Winning the hearts and minds of customers needs to be at the core of business strategy. And it is the role of the CMO to represent the voice of the customer and drive customer-first thinking, according to Australian Catholic University’s former marketing leader, Andrea Turley.

Over the last 12 months, Jenny Williams has led a digital and marketing transformation at health insurer, HCF.

The key metric Andy Lark uses to demonstrate marketing’s effectiveness is new customer growth.

“When I commenced my studies 27 years ago, marketing was about ‘satisfying the needs and wants of customers’,” Kathmandu’s GM of marketing and international, Paul Stern, comments. “You can’t do that unless you know who you are targeting.”

Since joining ME as CMO, Rebecca James has instituted a restructure of personnel and departments across the business to put customer experience at the heart of everything the banking group does. This work brought together marketing, product design, digital sales channels and customer insights under the CMO for the first time, giving her the scope she needed to start truly changing the way the business operates.

If she had to pick her biggest achievement over the last 12 months, VMware’s Tori Starkey says it would be fostering an intelligence driven marketing culture that’s delivered more customer centric, effective, omni-channel marketing programs.

For Toyota’s national marketing leader, Brad Cramb, gaining agility comes through a ‘fail fast’ philosophy, underpinned by strategic use of data and measurement. And that’s exactly what he’s been working to grow across the automotive manufacturer’s marketing division.

When asked for her proudest moment in the last 12 months, SBS director of marketing, Amanda McGregor, admits it’s just too hard to pin down.

MetLife’s vision is to change the way its customers experience life insurance. To do this, marketing is leading the strategy development and implementation of a new customer-centric approach.

There’s a holistic change going on at Bupa to focus on customers’ health and care needs. “We’ve really seen a shift in our strategy over the last 12 months to position Bupa as a leader in health and care and to be loved by our customers,” marketing director, John Moore, says.

Location intelligence and geo-mapping can be powerful ways to connect with customers and provide a more personalised, tailored and relevant experience. But placed in the wrong hands, and the technology can quickly spiral into annoying your customer and ultimately, ruin your customer relationships.

​CMO and ADMA recently joined forces with Signal to run a roundtable in Sydney looking at how marketers can improve the way they interact with customers by using data for more relevant experiences. Here are pictorial highlights from the lunch.

Marketing automation is a key enabler for targeted and personalised customer engagement. But it’s the data-driven customer insights that are vital in identifying who you want to target and what you want to target them with.

Fashionistas are a highly-social bunch, but they are also relatively rare, and very specific in their interests. So when the team behind Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW) decided to increase their use social of media to grow their audience, they were determined to get it right.

The arrival of big data has delivered a plethora of new data for insights into customer preference and behaviour. Online browsing activity, for instance, presents a rich tapestry of customer preferences and sentiment, and has been used almost exclusively to build behemoths such as Amazon and Google.

Out-of-home player, JCDecaux, has signed up with Data Republic, becoming the first media owner to join the data exchange provider’s Open Data Marketplace.

Nestle is celebrating 150 years as a global brand this year. It’s an anniversary that has the whole marketing team reflecting on the iconic food and beverage products, as well as advertising campaigns, that have resonated with consumers for so long.

Ryanair has gone through a digital transformation over the last two years, and is now using data and analytics to better tailor its offers and product pricing.

Customer loyalty has become the data and analytics engine helping retail conglomerate, Landmark Group, breaking down barriers between its brands and helping marketers engage in increasingly sophisticated and personalised activities with customers.

Marketing automation platforms will drive great customer strategy, but it’s actually developing the journeys and lifecycle approach that is what delivers big business results.

Social Soup claims it's become the first influencer marketing agency in Australia to offer in-store sales measurement of its activities after striking up a partnership with Quantium.