The most comprehensive conference for retail and FMCG marketers

Currently the Head of China Digital eCommerce for AB InBev, based in Shanghai.

As a serial technology start-up guy, working for the world’s largest beverage company in this role is not intuitive at first glance. More used to raising venture capital, building high-growth businesses and sitting on the sell-side during M&A discussions, I have “start-up DNA”, but AB InBev offered the best of all worlds – the chance to work in a newly created group, ABI’s ZX Ventures organization, with the mandate to launch and build an eCommerce business in China with ABI as a single strategic investor. Treating the business as a high-growth start-up is a key part of the ZXV culture, with innovation, velocity and agility as key pillars.

Having started my career in Beijing in 1989, I have come full circle in this, my second tour of China. In between China stints, I have had front row seats at several technology inflection points, spending the mid-90’s in Silicon Valley involved in the early Internet, SaaS and Cloud (before they were branded as such), the late-90’s in Redmond, deeply embedded in Microsoft as it transitioned from a work group to enterprise player, laid the groundwork for “du”, a telecommunications company in Dubai, spent 10 years at the forefront of mobile broadband, rode the front edge of the enterprise social media wave and am now launching an eCommerce business in China, helping to bring people together for a Better World.

Joe is Chief Strategy Officer of Mindshare Australia, where his key responsibility is helping clients generate brand and business growth through innovative and effective marketing communications strategies.

Mindshare works with many of the leading brands in Australia, including Bupa, BP, Craveable Brands, Danone, Deliveroo, Foxtel, General Mills, IAG, IBM, IKEA, Kellogg’s, Kimberly-Clark, Mondelez, NAB, Nike, REA, Sanofi, Treasury Wines and Volvo.

As Chair of the Media Federation of Australia Awards Committee, Joe is also responsible for recognising and rewarding best-practice media thinking in Australia.

Joe’s previous experience includes five years in Paris heading up global strategy; launching O2 Priority in the UK; establishing a digital media offering at Saatchi & Saatchi; and working as an intelligence officer for the Australian Federal Government.

He has also recently been published as a contributing author in ‘La Publicité à l’ère de la data’ (Advertising in the Age of Data – Hachette).

Julie Mathers is the CEO and Founder of Flora & Fauna, an ethical lifestyle and beauty retailer focused on driving change and empowering customers. Julie is passionate about using her skills and platform for purpose. Julie was named Business Person of the Year this Year at the Gala Awards and was named Number 4 in the “Top 50 People in Australian eCommerce”.

This year Flora & Fauna was named Online Retailer of the Year at the GALA Awards, Best Small Online Retailer at the ORIAs and won Telstra Small Business of the Year for NSW.

Prior to founding Flora & Fauna, Julie has worked in the UK, Europe, Asia and now Australia for the last ten years. She has worked in consulting, private equity and with many retailers, including senior leadership roles in Woolworths, Coles and APG & Co.

John is the owner of Save Our Soles which is engaged in recycling shoes and apparel in Australia.

An influential leader, John is committed to finding great vehicles to align himself with to make the world a better place for the next generation. He is a founding board member of B Lab Australia and New Zealand that look after B Corporations who are leading a global movement to redefine success in business. John also sits on the Retail advisory board of Save the Children, Australia and the Advisory board of Looptworks, a US company who manufacture eco-friendly upcycled products with brands to create closed-loop and waste recycling solutions. He is also part of the Australia’s Post REVAMP Network who explore using business to drive better circular economy outcomes.

John was also the Managing Director of TOMS Australia & New Zealand, the One for One company who use their business to improve people’s lives. John was responsible for the brand’s significant business growth and awareness since TOMS launched in the Australian and New Zealand market in 2012.

When it comes to corporate social responsibility, John has years of insider experience and a realistic, pragmatic view on how companies can create real change. He has worked in the sporting industry for over 30 years with roles at Puma, And1 and Sportsco, discovering his passion for social responsibility and business when he chaired Nike’s environmental group for the region and joined its first Global Climate Change summit in Portland. During this time John was Vice President of Warrandyte CAN – A climate action group in Warrandyte.

John is a regular (enigmatic and inspirational) public speaker for B Corporations, DO! Lectures and Peppermint Magazine’s Pep Talk series.

Pippa is the co-director of RetailOasis, a business consultancy dedicated to creating the future of retail. She’s has a life long passion for understanding human behaviour. She’s worked with a raft of established retail businesses through to start-ups helping them understand how to appeal to their current and future customer. She’s also a member of iFAB – a global think tank focused on the helping fashion businesses stay relevant.

David Rumbens is a macroeconomist and regular commentator on the Australian economy. He leads Deloitte Access Economics’ macroeconomics and forecasting group, and has two decades of experience with Australia’s pre‑eminent economic consulting firm.

David is the author of the quarterly publication, Retail Forecasts, which provides a detailed analysis of the drivers of retail spending and trends likely to emerge. David also prepares a weekly economic briefing newsletter. The newsletter can be found at www.deloitte.com/au/weeklyeconomicbriefing

Jonathan founded FITCH HK (then StartJG HK) in 2009. It quickly became one of the most respected consultancies in Asia, winning Agency of the Year awards in 2014,15 and 16. In 2016, WPP acquired a majority stake and StartJG HK became part of FITCH, the world’s leading brand and retail consultancy, with Jonathan remaining a significant shareholder.

