Natalie Lockwood, chief marketing officer at NAB, opened up ahead of her appearance at the ADMA Global Forum on September 9 about why marketers need to balance AI innovation with real consumer insights—and why the basics still matter.
Six months into her new role as CMO of NAB, Natalie Lockwood is staring down one of the biggest shifts marketing has ever faced.
“It’s all about AI—that’s the next horizon of marketing. The past horizons have been more around our martech, ad tech and the role technology has played but we are now moving into an entirely different sphere. We are, well and truly, in the era of AI,” said Lockwood.
Prior to joining NAB, Lockwood had spent over eight years at Visa, with previous roles taking her across Asia at companies such as MasterCard and the ASX.
At NAB, Lockwood is responsible for steering one of Australia’s most recognisable brands through a dynamic landscape, balancing the company’s heritage with the need to innovate at speed.
It’s exactly this complex background that makes Lockwood believe the foundation of future-ready marketing is, at its core, skills. Not just the shiny new kind, but the enduring, hard-won skills that help marketers stay relevant no matter what’s in the headlines.
“Even though I’ve had years of experience, my personal philosophy is based on continual learning. I have a very structured learning plan that I built through identifying gaps in my knowledge, what I need to succeed in my role and what my team needs from me, Lockwood explained.
Lockwood believes this approach is applicable for everyone, not just leaders. So alongside having a mindset of continual learning, she believes there are two other core skills marketers need to have.
“The first is commercial acumen. Marketing is all about driving behaviour change or shifting perceptions to deliver growth for a company—so we have to understand and prove the financial outcomes of marketing,” she said.
“The second is technology. Marketers tend to be more creative thinkers, so with AI, we now need to be creative technologists. We need to use technology to solve problems, elevate creative, improve workflows and so much more.”
In financial services, as Lockwood revealed, these capabilities get tested every day.
She said: “Some people consider banking a utility. That raises an interesting challenge—how can we be distinctive and gain a competitive edge? For me, that’s where I really like to bring the brand to life through experience.”
Lockwood takes an expansive view of customer experience, seeing it as spanning everything from digital engagement to the bank’s frontline employees in call centres and branches. Her goal is to unify it all—a critical part of building a consistent brand for an organisation like NAB.
She takes this responsibility seriously: “My role and my function is all about being the ultimate guardian of NAB’s brand purpose, values and promise. How we show up in-market needs to champion our organisation’s purpose.
“For me, customer experience is the how and the proof of the company’s brand promise. In my job, I really have to understand the customer journey and use data and insights to deeply understand our customers.”
Executing this at NAB often means getting the basics right behind the scenes.
“In such a large organisation, having systematic, repeatable and standardised processes and workflows is really critical to how we work. I’ve been really appreciating the power of that.”
It also means having a healthy appetite for experimentation. A test-and-learn mindset is something Lockwood has employed throughout her career but she sees it as even more important now with the advent of AI.
She revealed that while it’s important to pilot and experiment with new technologies, they need to be embedded within annual marketing strategies with the understanding that sometimes the experiment won’t always go to plan.
“The truth is, sometimes we fail. But out of our failings, we can gather some of our best learnings. When I speak with other CMOs and marketing heads, that’s something I’m seeing more and more—this passion for piloting so we can move at speed and get things to scale with confidence,” added Lockwood.
“The experimentation mindset in marketing—that’s where the magic happens. We need to do more of that.”
But while the rapid pace of digital innovation rightly captures attention, Lockwood also urges her peers not to lose sight of a fundamental truth: the consumer landscape itself is evolving just as dramatically.
Lockwood explained: “If we look at the older demographic, they’ve dramatically redefined what aging means. They’re healthier, adventurous and more financially well off. I saw an ad the other day targeting 50-year-olds and they were portrayed as elderly with gray hair. That’s simply not the case.”
For Lockwood, this signals a broader challenge, and an important reminder, for marketers everywhere.
“Everyone’s been so focused on the changing tech that I don’t think we’ve stopped to think enough about the humans. Let’s not take our eye off what matters most,” she concluded.
Natalie Lockwood is a speaker at the ADMA Global Forum on September 9, she will be joined by other industry leaders including business expert Todd Sampson, futurist Tom Goodwin, MECCA’s Kate Blythe and more.
