Marketing professor to challenge the ‘dreary’ digital orthodoxy at Mumbrella360

Ritson: Challenging conventional wisdom

Acclaimed marketing professor Mark Ritson is among the latest speakers joining the lineup for next month’s Mumbrella360 to offer a provocative session challenging the orthodoxy that digital marketing is superior to traditional channels.

Ritson’s provocative presentation – Beyond digital marketing: Why the dreary D word is hurting marketing – will suggest that the chase for the latest fashionable marketing options is seeing marketers lose site of long term marketing strategies.

Ritson’s view comes as traditional players are increasingly beginning to argue that their effectiveness marketers is being undervalued.    

At last week’s Time Warner digital newfront presentation in New York, the “big gaudy numbers” being claimed by the likes of YouTube were derided as tiny when compared with television players on a minute-by-minute basis.

And on Friday News Corp boss Robert Thomson suggested that media agencies are “more focused on fashion than function” when spending their clients’ advertising budgets.

Ritson has taught marketing at London Business School, MIT, University of Minnesota and Singapore Management University, and he is currently a Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School.

Other speakers newly confirmed for the Mumbrella360 lineup include ANZ bank’s head of digital sales and marketing Chaminda Ranasinghe and Unilever’s head of media Anneliese Douglass.

Both will join a panel chaired by PHD’s national head of strategy Stewart Gurney dedicated to exploring the rise of artificial intelligence in marketing.

Friday saw Domain become the first Australian brand to implement Facebook’s Messenger chatbot technology, signalling the arrival of AI-driven marketing in Australia.

Also taking part in the session – Marketing by algorithm – are you ready? – will be AdRoll’s global CEO Aaron Bell and Whybin\TBWA Sydney’s incoming strategy director Joel Pearson.

Before founding AdRoll, which lays claim to being the world’s most widely used retargeting platform, Bell was lead engineer for an artificial intelligence company and oversaw projects for the Space Shuttle program. Pearson was previously global innovation director for PHD and won a string of awards for his work on Unilever’s vial Dove campaigns.

The panel will follow a keynote earlier in the day from PHD’s Asia Pacific head of strategy and planning Chris Stephenson, who co-authored the book Sentience: The coming AI revolution and the implications for marketing. He will set out the timeline to AI becoming part of the mainstream.

Mumbrella360: Four weeks to go

Mumbrella360 takes place in just over four weeks’ time, at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney from June 7-9.

The full Mumbrella360 program, along with details of how to buy ticket, can be found on the conference website.

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.

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topics Mark Ritson Mumbrella360

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