​Former Bulla executive, Nick Hickford, has been appointed marketing and innovation director for Don Smallgoods (George Weston Foods).

Four years ago, CMO launched the first CMO50 list of Australia’s most innovative and effective marketers. And like most of the work we’ve been doing at CMO since we launched five years ago, we’ve been witnessing an incredible evolution story during that time.

​More than 90 of Australia's leading marketers joined CMO and Adobe at the 2018 CMO50 event in Sydney on 18 October to celebrate the courage and success of the country's most innovative and effective marketers. Here are pictorial highlights from the night.

And here are this year's top 10 CMO50 for 2018

Being bold isn’t the only thing modern CMOs must do – they’re also required to put that courage to the test, as this year’s CMO50 list highlights.

Marketing leaders from the tourism, banking and FMCG sectors have taken out top three honours in the fourth-annual CMO50 for 2018.

For ABC director of audience and marketing, Leisa Bacon, modern CMO leadership is an art in influencing and working more collaboratively with other parts of the organisation as well as the increasingly diverse marketing function.

Over the last 12 months, Caroline Patrick has created a new brand to take the Radio Rentals Group into the NSW market. She says it’s been one of the most important – and arguably the most challenging – decisions she’s made so far at the South Australian-based retailer and household goods financier.

If there’s one thing holding marketing leaders back, it’s their inability to think of themselves as business owners, Mercer’s Cambell Holt claims.

One of the most important decisions Auto & General’s Jonathan Kerr has made in his 12 years with the group is to build an in-house department of marketing and digital experts.

If you want to get your CEO onside as a CMO, then you'd better start demonstrating how marketing makes an essential contribution to achieving enterprise objectives, World Vision Australia’s Teresa Sperti says.

Establishing a completely new event in Australia, and the fast-paced change this requires is challenging enough, without it also being not for profit.

Over the past 12 months, Lenovo has been on a mission to boost customer centricity, creating a discrete global CX entity of 150 people dedicated to looking at customer journeys and finding ways to improve them.

ME Bank’s Ingrid Purcell is one of an increasing number of marketers whose roles have morphed into holistic customer experience responsibility. It’s a shift that’s seen her take on accountability for designing the entire customer journey, not just focusing on traditional marketing areas, over the past year.

Since taking up the CMO mantle at ANZ last July, Sweta Mehra has been striving to go well beyond commercialisation and focus on building capabilities that will future-proof the bank. These, she says, are rooted firmly in the financial services group’s purpose across three levels: Enterprise, divisions and marketing.

Over the last two-and-a-half years, Yves Calmette has transformed World Wild Fund for Nature Australia’s marketing department into an internal content agency powerhouse. It’s a move aimed at supporting aggressive income growth targets. And it’s a strategy paying dividends.

“Marketing can be all pervasive today, so focus on what matters and where you can make a difference.”

Marketing at its best is an “alchemy of science and art”, Mars Wrigley Confectionery CMO, Alison Levins, believes.

“Consumers are not rational and never will be,” National Heart Foundation’s Chris Taylor says. “Connect on an emotional level and you’re half-way there.”

Over the last two years, Nicole Papoutsis has led the brand development of Genea Horizon, Australia’s first egg freezing clinic.

Anand Surujpal is on a mission: To shift the Patties Foods business from brand focused business to category-led superstar.