Insurance giant creates new chief marketing officer role group-wide, reporting to chief customer officer
IAG has appointed former Saatchi and Saatchi New York chief, Brent Smart, as its new chief marketing officer as part of ongoing efforts to strengthen customer engagement.
The group-wide position reports into the insurance giant’s chief customer officer, Julie Batch, and will see Smart with responsibility across the marketing strategy, media buying, digital and search and innovation for the whole brand portfolio, including NRMA Insurance, CGU, SCIO, SGIC and WFI in Australia, as well as New Zealand.
Smart was most recently the CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi’s global headquarters in New York from 2013 to 2016. Prior to this, he was worldwide managing director from 2011 to 2013. His resume also includes creative, brand and content roles with BBDO in the US and New Zealand.
Smart takes up the new position in mid-February within IAG’s Customer Labs division, which covers customer experience strategy, digital delivery, data, product, pricing and marketing innovation and new business incubation.
The Customer Lab was one of the outcomes of a restructure of operations undertaken by IAG 12 months ago aimed at repositioning the business around customers. In December, IAG confirmed further changes to its IT function, a move which saw digital innovation also shift into the Customer Lab division.
“Brent is recognised as a global creative leader and has delivered integrated marketing campaigns for some of the world’s most iconic brands,” Batch said in a statement. “He brings to the table significant customer and market insights, impressive campaign credentials and extensive experience in fostering creativity in organisations.
“Brent’s skillset will be instrumental in bringing to life our brand positioning and evolving how we engage with our customers in an increasingly digital world.”
Smart said he was attracted to the role because of the opportunity to influence IAG’s holistic customer strategy.
“What excites me about this role is the opportunity to have a bigger influence on the entire customer experience, working with the impressive data and analytics capabilities IAG has to fuel creativity and innovation,” he said. “I have worked with IAG twice during my career and I’ve seen firsthand it has a great culture and can do great work.
“I feel blessed to have spent 20 years in the ad business. Now I feel I can make a bigger difference in a CMO role, especially at a company like IAG that has big ambitions for its brands and what it delivers for its customers.”
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+:google.com/+CmoAu
In this latest episode of our Conversations over a Cuppa with CMO series, we catch up with Jane Power, who stepped into the director of marketing and transformation role at GenesisCare in April 2020.
Understanding the core principles of Behavioural Economics will give players in the travel industry a major competitive advantage when restrictions lift and travellers begin to book again. And there are a few insights in here for the rest of the marketing community, too.
Unicorns, the Sunken City of Atlantis, Zeus: They are very famous. So famous in fact, that we often think twice about whether they are real or not. Sometimes if we talk about something widely enough, and for long enough, even the strangest fiction can seem like fact. But ultimately it is still fiction - stories we make up and tell ourselves over and over until we believe.
At a time of uncertainty and economic hardship, customer retention takes on much greater importance. CX Lavender’s Linda O’Grady examines the big grey area between ‘all’ and ‘best’ customers when deciding who is worth fighting for and how.
looking for the best quality of SMM Panel ( Social Media Marketing Panel ) is a website where People Buy Social Media Services Such as Fa...
Kavin kyzal
How to manage social media during Covid-19
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Definitely bookmarked for future reading! Check this website https://a2designlab.com/ with lots of ...
Pierce Fabreverg
Study: Gen Z are huge opportunity for brands
Thanks for sharing. You might want to check this website https://lagimcardgame.com/. An up and coming strategic card game wherein the cha...
Pierce Fabreverg
Board games distributor partners with Deliveroo in business strategy pivot
Such an important campaign, dyslexia certainly need more awareness. Amazing to see the work Code Read is doing. On the same note we are a...
Hugo
New campaign aims to build understanding around scope and impact of dyslexia
Great Job on this article! It demonstrates how much creativity, strategy and effort actually goes to produce such unique logo and brandin...
Pierce Fabreverg
Does your brand need a personality review? - Brand vision - CMO Australia