Three years ago, Alberto was brought in to develop a brand-new insights function at Latitude Financial Services (Australia), to help influence strategy, brand, marketing, CX and product. His work has seen him redesign various programmes across segmentation, brand tracking, VoC and customer research to ensure that they are ‘fit for purpose’ now and into the future as the organisation evolves. 

That in itself would be a challenge, but on Alberto’s very first day at Latitude in March 2020 Melbourne went into lockdown! He had to quickly adapt to leading a team and equally important building his own and the insights function’s influence across the organisation remotely. 

We have invited Alberto to share his experience and how it has shaped his approach to simply getting stuck in, constantly moving forward, and adapting to changing circumstances. 

About Alberto

Alberto careers spans 20+ year in the industry, across a healthy mix of customer Insights roles in Spain, UK and Australia. 
He has helped numerous companies solve key Strategic and CX issues, always following an Insight-led approach. He has an acute strategic mind and a deep understanding on how businesses work. 

He is a strong believer on designing fit-for-purpose Insight programs. Programs that ultimately push and transform an organisation, following a ‘leading from the back’ approach.   
 
In Alberto has been in his current role as Head of Insights at Latitude Financial for three years, helping grow our Gem product in NZ. He works with a cross-functional team across traditional Insights, VoC, Strategy, UX, Designers, Product, Marketing, and Partners to support the organisation.

About Qassem

Qassem (aka Q) is a self-proclaimed data enthusiast and true hybrid of advertising and science, beginning his career in medical laboratories researching targeting cancer treatments before venturing into targeting consumers.

Q has maintains strong relationships with major technology providers and clients alike, leading RFPs selecting the right technology, all the way through to designing strategies and successfully implementing them within businesses in order to drive measurable ROI.

He worked across leading brands in Seattle prior to making his way to New Zealand to join FCB in 2016. Since moving to New Zealand, Q has worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between traditional advertising and data, empowering FCB’s capabilities and building a specialist team along the way whose core purpose is helping clients realize the true potential of data & technology.

Mitre 10’s brand is “With You All the Way” – but to deliver on this promise, a significant evolution was required to establish the right capabilities and partners. With a massive infrastructure overhaul happening in the background the eCommerce team had to drive their own destiny. In a period of just 6 months, they implemented multiple new platforms, trained teams, and onboarded partners.

Lewis joins us to share their story and how it has resulted in their capabilities leapfrogging normal maturity curves. 

About Lewis 

Lewis is a member of the eCommerce team at Mitre 10 and dislikes writing Bio’s, so he outsourced this job to ChatGPT (aren’t we all doing that now?). Meet Lewis, a member of the eCommerce team at Mitre 10. Fuelled by his insatiable curiosity, he fearlessly shakes things up and drives business transformation through innovative thinking and a fresh perspective. He is a passionate disrupter that is constantly pushing the boundaries and challenging the status quo to drive the eCommerce business forward.

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Hato Hone St John has been saving lives for over 130 years in communities across the motu, but as one of Aotearoa New Zealand's largest not-for-profits (and most trusted brands), its ability to respond to its customers’ changing digital behaviours and expectations hasn’t kept up with the organisation’s critical, life-saving work, sparking a transformation programme unlike anything the organisation has tackled before.

In this session hear about Hato Hone’s St John’s experiences on their transformation journey, and how they’re changing a complex organisation’s way of thinking about – and engaging with – their customers, donors, patients, and people.

About Adi

Adi has worked in digital marketing and ecommerce-related roles for twenty years, across banking, retail, government and the not-for-profit sector. 

Adi's core role at Hato Hone St John is focused on digital marketing and customer experience, driving online engagement, acquisition and revenue for one of New Zealand's most trusted brands. 

Adi is also a business owner of Hato Hone St John's digital transformation programme, seeking to improve how they engage with their donors, customers, patients and people in an increasingly challenging digital environment.

