The CMO Show Live with Michael Laxton | Mumbrella360 video

In this video from June’s Mumbrella360 conference – which was recorded before Laxton announced he was leaving Fairfax – the marketer discusses how he found his way into the world of media, and what it was like to be Fairfax’s first CMO.

“You need a storyteller to tell the stories of other storytellers,” explains Laxton.

The session is a special live edition of The CMO Show, a marketing podcast about the future of brand storytelling. Hosts Mark Jones and Nicole Manktelow dig into Laxton’s work history and discover how he learned on the job – something that isn’t quite so common these days.

Laxton also tells the audience how he believes some marketers have forgotten that “there are human beings at the end of that [customer] journey.”

As Fairfax’s first CMO, Laxton made the decision to take the marketing strategy from a tactical one full of “price and promotion”, to something that was centred around Fairfax’s values.

“For this to be sustainable, it has to really align to the values and why we’re here,” he explains.

On Fairfax’s decision to implement a full price at day one strategy, he says: “That was a pretty scary thing to do because it’s not following market trends, it’s not following global trends… at the time we were coming from how everyone else was doing it and we had to have a pivot.”

This video is from a session at June’s Mumbrella360 conference. To see more videos from the conference, click here. 

Josie Tutty

Josie Tutty was Mumbrella's deputy editor. She worked on the publication between 2017 and 2019. She's previously written and edited in the UK for Jungle Creations and Trinity Mirror.

topics Fairfax mark jones Michael Laxton Mumbrella360 Mumbrella360 video Nicole Manktelow The CMO Show

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