Virgin’s Frequent Flyer program division has appointed Former American Express VP of consumer acquisition and product development as its new chief marketing officer.

Providing relevant customer experiences is about removing the barriers to a customer getting the services and solutions they want, Suncorp chief customer experience officer, ​Mark Reinke​, says.

Qantas data business, Red Planet, has struck a deal with the Australian Premium Exchange (APEX) to combine its consumer data with premium advertising inventory across the Fairfax Media and Nine sites.

Marketing may have gained importance and influence in terms of business focus over recent years, but it hasn’t necessarily helped CMOs rise up the executive ranks.

Marketing leaders have to become technically adept, engineers of big data and own the end-to-end customer experience if they hope to keep up with the pace of disruption impacting every industry on the planet, GMC Software’s global chief claims.

All the latest martech, adtech news from Near, Genesy, RadiumOne, Infer, Exponential Interactive, Invoca, Innovid and Magisto.

Cognitive computing and machine learning are among the top buzzwords of 2016, and judging from the product roadmaps of most martech and adtech vendors, they’re going to dominate headlines again in 2017.

When Mars Chocolate announced it would set the price of a Snickers bars based on the mood of the Internet, it did more than just create a cool integrated online and offline campaign – it set in motion a fundamental rethink of how Mars reaches specific audiences.

Bupa’s marketing director, John Moore, has been promoted to a newly created role in the health insurance group’s corporate HQ from 2017.

The ‘age of the customer’ is here - the power of personalisation and customer context is now ensconced in every marketer’s lexicon. Certainly, the single biggest driver of digital transformation is customer experience.

Streaming video service provider, iflix, has added 1 million subscribers in six months and seen acquisition costs drop from US$25 to $3 following an iterative data-driven marketing program tapping consumer intent.

Mercer’s chief customer and marketing officer, Renee McGowan, has been promoted to a global business operations role within the group and will relocate to New York later this month.

Twitter has swallowed social app developer Yes and is also getting a new product head as part of the deal.

Moves to curb the types of jobs eligible for 457 work visas by the Australian Government should sound a warning bell to the marketing industry to do more to foster local talent, leading industry association chiefs say.

Telstra’s CMO says a shake-up of the commercial model for TV is vital if free-to-air providers hope to stay relevant to marketers being lured away by more fashionable digital options.

Both ADMA and the AANA have announced new board members this week in preparation for 2017.

All the latest martech and adtech news from Emarsys, Return Path, AppNexus, I Synergy Group, Microsoft, Bpm'online, Salesfusion, Civis and MarianaIQ.

Retail Food Group (RFG) will rollout Marketo’s marketing automation platform as part of ambitions to digital transform its brands.

Guzman y Gomez CMO, Anna Jones, has parted company with the fast food chain after just 15 months in the role.

A whole-of-business project to replace disparate CRM and customer data instances with a unified CRM platform has finally given staff at Beyond Bank a single customer view.