Martine Jager has spent more than 20 years marketing some of Australia’s top brands across the financial services, media and airline sectors. Having held senior roles across the Westpac Group for the better part of a decade, Martine was appointed Chief Marketing Officer for the Westpac Group in 2015, and has responsibility of all brand and marketing programs for Westpac, St.George, BankSA, Bank of Melbourne and RAMS.

This year, Martine was responsible for marketing the most significant milestone in Westpac’s history – celebrating 200 years as Australia’s oldest company. Westpac understood that to resonate with Australians, the anniversary needed to be focused on the future. As a result, the marketing programs were designed to deliver key philanthropic, community and customer-focussed initiatives, such as the Westpac Bicentennial Foundation, Businesses of Tomorrow and the Bump Savings initiative.

Martine is passionate about her people and customers, with the belief that when we get it right, we have the the potential to help positively change peoples lives. She lives in a world of possibility, and by the guiding principle that putting what is right for the customer first allows the best solutions come to surface.

Martine is also a Governor of St.George Foundation, which helps support charities that look after disadvantaged children in Australia and is on the board of the Global Banking Alliance for Women.

Brent Smart is the first ever Chief Marketing Officer for IAG, Australia’s largest insurance company with leading brands including NRMA Insurance, CGU, SGIO and SGIC. Brent leads group-wide marketing efforts, responsible for brand strategy and marketing operations.

Brent has more than 20 years in the advertising business. Previously he was CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New York working on iconic American brands like Cheerios, Tide and Walmart. He spent seven years with BBDO, running their San Francisco office, and the creatively revered Colenso BBDO in New Zealand. Brent has led a body of highly awarded creative work, recognised with over 25 Cannes Lions and over 40 Effies.

Brent has returned home to Australia from New York City with his wife and three young boys who have American accents and can’t kick a drop punt.

Trudie Newcomb has worked in the financial services industry for over 20 years holding various roles across the insurance and banking industry. In this time she worked in various markets in the Asia region including Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

She has spent the last 10 years at American Express in various general management, marketing and partner management roles in the Consumer Credit Card business.

Today Trudie is responsible for the general management of the American Express cobrand Alliance with David Jones, Consumer Acquisition Marketing, Card Member Cross Sell and First Year Engagement program leading those businesses to unprecedented growth rates.

She is a strong general manager and an expert in digital marketing leading her team to a number of global firsts in digital innovation.

Paul McCrory leads a group of Industry’s at Facebook Australia and New Zealand where he is responsible for transforming the way in which organistaions deliver business value from mobile. Before joining Facebook, Paul led Experian’s Digital division in Australia.

His previous experience has provided him with key skills in data, analytics and technology across a wide variety of industry’s in the UK, Europe and Australia / New Zealand.

Colin Barnard started his career at Peugeot UK in a variety of roles before he became hooked on digital marketing when he became head of, what was then called, “New Media”.

Joining Google in 2006 he has worked with Automotive, Retail and Financial Services companies to help them evolve their customer and marketing strategies in response to the Digital Revolution, including the recent launch of Android Pay.

The thing keeping Colin up at night is the need for constant innovation in the face of the ever ­increasing consumer expectations, driven by technology.

Elaine joined PayPal Australia in February 2106 as Marketing Director. In this role she is responsible for driving customer engagement across both the consumer and merchant portfolios and building the PayPal brand in Australia. She is a member of the PayPal Australia Leadership team and leads the marketing team to deliver best in class digital and social campaigns that drive business outcomes.

With over 10 years’ experience within the Fintech marketing space she is passionate about how the commerce experience will be rewired over the next two years and the role marketing plays in guiding consumers through this transformation.

Previously, Elaine spent 8 years in Westpac Group. Elaine joined the Westpac Group in 2007 as Head of Marketing for BT Super for Life, and spent nearly 3 years in BT’s Superannuation business leading marketing and sales functions. She moved to Westpac in June 2011 as GM, Brand and Advertising, subsequently leading Strategic Brand and Planning team. She was appointed to role of Head of Marketing and Brand for Westpac in March 2012 and when she left the group she held this role as well as that of Head of Mass Marketing Services, with a team of 90.

Prior to joining BTFG, Elaine spent nearly ten years working in London at Reuters, in a variety of B2B marketing and communications roles working across numerous business units, editorial and group marketing functions.

Elaine has Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin and a Higher Diploma in Marketing Practice from the Smurfit Graduate School of Business.

David is an outcome oriented professional with over 20 years of global Innovative Marketing and Product Management experience

As Managing Director, the labs consultancy at ProjectWorldwide, David works with global brands to define, design and build their corporate customer experience centres. Beginning with customer journey strategies, experiential design and culminating with end to end operational processes, David is able to ensure client investment in their centre is maximised.

David has lived and worked in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and has a global reputation for innovative thinking in major companies including ProjectWorldwide, Telstra, Optus SingTel, British Telecom, Vodafone, Compaq, and Nortel Networks.

Prior to joining ProjectWorldwide, David was General Manager of the Telstra Customer Insight Centres, where he was responsible for delivering and managing multimillion dollar, state of the art, world class Insight Centres.

In 2016, David and his team were recognised with two Global industry awards for designing and delivering Telstra’s Sydney Customer Insight Centre which combines Digital Innovation and Customer Engagement Design Thinking strategies to increase brand preference for Telstra products and services.

Elly is the creative heart of the business and leads Yell Creative’s creative team. Her passion for creating exceptional, beautiful and effective design is only matched by her dedication to applying her ever-increasing knowledge of fin services to improving how firms engage their audiences. Elly brings a wealth of experience, having worked in every conceivable media for both agencies and client side, allowing her to bring a unique perspective to every project. She loves her cat, Everton FC, Drum and Bass and is partial to a bit of Great British Bake-Off, when she has the time!

Simon worked for the Saatchi brothers for 25 years from 1983 to 2007.

He started as a graduate trainee at Saatchi & Saatchi in London, then moved to Sydney after 5 years. He became MD of Taiwan (1991), then CEO Ireland (1992-94) and returned to Australia and founded M&C Saatchi Australia in May 1995.
Over the next 12 years, M&C Saatchi became a top 3 Australian Agency, with a range of blue chip clients, over 300 staff and $50million in revenues.

Following the sale of M&C Saatchi on AIM on the UK stock exchange, Simon left in 2007, to start Growth Mantra.
Growth Mantra is a boutique strategy consultancy focussed on growth.

We uniquely combine the creativity of marketers with the disciplines of management consultants.

We forecast markets over next 5-10 years, to spot opportunities for growth, then bring the strategy to life in the market. (McDonald’s ‘Create Your Taste’ and Woolworths Metro are recent examples)

Growth Mantra has worked with a large number of blue chip companies, including: AGL, Bupa, Carnival, Coca-Cola, Diageo, McDonald’s, NAB, Optus, Tabcorp and Woolworths.

Simon is married to Monique and has three sons, Nicholas, Marcus and Oscar.