What kept you awake at night during 2017?

1. Integrating our CRM and Digital Environment to enhance customer engagement strategy
2. Customer acquisition was imperative to drive engagement, efficiencies, and true customer-centricity. Always a work in progress.
3. Balancing leadership and management demands across a large team and two countries.

What have you achieved this year?

1. Development of an agile, collaborative team culture
2. Execution of a new customer marketing go-to-market strategy across Australia and New Zealand
3. Pursued an aggressive strategy around our A-brands with a laser-like focus on content marketing and customer insights
4. Developed a comprehensive suite of brand services and solutions whilst to seamlessly optimise our marketing efforts and investment contributions

What is your marketing prediction for 2018?

Demands on CMOs will increase as a net result of having greater impact on through-the-line customer-brand satisfaction.  Competition around data harvesting and integrity I expect will intensify. Anticipating customer behaviour based on insights, and leveraging these insights into the brand ecosystem will be critical to deliver a higher-retention marketing model.

Grant Steyn, Head of Customer Marketing & Innovation Ambassador – Australia & New Zealand, Bayer