Stories by Vanessa Mitchell

​ASX-listed Salmat is selling its contact centre business to funds advised by Five V Capital in combination with the Probe Group for $53 million, in order to free up capital and resources to invest in its Marketing Solutions and MicroSourcing businesses. The sale is expected to be completed at the end of April.

​Diageo Australia has launched its biggest brand campaign in a decade with Johnnie Walker ‘The Next Step’. The $15 million campaign will be activated over the next 18 months across multiple channels including TV, out of home, and digital media in the Australian market.

​Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s chief customer officer has been appointed to the position of managing director, effective from early July. Marnie Baker, who will take over from Mike Hirst in the role of MD, has worked across all facets of the Bank since 1989 and led the Bank’s entry into the new payments platform and digital banking.

Once upon a time, meeting a partner online was not seen as conducive to a happily ever after. In fact, it was seen as a forbidden forest. However, in the modern age of time poor, stressed-out professionals, meeting someone online is not only seen as essential, it can also be considered to be the more scientific way to go about the happy ending.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Salesforce, Meltwater, Aprimo, Impact Radius, and more.

AMP looks to be continuing to place customers at the centre of its growth, following the promotion of its marketing executive and a new recruit with customer experience speciality.

Higher analytics maturity correlates with higher financial performance, company performance and brand reputation according to a fresh industry report.

Digital disruption, customer-led change, martech adoption and being customer obsessed were just a few key topics in the spotlight during a panel session at the CMO-CIO-ADMA Executive Connections event in Sydney.

It’s important to crawl before you can run when it comes to changing an organisation from being digitally led to being customer led.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from SAS and Data Republic, Genesys, Hypetap, Zoho, Qualtrics, Salesforce and Dropbox, Brand Metrics and more

​World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is challenging creative marketers to change the course of history with the launch of Project Extraordinary, which will see the winning creative agency featured at a UN Summit, and three agencies featured at Cannes.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has launched a new AR app to bring the reality of war closer to home for iOS app users.

To amalgamate three brands into one, while simultaneously streamlining costs and improving profitability and customer satisfaction and brand recognition, is no mean feat.

Moving into the future, the key differentiator for brands will be customer experience. This is the view of ME Bank’s new chief experience office (CXO), Ingrid Purcell, who was appointed to the new role late last year.

Two years ago, the data and analytics team was seen as a backwater cost centre within ANZ, a silo to be trimmed when needed that was offering little observable value to anyone. On top of this, the employee NPS score with the team was measured at minus 48, a dire position for any business that relies on its people to deliver customer experience.