In Episode 9 of Marketing Dividends presented by the AANA, Vittoria Shortt, Chief Marketing Officer at Commonwealth Bank Australia details how marketing drives value and insight across the broader business, and how her focus on connecting brand strategy with business strategy pulls marketing right into the business.

“The role for marketing is to really demonstrate the value that they can bring to the business. I don’t necessarily think of it as a rebrand, but it’s really about how marketing teams are harnessing the changes that are going on. How they’re harnessing the new tools particularly digital and data. And then showing the businesses the insights that they can really bring to help drive business value.”

Shortt explains how customers’ expectations of brands is increasing and how CBA meets this challenge by focusing on innovating through technology and then communicating with customers when and where it works for them.

There are many product innovations CBA has launched in the last twelve months, which Shortt says have required marketing to ensure that the whole journey from ‘mass communication’ through to ‘very personal one-on-one communication’ optimised the adoption of these initiatives in the market. A prime example was the success of cardless cash, ‘a first time capability in this market which saw extraordinary adoption with one million dollars worth of transactions in three weeks. So we knew we’d got our messaging right and clear and delivered the right tools  to help bankers explain it to customers’.

Shortt said: ‘Marketing’s contribution is increasingly valued. And the two real signals for me are for the first time we have marketers who are sitting on the leadership teams of the businesses at different levels. And the second real metric for me is that we’re seeing a lot of our marketing talent go into other areas of the business. So marketers are going into product, they’re going into the digital channels and I think that’s a wonderful sign when your marketing talent is sought after across the business.’

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