Sixteen years ago, Krispy Kreme launched in Australia, and it’s fair to say there were doughnuts everywhere. Aussies couldn’t get enough – until they did.

To a lot of Finder’s potential customers, Finder was a nice little soundbite, and nothing more. Its challenge was to turn awareness into usage. To tackle this head on, marketing came up with the campaign “Be a Finder”.

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Rice Bubbles and Just Right have been family favourites for decades, yet their relevance was waning. Added to that, their smaller market shares made it difficult to support these brands with dedicated brand building, due to lack of scale.

​If marketers want to get their CEOs on side, then don’t preach soft metrics, instead present hard data, says CMO of Catch Group, Ryan Gracie.

Ensuring every team member within the marketing department has everything they need to be doing their best, most powerful work is critical, A/NZ CMO of Domino’s Pizza, says.

Converting interest into record student numbers is making a demonstrable impact on UNSW’s bottom line, vice president of external relations, Fiona Docherty, says.

Natalie Sarich-Dayton, CMO of Brownes Dairy, says sometimes you have to lead from the front, which she certainly achieved when she drove a 4T refrigerated truck around the city to sample products outside train and bus stations. And this is not the only tip she has!

Fundamentally, a marketer must understand the consumer, the marketing director of Mars Wrigley Australia, Suzanne Morrison, says. It sounds simple, yet many companies don’t do it well.

​The most creative marketing typically starts with a deep appreciation of the audience you serve, says CMO and head of communications at Microsoft Australia, Pip Arthur.

CMO of the Heart Foundation, Chris Taylor, says he feels grateful his work helps to save lives.

A passion for customer insights and behaviour drives Amanda Johnston-Pell and it’s only been amplified in the role of CMO. When she started as a marketer, Johnston-Pell says, AI and machine learning-based marketing tools just didn’t exist. “Today they are at the centre of deep customer personalisation and that’s exciting.”

Despite the new and evolving tools and tactics, marketing fundamentals remain the same, Auto & General’s CMO, Jonathan Kerr, believes. Which is why he disagrees with the view marketers are trying to be all things to everyone.

Coming off the back of a brand disaster in 2017, Campbell Arnott’s has not only recovered, but grown over the last 18 months, achieving stunning success driven largely through new product development born of partnerships.

Telling creative stories and positioning the customer in these stories is far more valuable than simply showing what we sell, believes Tom Willis. And it’s this challenge which keeps the Lawpath CMO constantly imagining new ways to reach the target audience with messages and situations they can empathise with.

For ABC director of Audience and one of the few marketers with more than four years in the one organisation, the drive to being more data-led is right in her wheelhouse.

​Jayne Andrews, director of marketing at Carnival Cruise Line Australia, often describes her role as being like a conductor of an orchestra.

In marketing, you find the bridging of data science and art. For Diane Belan, it’s the art of looking at data from different angles, interpreting that data to form meaningful insights and identifying untapped opportunities can unlock many creative ideas. Belan finds creativity is about generating ideas to solve problems and notes “without the data, you don’t know what you are solving for”.

​The biggest challenge the CMO of WWF is finding is demonstrating the value of investing in the brand, which requires time and money, in an era obsessed by short-termism and immediate results/profit.

​With a $25,000 spend, one of the most effective, disruptive and innovative marketing initiatives Kathmandu launched this past year was the world’s first, all-weather wedding dress stunt for April Fool’s day, general manager marketing and online at Kathmandu, Paul Stern, tells CMO.

It’s one of the big lessons Mark Reinke took away from his 12 years in marketing at Suncorp: Focus on your customers and the long-term value for them, not what you’ll get from them.

Martech acquisition has grown 22 per cent last year, according to a global report, to be worth more than US$121 billion. However, there are concerns the concentration on data is coming at the expense of creativity.