COVID-19 has allowed Julia Edwards-Smith to lead a team to innovate and roll out new products in an ongoing crisis. "Through customer research and data analysis, we identified a new product offering to disrupt ourselves, but also allow Victorian healthcare workers to feel safer driving to work," explained Edwards-Smith. To do this, a short‐term lease has been developed for essential workers to increase flexibility and reduce the need to take public transport to and from frontline facilities. The MVP has just been rolled out to a number of hospitals across Victoria.

Examination of the composition of many marketing teams will often show a skew towards a younger working population. It’s not until you get into the senior roles you start seeing people in the 40s and 50s, and those roles by design are somewhat scare. This can of course cause problems when your target audience resides in a demographic more akin to the parents of your team members.

Loyalty and customer evangelism is driven through a deep understanding and focus upon every step of their journey, regardless of channel or level of relationship. Which is why Sweat’s marketing chief, Mike Scott, was so determined to foster customer journey building as a skill across his team at the Australian-born online health and wellbeing app.

‘Defy barriers to progress’ is Samsung’s purpose. So it was fitting the mantra also became the catch cry supporting marketing transformation locally, says Australian CMO, Josh Grace.

​In this latest episode of our conversations over a cuppa with CMO, we catch up with the delightful Pip Arthur, Microsoft Australia's chief marketing officer and communications director, to talk about thinking differently, delivering on B2B connection in the crisis, brand purpose and marketing transformation.

At its most basic, innovation is the introduction of something new. And in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the process of innovating has flourished across Australian marketing and customer teams as they strive to keep up with the rapidly evolving crisis and its impact on customers, business models and market dynamics. CMO caught up with five marketing leaders from the 2019 CMO50 list of Australia’s most innovative and effective marketing leaders to find out more.

Sonder has a new head of marketing, with former American Express’ former marketer director taking up the local reins.

​It’s a process Maria Robinson has applied to every new role she’s held as a marketer since cutting her teeth in the dotcom era: The no-fly zone. And it’s one that’s particularly useful when you’re the first CMO appointed to a company like Nitro, looking to ride the rapid growth opportunity presented by COVID-19.

McDonald’s Australia has appointed Chris Brown as VP and CMO for the iconic fast food business. With over 23 years’ experience leading creative and digital agencies in Australia and overseas, Chris will join the McDonald’s Australia senior leadership team, reporting directly to CEO, Andrew Gregory.

Every marketing leader is endeavouring to transform their marketing organisation to be more customer-led. But what does it really take to disrupt your approach to achieve success?Mastercard global CMO, Raja Rajamannar, has done just that, and he’s going to share his very valuable insights at this year’s CMO Momentum conference, reimagined as a virtual event and taking place 11-12 November 2020.

CMOs will need to drive customer obsession within their firms, rather than simply guiding ad procurement and promotions, according to Forrester’s 2021 prediction. This means marketing teams will need to put the customer at the center of everything they do, including leadership, strategy and operations.

With Australia entering the uncharted waters of a pandemic-driven recession, it is becoming harder and harder make predictions about future customer sentiment and behaviour. There are signals and trends, however, that are evident today which begin to describe likely scenarios and outcomes. So here are four factors marketers need to prepare for in the post-COVID recession.

CMO is delighted to confirm our unique conference for modern marketing leaders, CMO Momentum, will return in November as a fresh new and immersive online event.

The words ‘new normal’ have quickly emerged as the go-to phrase for describing the world created by the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on the economy and national psyche. But have we even reached the ‘new normal’ yet?

​Leadership resilience, startups scaling up, marketing best practices, customer insights - these are just a few of the topics we manage to explore in the latest episode of Conversations over a Cuppa with CMO featuring Craig Davis.

Nurturing SMEs through the COVID-19 crisis and recession using a combination of technology, customer insight and content are the cornerstones of growth for Employment Hero’s marketing director, Tasman Page.

CMO asks four industry leaders to shake their crystal balls and share their thoughts about what the business landscape might look like as we make our way through the coronavirus pandemic. On the other side, how will things look?

Screen Queensland has brought on a new marketing and comms leader as part of trio of new executive-level appointments at the arts organisation.

Brand leaders are looking for better integration between public relations and marketing as COVID-19 has increased the importance of delivering cohesive messaging, according to the CMO Council’s latest report.

Better distinguishing Winning Group’s portfolio of brands externally while building an integrated marketing function internally have been top priorities for CMO, Sven Lindell, in his first year in the job.

Growth through stronger customer retention is firmly in the sights of Youfoodz CMO, Simon Jarvis, and he’s doubling down on his CRM and data strategy to achieve it.