​Marketing leaders from B2B and B2C organisations convened on Sydney's Aria restaurant on 6 June to discuss how they can better improve their utilisation of digital marketing technologies in order to drive revenue opportunities for their brands. Here are pictorial highlights from our exclusive lunch.

Today’s brands are too uptight and need to ‘unbrand’ if they’re to have a hope of meeting dynamic and changing consumer expectations, a leading Gartner analyst says.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zendesk and more.

Shiseido is building a global customer data platform, investing in omni-channel marketing automation and driving real-time engagement capability as part of a major transformation program aimed at providing more relevant experiences to customers.

Salesforce has debuted fresh Google integrations along with machine learning-powered capabilities across its Marketing, Service and Commerce Clouds as part of efforts to improve the way brands build connected customer experiences through its platforms.

Leading Australian loyalty membership program, flybuys, has no shortage of data on its millions of members. So when the team started looking for ways to create customer surprise and delight to kick off the 2018 year, it latched onto the idea of turning these vast stores into hyper-personalised content customers could not only engage in, but also learn something about themselves.

SAP is dropping the ‘Hybris’ name and repositioning its portfolio of marketing, ecommerce, service and customer data cloud platforms under SAP C/4Hana as part of efforts to capture the end-to-end customer experience management market.

​APAC shoppers are more active on smartphones than ever, digital advertising dominates budgets, and social media is considered to be the most effective form of marketing to acquire new customers. These are the key findings of the Reach, Click and Conversions report released by Criteo.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Pegasystems, Integral Ad Science, Domo, LivePerson, Adobe, SoundCloud and more.

Stronger commercial accountability, data and technology savviness, and the ability to better influence the company culture are significant changes CMOs have experienced in their roles over the last five years. And they’re striving to be braver and take more risks as a result.

​Open Universities Australia (OUA) has chalked up its first student enrolment growth in 15 quarters and slashed the time it takes to on-board learning providers following a business transformation and overhaul of its technology ecosystem.

Telstra and the AFL are teaming up on a new digital content and events play aimed at encouraging stronger engagement between football players and their fans.

​The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is on the hunt for a new CEO following the immediate departure of Vijay Solanki.

The onus is on marketers to better understand technology at their disposal because it is technology providing the ability to interact with customers in new ways, Salesforce’s CMO for Asia-Pacific, Michael Peachey, says.

​Medibank has launched a WeChat channel to better connect with the growing Australian-Chinese population.

Video and mobile advertising increases have driven a 13.2 per cent year-on-year growth in digital advertising according to the Australian Online Advertising Expenditure Report released by IAB/PwC.

Brands must transform the way they plan their communications across media and up the ante on mobile, as a recent report shows media consumption on mobile devices is set to rapidly rise by 2020.

National Australia Bank is working to deliver personalisation in the moment, rather than after the fact, in order to create great customer experiences, its general manager of consumer marketing and customer strategy says.

Australian specialty baby goods retailer, Baby Bunting, is transforming its online retail environment, moving beyond the traditional shopping cart and instead providing what it says are engaging customer experiences.

Compelling customer experiences require “a constant stream” of customer feedback, Slack’s global vice-president of marketing, Kelly Watkins, says. It's sound advice and not overly complicated, but often, it’s difficult for companies to achieve.

Five years ago in May, IDG tasked me with launching CMO as a brand in Australia. It was a decision driven by two factors: One, the exponential growth of technology in the marketing sphere; and two, the rising role of the marketer as an executive leader of influence.