ADMA’s top individual marketing professional award was controversially presented to global CEO of creative and media agency, cummins&partners, at the association’s new-look awards ceremony in Sydney last night.

Australian marketers are ahead of their international peers when it comes to embracing marketing technology. Yet there’s a way to go before they have the cross-channel, real-time capabilities and customer lifecycle view needed in modern marketing.

In this era of automated online marketing, it is easy to forget there are still human beings at either end of the transaction.

CMOs need to stop running away to cloud-based apps as a way of solving customer engagement, and start doing the hard work of bringing agility and continuous digital innovation into their business to drive more relevant experiences.

The leader of Qantas’ new audience data business, Red Planet, has warned against establishing standalone data strategies, saying any data-driven activity must be embedded within commercial context.

Westpac has partnered with data and analytics platform provider, Teradata, to tap into a new seam of big data within the organisation and further its customer engagement strategy.

CMOs are destined to become their CEO’s right hand in a customer-driven economy, but they’re being stifled by the complex array of technology sitting within their marketing department.

Microsoft teamed up with Xbox, Sitecore and Object Consulting to create a digital marketing tool, referred to as Project EBC, which enhances the consumer experience in a highly personalised approach.

Experience is still playing a larger role than data with marketers when it comes to making budget decisions, a new report claims.

Big data is requiring marketers to provide the right data and intelligence to sales in order to achieve business impact.

Australia continues to lead the digital marketing charge across Asia-Pacific but conflict between marketing and IT departments, along with poor data utilisation, are inhibiting strategic capability and improvement.

Business has changed significantly during the past few decades, fuelled by low cost and ubiquitous communications technologies. Innovation has been layered on top of innovation, irrevocably altering human behaviour and causing seismic shifts in business philosophy, practices and careers.

Communication between brands and consumers is at a premium thanks to real-time digital and social exchange, and has heightened the role of creativity and authenticity in marketing, Coca-Cola’s head of strategy claims.

An Australian-owned data management platform provider is claiming to be the first to offer permission-based programmatic buying in real-time to advertisers.

Customer engagement isn’t just a digital play for online flash retailer, Ozsale, it’s also about making improvements to the physical post-purchase experience.

Marketers need to become “chief variation officers” if they wish to win the customer experience revolution they’re fighting in right now.

Having built his CMO credentials in startups across Australia and Europe, Amaysim’s Christian Magel has a wealth of knowledge about building brands, consumer experiences and a customer base. But he’s also one of the first to point out a modern marketing leader can’t sit in their silo and expect to succeed.

Jaguar Land Rover has launched a new virtual reality solution for its dealerships in a bid to unite the digital and physical customer experience of purchasing a luxury car.

A lack of appropriate skillsets and siloed organisational structures are inhibiting several Australian companies from achieving their customer-led marketing ambitions.

Nine out of 10 organisations do not currently have the change management strategy or business processes in place to make their marketing automation and customer experience management ambitions a reality, Deloitte claims.

The concept of retargeting consumers in the hope they might complete an action – such as finalising an abandoned purchase – is now common practice among many online retailers and other transaction-based organisations.