Stripping the industry of boring buzzwords
Setting the scene to the night’s discussions was The Lumery’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, Rajan Kumar. He stressed how the industry as it stands now is rife with buzzwords and it’s finally time to cut through the hype.
“Words like omni-channel, customer experience, personalisation, they’re all critical, but what‘s it all really about? It’s all about driving growth,” he told attendees. “ And that’s what we’re here to do — help businesses drive growth.”
“In our opinion, it’s all about investment in capability,” he continued. “And the way we describe capability is across four pillars: people, process, data and technology. Importantly, it’s deliberately in that order. We think companies that really invest in this capability gain the competitive advantage. “
A passion for solving complex business problems
Rajan revealed why The Lumery is so passionate about partnering with really ambitious brands to solve complex business problems through the use and understanding of technology.
“In the last three years, in a relatively short amount of time, we’ve been fortunate enough to partner with some of Australia’s leading brands like Bunnings, News Corp, Jetstar,” he added. “We’ve built a company that’s full of great people, now over 60 and growing across ANZ with offices in Melbourne and recently opening our doors in Sydney, with a growing team on the ground. And we’re excited to do our first ever industry panel here in Sydney.”
“These events are about creating an environment where marketing leaders and digital leaders can talk, debate and challenge, really openly and honestly, about what’s happening in their organisation, and what’s happening in the industry “ , he continued. “This discussion is all about driving transparency with some kickass industry leaders talking about the industry problems, and how we’re going to solve them.”
Next up on stage was Global head of Fundraising for Movember, Charlotte Webb, who revealed the work-in-progress story for the fundraising organisation’s journey — from its Melbourne beginnings to implementing the right people, process, data and technology and becoming a global initiative.
“We’re undertaking an exciting business transformation with The Lumery as well as our brilliant internal team,” she told guests. “The numbers around men’s health are really scary and it’s a serious issue. One in six Australian men will receive a diagnosis for prostate cancer before the age of 85 ad three out of four suicides around the world are men.”
Charlotte revealed how over 16 million people have participated in Movember globally across 21 countries since the fundraising organization began six years ago , raising over $1bn for the worthy cause. But despite the growing rate of participation, the churn rate has been shocking.
“That’s one of the reasons we needed to take a good hard look at what we were doing with our data, especially by the 2013 mark when the technology world had advanced so much, but we hadn’t really needed to,” she said. “ So, we worked hard to turn things around, and three years ago our partnership with The Lumery has been integral to driving the next phase of our growth.”
Full frank discussion on the future of
The feature panel for the night then uncovered some serious points of discussion, especially given all the noise in the industry recently around who ‘owns and runs’ the MarTech stack.
Panelists debated how marketers are in the firing line and questioned about the ‘value’ they’re bringing to their organisation. Meanwhile, technology vendors are being blamed for ‘selling the dream’ but not managing the hard reality. Consultancies and agencies are also promising ‘new sources of truth’, but are their solutions sustainable without collaboration?
One key takeaway was that CMOs and CDOs should watch out for the dreaded ‘all talk but no action’ digital environments. This means if you’re in an organisation that constantly talks about driving change, but doesn’t actually do anything about it, then get out…
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