Our panellists have all embraced imperfection, experimentation and fast learning to tackle their data and insights challenges.

In this honest panel discussion, they share what they have learnt along the way and what they see as common obstacles to progress.  

About Peter

Peter is an experienced technology leader with a diverse range of skills in both technology and business. His analytical skills and technology-agnostic approach have been developed through my work in a variety of industries and organisations of different sizes.

He has always been passionate about technology and its potential to transform businesses and society. He enjoys working with diverse teams and stakeholders to identify and solve business challenges. His versatility allows him to take a leaner approach, drive innovation and ensure long-term solutions.

Our panellists have all embraced imperfection, experimentation and fast learning to tackle their data and insights challenges.

In this honest panel discussion, they share what they have learnt along the way and what they see as common obstacles to progress.  

About Jo

Jo Bailey is an award-winning marketer with over 15 years of experience in the FMCG, Tourism, Financial Services and Telco industries. With customer expectations growing exponentially, Jo is obsessed with solving problems and designing experiences that excite, while generating exceptional business growth.

As Domain Chapter Lead for Retention Marketing at Spark, she’s responsible for the strategy, planning and implementation of all of Spark’s customer retention programmes, touching consumer and SME customers.  Jo’s real passion is customer insights, pushing the boundaries creatively and underpinning all work with a data-driven approach.  

Jo’s a busy working Mum, with 4 teenage children – two of her own and two with her new partner. You’ll either find her on the side of a rugby pitch during winter, socializing at home with friends or eating and drinking her way around the many new bars and restaurants in Auckland. 

Our panellists have all embraced imperfection, experimentation and fast learning to tackle their data and insights challenges.

In this honest panel discussion, they share what they have learnt along the way and what they see as common obstacles to progress.  

Our panellists have all embraced imperfection, experimentation and fast learning to tackle their data and insights challenges.

In this honest panel discussion, they share what they have learnt along the way and what they see as common obstacles to progress.  

About Emily

Emily has over 20+ years’ experience in customer experience, strategy, data and insights. Building and operationalising customer-centric capabilities to transform organisations and support exceptional commercial results.  

Emily learnt global best in class insights practices at Coca-Cola which she has applied in subsequent leadership roles. She has built and implemented rich and agile insights programmes at Foodstuffs and Sky. Implemented near real-time voice of customer to empower rapid improvements and analytics platforms that connected customer data with behaviour. The development of segmentations, models and algorithms that helped personalise experiences and focus business strategy on customer needs and opportunities.

•  What do we mean by dirty data, what causes it and how do I know if my data has issues?
• Customer outcomes, business impacts, opportunities, risks, costs – the business case for change (and assigning accountability).
• What are some options for dealing with dirty data, and what NOT to do in your efforts to clean it up. 

About Sharon

Sharon's career has spanned Telecommunications, Energy and Financial Service Sectors, with a particular focus on Data and Insights, Marketing and Customer Experience.

Most recently, Sharon has led the evolution of ANZ Bank's Data Governance capability and culture in NZ to protect and support customers, staff and the organisation as the bank sets about executing on its future strategy. This has included the development of data management and governance disciplines, as well as approaches to privacy and ethics, that ensure high levels of consumer and regulator trust in readiness for an open data economy.

• The challenges of collecting and managing first-party data
• GA4 – changes, benefits and challenges of implementation and deliverability
• How to ensure transparency and compliance in data collection and usage
• Algorithms and AI – understanding how they work, their impact on CX and concerns around use
• Managing consent across omni-channel if there’s a “right to be forgotten”
• Practical solutions, tools and tech to consider.

• Nicola Yates, Media Planning Chapter Lead, Countdown Supermarkets
• Qassem Naim, Chief Transformation Officer, FCB NZ 
• Craig Whitaker, Senior Platforms Consultant, Google NZ

About Adnan

Adnan Khan is an expert at integrating advertising technology, marketing technology, and customer data platforms to drive marketing transformation. With a career spanning 15 years, Adnan has worked with some of the world's largest brands to help them achieve better business outcomes through technology. 

