Navigating the future of marketing: Key insights from iMedia 2024

I had the pleasure of attending this year’s iMedia Future of Marketing Summit on the Gold Coast, Queensland. With a solid mix of standard conference activities—from guest speakers to networking opportunities—and some unique offerings like a sailing trip and golf day, it’s definitely an event to look forward to each year. But beyond the festivities, it’s a fantastic opportunity to gather some of Australia and New Zealand’s top marketing leaders and dive into the latest trends, both globally and locally. Here are my four key takeaways from the event:

Are we getting too personal with customers?

In recent years, there’s been a significant push toward hyper-personalising the customer journey at every touchpoint. From tailored birthday offers to tracking every scroll, click, and interaction, marketers have been gathering vast amounts of data to craft highly personalised experiences. And with the rise of AI, this level of personalisation has become even easier to achieve. But do customers really want it?

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s presentation, “The Future of Marketing...in a Time of Change,” questioned whether personalisation is truly the key to building stronger customer satisfaction and retention. While customers do appreciate feeling understood by businesses, the Institute found that this only applies when it involves data customers are willingly shared (shocking, I know). Honeycomb Strategy echoed this idea during their presentation, revealing that 74% of Australians believe they gain no value from companies asking for excessive personal information. Yet we still see organisations requiring you to fill in a 6 field form to access their latest ebook.

Honeycomb's research found that 77% of Australians now prioritise data privacy over personalised experiences, marking a 5% increase from 2023. With frequent headlines about data breaches, it's no wonder customers are wary of sharing sensitive information like birthdates, bank details, or phone numbers—raising the question, do businesses really need this data to personalise experiences? Customers feel more at ease when companies use interaction data, such as browsing history, preferences, or past purchases. So why not take a different approach? Honeycomb provided a clever example of using the anniversary of a customer’s first purchase instead of birthdates, offering a personalised touch that also avoids the cluttered inbox on a customer's birthday. In today’s customer landscape, digital trust must be earned, so the challenge for marketers is to personalise with the data they already have, before requesting more.

“Just because you can tailor everything doesn’t mean you should.” - Dr. Rachel Kennedy, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

Best practice in data management, are we there yet?

While data management wasn’t a new concept at the conference, it sure was a recurring theme in presentations, roundtables, and one-on-one discussions with delegates. Businesses are increasingly trying to balance personalising customer journeys with the need to use only data collected through explicit consent. My team and I hosted three roundtables on the topic, and a common issue emerged: few organisations have truly mastered data management.

From small businesses to global brands, data management is still a missing piece of the puzzle. Surprisingly, not a single organisation had integrated it into their broader business strategy or assigned it to a dedicated role. Despite 93% of senior business leaders in Australia recognising the importance of evidence-based decision-making, 41% admitted that many of their company’s decisions are based on ‘gut feel’ or instinct alone—and 81% reported negative consequences as a result. How can we expect to make informed decisions without getting our data in order?

The ongoing importance of future demand

James Hurman brought a fresh perspective to the ongoing conversation about brand marketing—particularly when communicating its value to non-marketers and stakeholders across the business. Brand marketing often doesn’t show immediate commercial value or financial impact, especially compared to product marketing, which is why it’s typically the first to go if the board or executives don’t see direct results.

Hurman’s key message was to keep an eye on future demand—the 85% of buyers who aren’t in the market for your product this quarter. And don’t forget to have fun with it! Future buyers respond best to creative, engaging, and memorable advertising that reflects your brand. Keep it emotional and targeted at a broad audience. Of course, the 15% of buyers with immediate demand still want to see product features and competitor comparisons. This branding should be more rational, with clear calls to action for a focused audience. But make sure everyone else in your company understands why brand awareness is so crucial—don’t forget about the other 85%.

“Brand marketing makes people (who aren’t in the market yet) familiar with us and emotionally positive toward us. So when they enter the market, they gravitate toward us and pay more for us.” - James Hurman

The role of a marketing executive in 2024

To wrap up the conference, a CMO panel brought together many of the event’s recurring themes, discussing key focus areas for the next 12 months. One topic that came up again was “vanity metrics” in relation to data management. Many organisations have access to huge amounts of data, but the challenge is identifying which data is actually worth focusing on. Executives agreed that it’s less about collecting more data and more about knowing which data to surface and use.

The reminder to “give value, not get value” was repeated several times, linking back to earlier discussions on brand awareness. As marketers, the goal should be to constantly provide new insights, share valuable information, and showcase the brand’s worth—not just push products (sorry, sales team!). With customers’ attention more difficult to capture than ever, staying front of mind with fresh, engaging content is essential.

While the pace of acceleration brought on by AI is notable, the consensus was that it’s not a shocking development. Marketing has always been about navigating constant change, and AI is simply the next chapter. We need to lean more into the new tools and tech available to us, while staying grounded in our strategies. For those with a solid grasp of marketing fundamentals and a willingness to adapt, this should be an exciting—not stressful—time. 

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