IAG’s NRMA insurance achieved record online customer engagement and successfully reached business objectives thanks to its Stevie award-winning ‘Arlo the Koala’ chatbot, an extension of its ‘Arlo the Koala’ advertising campaign that made headlines across marketing and media press.

Julie Batch has been appointed chief strategy and innovation officer of IAG, following her successful tenure as chief customer officer.

Artificial intelligence (AI) might be the current marketing buzzword, but it shouldn’t be implemented for the sake of it, or be used to replace humans for customer experience (CX). Rather, AI is facilitator for a better CX.

​It's been a big year of transformation once more for chief marketing officers worldwide. Faced with ever-increasing pressure from the c-suite to prove their worth, drive business growth, transform and innovate go-to-market models through digital and own end-to-end customer experience, there's no shortage of work to be done to prove their value.

With so much pressure on marketers to perform and prove their worth, Brent Smart is unsurprised many pull the nearest and quickest levers to show impact. The problem is, those short wins aren’t going to build you a brand for the long term.

Brent Smart believes his switch from creative agency chief to first CMO at IAG says as much about the insurance giant as it does about him.

The days of quick customer experience wins through digital and mobile innovation are gone and organisations must tackle the more complex task of overhauling their culture in order to find sustainable improvement.

Marketers with blind faith in adtech and martech are at risk of putting advertising in front of people who were going to buy anyway and waste time and money on useless personalisation activities.

There’s a joke in the English town of Norwich that everyone either works in a church, in a pub, or in the insurance industry. Luckily for the customers of IAG, Julie Batch’s family worked in insurance, and instilled in her a set of values she has carried through to her current role as chief customer officer.

​The Marketing Academy (TMA) has launched an Alumni Program, with insurance giant, IAG, as its founding partner.

Tapping artificial intelligence and real-time data capability, redesigned customer journeys and digital-led and disruptive innovation have been key priorities for IAG’s customer labs over the first half of the financial year.

IAG is beefing up its marketing team once more, appointing two additional senior marketing leaders aimed at lifting its creative and strategic marketing nous.

IAG and the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) have both started the year with fresh senior digital and marketing hires.

IAG has poached New Corp Australia’s head of innovation and product chief, Mark Drasutis, as its new chief digital officer to over digital strategy and experience.

​Innovation happens in the space within the mess, according to IAG’s director of human-centred design.

Brands today need to “get an unfair share of culture” and learn from Trump if they want to eclipse the competition and attract customers in the age of escalating content, IAG’s CMO claims.

IAG’s new Customer Labs division is looking to extend the commercial reach of its Ambiata analytics subsidiary as a service product offering as part of a raft of data-led initiatives over the next 12 months.

It’s not often you hear of any company, let alone an insurance giant, tapping into the razzle and dazzle of movie making to get employees behind a new business initiative. But that’s exactly what IAG is doing as part of a program of work to raise awareness of customer experience painpoints and how to solve them internally.

Data analytics is the key to bringing personalisation back into the way brands engage customers in a digitally driven environment, IAG’s chief customer officer claims.