He started his career in media at Initiative Media in Sydney before joining Microsoft, where he managed premium advertising technology partnerships. He went on to become one of the founding employees of Facebook Australia and New Zealand, where he helped to open and grow on-the-ground operations in ANZ. After six years with Facebook, Adnan became a founding partner at a major marketing technology consulting firm where he led global marketing transformation for numerous top-tier clients such as Cisco, Canon, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda, Comvita, The Bank of New Zealand, and more.

Adnan co-founded Stitch, a customer data, advertising and marketing technology consultancy, in 2019 to cater to the fragmented customer experience age. Since then, he has been instrumental in partnering with a range of clients to deliver business value and transform their operations. Some of the notable clients Adnan has worked with include AA Smartfuel, Forsyth Barr, Juliette Hogan, Kate Sylvester, Mr Apple, Scales Corporation, Tourism New Zealand, Real NZ, Treble Cone, Cardrona, Trilogy, and Vend. Adnan's work at Stitch has also been recognized with numerous awards, including a triple win at the TVNZ Marketing Awards and two Gold Effie Awards. Adnan has been recognized for his work on "Tina from Turners" for Turners Cars, an innovative campaign that leveraged technology and storytelling to transform the company's brand and boost revenue.

In addition to his extensive experience and achievements, Adnan is currently the Chair of the Digital Special Interest Group for the Marketing Association. He is dedicated to leading and growing the understanding, use, and value that marketers, agencies, and suppliers gain from best practice digital marketing.

In more recent years Adnan was a founding partner at one of the biggest marketing technology consultancies in New Zealand prior to exiting and co-founding Stitch - a new kind of advertising, marketing technology and customer data driven consultancy for the fragmented customer experience age.

• The challenges of collecting and managing first-party data
• GA4 – changes, benefits and challenges of implementation and deliverability
• How to ensure transparency and compliance in data collection and usage
• Algorithms and AI – understanding how they work, their impact on CX and concerns around use
• Managing consent across omni-channel if there’s a “right to be forgotten”
• Practical solutions, tools and tech to consider.

Panellists:

• Nicola Yates, Media Planning Chapter Lead, Countdown Supermarkets
• Qassem Naim, Chief Transformation Officer, FCB NZ 
• Craig Whitaker, Senior Platforms Consultant, Google NZ

About Craig

Craig leads the enterprise advertising and measurement platforms business for Google in New Zealand. He partners with local brands, media agencies, publishers and technology consultancies to help ensure they're making the most of Google technology.

Craig has worked at Google for over 10 years, first as an analyst and account manager for the advertising sales team and then as New Zealand's first DoubleClick employee before it was rebranded to Google Marketing Platform. Prior to joining the Google New Zealand team, Craig worked in various media agencies managing search for some New Zealand's leading brands..

• The challenges of collecting and managing first-party data
• GA4 – changes, benefits and challenges of implementation and deliverability
• How to ensure transparency and compliance in data collection and usage
• Algorithms and AI – understanding how they work, their impact on CX and concerns around use
• Managing consent across omni-channel if there’s a “right to be forgotten”
• Practical solutions, tools and tech to consider.

Panellists:

• Nicola Yates, Media Planning Chapter Lead, Countdown Supermarkets
• Qassem Naim, Chief Transformation Officer, FCB NZ 
• Craig Whitaker, Senior Platforms Consultant, Google NZ

About Nicola

Nicola is an experienced, passionate, integrated marketing comms professional. Employed across the globe in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong and now New Zealand, she has had the opportunity to work with regional and global brands, covering various digital disciplines. Her experience includes Yellow, Mindshare, Air New Zealand, and Cathay Pacific. Nicola believes the best strategies are data driven and she aspires to deliver the best insights possible, based on data, to inform strategy, using the latest innovation to develop creative to drive engagement.

