that humanises the brand, increases salience, and puts distance between AustralianSuper and its competitors.
Given Hayley’s favourite colour – and half her wardrobe – is hot pink, it’s unsurprising her mantra is “be distinctive”.
She talks to us about how her team is kicking major goals across brand, advertising, content and social.
What do you do?
I’m responsible for growing, promoting and protecting AustralianSuper’s brand.
This includes defining what our brand stands for and demonstrating how we tangibly improve member’s outcomes in retirement.
We work with members to help them take the right actions now so that combined with the Fund’s big actions they can help live their best life in the future. My team bring this strategy to life through brand identity, advertising, content and social media to drive awareness and preference of the brand.
Importantly, we cultivate and influence colleagues to embed this brand promise too, so all of our people can provide the consistent brand experience members want from us.
I’m so proud that at AustralianSuper, we are making a noticeable difference to the financial future of millions of Australians every single day; and I find that incredibly rewarding.
What mantra are you living by this year?
Be distinctive in what you say and how you say it.
I believe we have an opportunity to make the AustralianSuper brand more relevant and loved.
What’s the most important thing marketers can do to drive commercial outcomes?
Working in brand, I’m regularly asked how we can directly attribute our work to financial outcomes.
There is no perfect model to calculate it, but we have some strong media and brand mix models to help us directly correlate our activity to brand health, new members and CPA.
Measurement robustness and attribution is critically important. Because at the end of the day, our ability to demonstrate how our work has helped contribute to fund growth – which ultimately benefits members – is what we live and die by.
What’s a cracking book you’d recommend or podcast you swear by?
Death, Sex and Money. It’s an American podcast about the things you never talk about. Each episode tells an incredible, unimaginable personal story that is honest and breaks the taboo.
Who are your go-to thought leaders, and why?
Mark Ritson will be no surprise to marketers. He’s brash and provocative but does it from a position of expertise.
He’s also not afraid to challenge the fundamentals of brand and marketing and is a bit of a rebel – we’re not going to get better unless we continually challenge what we do and I always admire his approach.
And Arianna Huffington for leading the conversation around well-being and performance via Thrive Global.
Our favourite qu: What’s your top beer or wine recommendation?
I might be biased as it’s owned by family, but the Smiths Paddock Shiraz from Whitlocks Vineyard is delicious.
Their grapes are grown just outside of Maldon with the vines overlooking Lake Cairn Curran. After eight vintages, it was given 94 points by Halliday last year.
