Scott-Branagan leaves Deakin CMO post for role at ANZ

Deakin University’s award-winning marketing chief, Trisca Scott-Branagan, has left the tertiary education provider after three years in favour of a new role with ANZ’s Institutional Bank.

Scott-Branagan joined Deakin in December 2014 as executive director of marketing, overseeing a team of 90 staff. Prior to this, she spent 10 years with Deloitte in a number of local and international roles including global director of industry marketing based in New York.

Scott-Branagan has been appointed head of marketing, Institutional, reporting jointly to GM of group marketing, Sweta Mehra, and head of divisional execution, Joss Raines. The role sees her leading the institutional marketing team across Australia and Asia-Pacific through the next stage of the Institutional bank’s strategy. 

In a statement to CMO, Scott-Branagan said the past three years had been some of the best of her career. The work she’s achieved during this time resulted in Scott-Branagan securing 5th place in the 2017 CMO50 list.

“During this time, I led and built out a team of highly skilled and capable marketers, and together we transformed the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of marketing in the education sector,” she said.

Core to these achievements has been rolling out an agile marketing approach that is transforming the way Deakin’s marketing function operates and liaises across the business.

In place of Scott-Branagan, Deakin has promoted director of digital marketing, Matt Edge, to executive director of marketing. Deakin University Deputy Vice-Chancellor Global Engagement, Professor Gary Smith, told CMO Edge is a Deakin alumnus, and boasts of a diverse career in marketing, including senior strategy positions. He also worked on the agency side, leading and managing successful creative agencies.

 “Matt joined Deakin four years ago as the director, digital marketing and quickly established a strong practice in this field, setting up and leading Deakin’s best practice Social Media Hub, development of the global award winning content marketing hub this., and the redevelopment of Deakin’s website leading to significant growth in page views and applications,” he stated.

Under Edge’s leadership, the digital team has also received more than 25 marketing industry awards over the past three years, culminating in recently being named Australia’s Digital Team of the Year.

“For the past 12 months, Matt has focused on leading the marketing division through significant change in order to adopt an agile marketing methodology, an approach that has improved both work quality and velocity, enabling real time conversion optimization,” Smith continued.  

 “As we further transition into this data led world, Matt is perfectly positioned to lead Deakin’s marketing division and play a key role in assisting Deakin achieve our Live the Future 2020 vision.”

In the new role with ANZ, Scott-Branagan said her the first priority will be deeply immersing herself in the business and developing a growth plan spanning global markets, with a particular focus on Asia-Pacific. Scott-Branagan official joins the banking giant on 29 November.

“ANZ is going through a really interesting internal transformation, adapting an agile way of working across its entire organisation,” she commented.

“This has been an area of focus for me over the past 18 months as I truly believe agile brings a better way of working. I’m excited to be joining an organisation providing such strong leadership in this area.

“I’m also looking forward to once again having a global remit. As the epicentre of the business world continues to migrate to Asia, being relevant in these markets is critical for any commercially savvy marketer.”

Traditionally, the Institutional Bank has leveraged business-to-business marketing approaches, which Scott-Branagan said were similar to those she mastered herself over 10 years at Deloitte. While seeing different strengths across B2B and B2C marketing, she said it’s time to blur the line between the two.

“What I hope to do is blend the best of B2C marketing, namely performance marketing, with B2B marketing to bring a richer and more personalised and relevant experience for Institutional clients,” Scott-Branagan said.

Smith thanked Scott-Branagan for modernising Deakin’s marketing capability and performance measurement, as well as launching its new brand campaign, ‘Think Young’.

“These are moving us to a leading position with strong student recruitment results,” Smith said. “We thank Trisca for her contribution to Deakin’s success and wish her the best in her future endeavours.”

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