Co-presented with Paul Hickey

If you think your organisation has been struggling with data silos, wait until you see this! 
 
Te Pūkenga is NZ’s newest and largest education provider, newly merged from 24 separate polytechnics and industry training organisations that have been competing with each other for decades. So how would a new central marketing function go about building a single customer view of prospective learners engaging across this vast but heavily siloed network? 24 different websites, all with their own structures and conversion paths, hundreds of different lead and enquiry touch points, thousands of study programmes, all classified differently, dozens of different technology platforms and technical teams, the list goes on. This is a first party customer data challenge on a truly daunting scale. 
 
So meet the team tackling these challenges via New Zealand’s biggest ever Customer Data Platform (CDP) implementation project. This presentation is an honest work-in-progress update at the half way point of their two year journey towards centralised marketing audiences, insights and use cases. Interested in CDPs? This story’s for you!

About Lucy

I am a marketer based in Ōtepoti, New Zealand. I love helping brands develop their unique identity and create a go-to market strategy that converts. I enjoy driving digital strategies although my 15 years’ experience marketing has been managing brands across on-and-offline channels. However, digital is where I've naturally landed as I love the mix of creative and tech. And of course the epic results you can achieve!

Passionate or obsessed? However you describe me, I freaking love marketing. I'm constantly geeking out on marketing stuff - dissecting brands, mulling over messaging and celebrating epic micro-copy. And now you can add first-party data to the list! In my role with Te Pūkenga I’m out to make a difference in Aotearoa. I believe the approach we have taken to partner with Tealium will make this possible, through the personalised and relevant experience we’ll be able to offer our diverse audiences. 

Co-presented with Lucy Eru

If you think your organisation has been struggling with data silos, wait until you see this! 
 
Te Pūkenga is NZ’s newest and largest education provider, newly merged from 24 separate polytechnics and industry training organisations that have been competing with each other for decades. So how would a new central marketing function go about building a single customer view of prospective learners engaging across this vast but heavily siloed network? 24 different websites, all with their own structures and conversion paths, hundreds of different lead and enquiry touch points, thousands of study programmes, all classified differently, dozens of different technology platforms and technical teams, the list goes on. This is a first party customer data challenge on a truly daunting scale. 
 
So meet the team tackling these challenges via New Zealand’s biggest ever Customer Data Platform (CDP) implementation project. This presentation is an honest work-in-progress update at the half way point of their two year journey towards centralised marketing audiences, insights and use cases. Interested in CDPs? This story’s for you!

About Paul

Paul Hickey is widely considered as one of NZ’s leading database marketing strategists. Over the last two decades, Paul has picked up literally dozens of awards – for Best Loyalty Programme,  Best Data Strategy, Customer Insight and Data Driven Marketing with clients such as Suncorp, Countdown, Education New Zealand and New Zealand Cricket. Paul is the Managing Director of SpeakData Ltd, an established data services consultancy that specialises in using first party customer data to drive marketing outcomes. Paul and his team have deep experience with Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), a relatively new but fast growing MarTech category, along with marketing automation, business intelligence, web services, algorithms and data science. As one of the small minority of people who’s equally comfortable speaking data, from a business or technical perspective, with executives, IT people and marketers, Paul is definitely somebody you’d want to consult with about customer data issues in your organisation. 

Adobe’s 2023 Trends Report is just out showing that although many organisations are able to collect data, their ability to immediately enhance that data with human insight—and then turn it into meaningful interactions—comes up short. The same trends report also found that most organisations aren’t making the most of technology investments, AI and Machine Learning. 

In this Fireside Chat, we explore how to overcome this adoption problem, how to create a culture comfortable with imperfection across new mediums, and what roles and processes need to be in place to drive actual business outcomes. 
 
The discussion will be led by Datacom Marketing Consultant, Angel Riley and will dig into real experiences from IAG Product Manager, Dini Paranagama, plus lessons from a SME client example shared by Adobe Data and Insights Account Executive, Hannah Schembri.

