It’s no longer enough for marketing to support businesses; it must also drive it—and do so with the full force of data, foresight, and strategic alignment behind them. That was the theme of this morning’s Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) Masterclass.
Held at the stunning WPP Campus in Sydney and delivered in partnership with Gain Theory, the sold-out event— From Data to Decisions: Driving Profitable Growth with Marketing Effectiveness—brought together some of the industry’s sharpest minds.
B&T was on site as leading marketers unpacked how to move beyond dashboards and reports to a future where marketing sets the agenda, not just responds to it.
The morning’s big idea? Marketing effectiveness isn’t just measurement—it’s leadership. It’s a sentiment echoed throughout the panel discussion featuring:
- Tamara Howe, CMO, SunRice
- Susan Coghill, CMO, Tourism Australia
- Naomi Gorringe, Head of Marketing, SCA
- Moderated by Justin Nel, Gain Theory
All three leaders called for marketing to take a more assertive, strategic role—fuelled by evidence—but human at its heart.
“Marketing Is a Blend of Art and Science”
For Tamara Howe, the journey starts with changing culture. She believes marketing’s effectiveness hinges not just on creative intuition but on scientific, data-driven insights.
“Marketing is a blend of art and science… but what I love about the science or the maths is that you then get to take the subjectivity out of it as best you can and make it more objective,” she explained. “Then you can really focus your energy on the creative bit” .
Howe went on to explain how SunRice is leveraging AI to guide innovation and decision-making. By feeding existing research data into a bespoke AI model, her team is able to make more informed predictions and streamline their innovation efforts. This mix of science and creativity is empowering the brand to stay ahead of market trends, especially in a fast-paced consumer goods environment.
“We’ve made a shift now and we are not just looking at what’s popular in the food culture now, but actually trying to predict what’s going to be popular in food culture. You can do that by [using AI to] scrape food service menus and what the chefs are working on and talking to chefs. That then fills our innovation agenda, so that by the time we then get that into the market, we’re at the peak of what’s popular,” Howe explained.
“Meeting people where they are”
Gorringe discussed SCA’s journey from broadcast media to a data-rich audio ecosystem with LiSTNR. She stressed the importance of tailored data literacy across business functions.
“We are really trying to understand all of the different parts of the business, what their data literacy is… then really leaning in and meeting people where they are,” she explained. “We need to really make sure that people understand what we’re talking about, and we’re not alienating people, so that people feel like they’re a part of that culture, that it’s relevant to them, that they understand how it’s going to help them make decisions, and how it’s going to make help them reach their goals”.
Gorringe also shared an example of how they helped Berocca deliver hyper-contextual audio ads, a brand that needed to become more relevant across the whole of the day, not just in the evenings and early mornings. She unpacked how SCA’s unique data gave the ability to identify when users where performing activities that this kind of energy product might be useful – running for example.
“From an audio perspective, what we had that was unique was data points that potentially weren’t available in some other channels. We used live in-device sensors, plus time of day, interest and demographic data to then dynamically serve creative to people at the moment that they’re actually doing that activity”.
“We had to write the rules ourselves.”
For Coghill and Tourism Australia, it was a matter of developing a new measurement playbook from scratch.
“One of the first things that I focused on with the team was developing a playbook for what great destination marketing looks like. That doesn’t exist in our category… So we really had to write the rules ourselves,” Coghill explained. “It’s not a deck, it’s not a presentation… It’s something that our teams use every single day. It informs every single discussion”.
She also warned against overreacting to short-term trends. “Don’t confuse fast change with deep change,” she explained.
“I think data can help you understand… what are the meaningful changes that are going to stick over time, and what are the things that are just trends”.
For her team, scenario planning, a habit picked up during the pandemic, is now essential in forward thinking. She recognised that while perfect data doesn’t exist, this kind of thinking can set a business or organisation apart from the crowd.
Looking at a whole bunch of data sources to triangulate, to understand what is happening in market, to better inform those decisions. There is such thing as perfect data, but I think what you can do is you can take those signals and find your path forward to driving that incremental growth”.
Future-Proofing Through Foresight
The panel wrapped with a look at how marketers can future-proof their strategies.
For Howe, it’s all about learning to embrace what you know and not being afraid to try what you don’t. “80% of the investment goes on what’s proven, 20% is test and learn… It’s always been building that muscle in test and learn and new methodologies,” she explained.
Coghill backed this, urging attendees not to wait for perfection. “Don’t let perfection stop you. You need to jump in and define your challenges… Don’t wait. Get started now,” she said.
At a time when marketing is under more scrutiny than ever, today’s panel made one thing crystal clear: effectiveness isn’t about defending marketing—it’s about defining the future of the business. By embedding a culture of data literacy, aligning with commercial outcomes, and planning with foresight, Australia’s top marketers are proving that growth isn’t just a function of spend—it’s a function of strategy. And in that equation, marketing belongs at the helm.