About Dini

Dini is a Product Leader with experience across product strategy, discovery, experimentation and delivery.

Changing careers from project portfolio management into technology forced her to quickly get comfortable with problem solving at a whole different level. Her role is to understand and solve for customer and business needs, then leverage technology to effectively meet these needs.

Experienced in both B2B and B2C, Dini’s role spans across Australia and New Zealand.

Adobe’s 2023 Trends Report is just out showing that although many organisations are able to collect data, their ability to immediately enhance that data with human insight—and then turn it into meaningful interactions—comes up short. The same trends report also found that most organisations aren’t making the most of technology investments, AI and Machine Learning.  

About Hannah

Hannah is Adobe's Data and Insights Lead in New Zealand; she works with customers to understand how to best  leverage their customer data to improve business performance and achieve their goals.

Adobe’s 2023 Trends Report is just out showing that although many organisations are able to collect data, their ability to immediately enhance that data with human insight—and then turn it into meaningful interactions—comes up short. The same trends report also found that most organisations aren’t making the most of technology investments, AI and Machine Learning.  

In this Fireside Chat, we explore how to overcome this adoption problem, how to create a culture comfortable with imperfection across new mediums, and what roles and processes need to be in place to drive actual business outcomes. 
 
The discussion will be led by Datacom Marketing Consultant, Angel Riley and will dig into real experiences from IAG Product Manager, Dini Paranagama, plus lessons from a SME client example shared by Adobe Data and Insights Account Executive, Hannah Schembri.

About Angel

Angel Riley joined Datacom 12 months ago as a Senior Consultant and during that time has been involved in implementation and optimisation projects in Adobe AEM, Marketing Cloud and D365 Marketing.  

With over 15 years of direct marketing experience, Angel has worked with some of New Zealand’s top corporates, charities and marketing teams including Mastercard, Farmers, Spark, Starship, World Vision and Fonterra to optimise and enhance their communication strategy ensuring uplift in customer engagement, customer conversion and customer loyalty.

Co-presented with Sobia Mughal

•   Having a go – using a test and learn approach to prove the value
• Pitching the idea to the exec team
• Layering purchase behaviour data with engagement data
• How we are using the model now to trigger product upsell campaigns
• What it’s done for the engagement with the sales team.

About Jess

Jess is a senior marketer with a passion to deliver data-driven, customer-led campaigns that are impactful and showcase value. Currently the Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Trade Me in B2B Classifieds, she uses her expertise and knowledge to solve key customer problems and deliver strategies and campaigns that are working towards the goal of leading the way in lifecycle B2B marketing. Jess is self-taught in everything she does and prides herself on her ability to stretch outside of her role, often taking on the role of an analyst, solution engineer and customer researcher. 

Outside of her professional career, Jess has a passion for adventure and can be found doing the next crazy thing. She also has a certificate in Astrobiology and uses her scientific background to help in her day-to-day by looking at the data available to her to inform decisions.

Co-presented with Jess Scott

•   Having a go – using a test and learn approach to prove the value
• Pitching the idea to the exec team
• Layering purchase behaviour data with engagement data
• How we are using the model now to trigger product upsell campaigns
• What it’s done for the engagement with the sales team.

About Sobia

Sobia is a senior marketing professional experienced in the technology, education, and services industries. She's had both B2C and B2B Marketing experience but currently, her role focuses purely on B2B as a Marketing Manager at Trade Me. For over 9 years, Sobia has been managing advertising campaigns (digital), go-to-market projects, new product launches, market research, and working with key stakeholders to provide solutions from a marketing point of view.

Alongside her professional career, she's also active in the marketing academia. She's presented two research conference papers in Portugal and Germany. One of which she won the Best Paper Award at a Macromarketing Conference. What gets Sobia up every day is having a meaningful and purposeful life. And to her, that starts and ends with people whether it's volunteering giving back to the community, or simply helping a friend out.