Felecia White has been studying how Australians eat and drink for over 20 years, the last 10 of them with PepsiCo. Felecia champions Australia as an innovation hub for food and sees us as a window into the future of snacking globally.

After early roles at Nestle Confectionery in Insights and Brand Management, Felecia has been building iconic brands such as Smiths, Doritos, Gatorade, Shapes, Tim Tam and Bundaberg Rum while at Arnott’s Campbells, PepsiCo and Diageo.  Felecia has also guided new brands, like Red Rock Deli, that have been exported globally.

Felecia believes in demand generation as the foundation for identifying opportunities and driving Category Growth. This has seen PepsiCo recognised by retailers as a leader in Marketing and Category Management.

Dr. Sonika Singh is a PhD in Management Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, and her research has been published in top journals such as the Journal of Retailing and the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. Her research is in the domains of digital marketing and retailing. She focuses on econometric modeling of consumer information search, consumer choice, and retail pricing and promotions.

Sonika’s current projects focus on retail pricing in EDLP stores, website purchase and post-purchase behavior, and consumer response to category pricing and promotions over time. She has presented her research at leading marketing conferences in the U.S., in Europe at Cambridge University, and IIM-Ahmedabad in India.  She has prior industry experience in market research and has worked in Sandvik Asia and Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd.

Linda O’Grady is a leading specialist in customer centric transformation and multi-brand CX strategy working across brands and sometimes across companies and cultures to create great CX. She has been Head of Strategy for SE Asia for a large networked agency and Head of Marketing Planning & Performance (Transformation) for a major multi-brand retailer. She also lead the customer relationship integration during a company acquisition and IPO, drawing heavily on her post-graduate qualifications in Change Management. Now as a Business Partner and the Data Strategy Partner at CX Lavender she leads a large multi-disciplinary team designing customer experiences and solving problems for many large corporates. This includes Westpac Group where CX Lavender has nearly 40 CX specialists partnering in strategy, innovation, lean design and Agile. Linda is particularly interested in how brand values come to life in customer experience and evaluating where and when to leverage different types of strategy, technology, creativity and change management to move from conceptual to successful, future-proof CX.

Pippa joined Unilever Graduate Training Program in Australia in 1984 and during the following 15 years she worked predominantly in marketing.

Pippa has held various senior marketing roles with cross category experience in Food, Personal Products and Detergents. Pippa’s last role in Australia was leading a major change project reviewing the Laundry Business. The project was complex and involved an intensive brand, consumer, competitor feasibility study reshaping the Laundry portfolio.

Pippa moved to London and joined Brand Learning (a marketing consultancy business) and was able to pursue her passion for learning by developing live action learning events for Diageo and Unilever including innovation, concept writing, experiential marketing and marketing awareness for non-marketers.

Pippa returned to Unilever in 2005 as the Marketing Excellence Director for Europe reporting to the Unilever Marketing Academy in London. This role involved implementing the Unilever Marketing Capability Programme for Brand Builders & Brand Developers in Europe, facilitating live action workshops for Innovation, Insight Activation, Brand Vision & Brand Architecture Development & Brand Marketing Planning. Pippa helped to build the category strategy program for Unilever and then launched it across Europe developing category strategy capability. Pippa also facilitated & coached individual Brand Teams across Europe with their specific category strategy or innovation Brand issues.

Pippa returned to Australia late 2007 with her family and joined the GALKAL team working with Companies in Australia & Asia across a broad range of Marketing Strategy & Innovation Streams.

Pippa graduated from Sydney University with a Bachelor or Arts degree. Pippa’s passions include spending time with her family and friends and she also enjoys the theatre, netball, swimming, reading and travel.

A global marketing leader with over fifteen years’ experience growing some of the most loved global brands across Retail, FMCG, consumer goods and services. Kenton is passionate about leading teams to deliver outstanding marketing performance through creative excellence, category management and customer insight.

Kenton’s current role is to lead the overall brand strategy, customer insights, creative design, communications, customer support centre and customer experience at Target, ensuring full alignment across the business to drive sales and transactions growth both online and in store.

Bio coming soon

As managing Director of Isobar Australia, Erik manages the business across the four offices.

Erik has been part of the Isobar team for nine years, and helped grow both the team from 60 to 300, establish industry-leading capabilities in technology and innovation as well as represent Isobar externally through thought leadership in the industry.

Erik joined as a developer, after a period of time working both in Europe and in America. At Isobar, Erik has worked with a broad range of clients as well as a spectrum of roles across technology and innovation.

Infamously no-bullshit and immune to stress, Erik is currently tasked with driving the Isobar vision and evolving its business offering to keep Isobar at the forefront of technology, design, creative, strategy and delivery.

Personally, avid gamer (and ex-eSport professional), father of two and a relentless passion for good digital products.

Infamously no-bullshit and immune to stress, Erik is currently tasked with driving the Isobar vision and evolving its business offering to keep Isobar at the forefront of technology, design, creative, strategy and delivery.

Bio coming soon

Danny has 20 years of experience developing his skills and knowledge within the retail marketing, services and sales sector. He has worked with retailers and brands all over the world, having lived and worked in London, Singapore and Sydney for global and local brands across several marketing disciplines.

For the last three and a half years, Danny has led the retail experience offering for Y&R. Both as Managing Director of the IdeaWorks business and Regional Head of Retail, VMLY&R across Australia and New Zealand working with retail brands like Best & Less, Breville, Coca-Cola, Myer, Petbarn, rebel, Samsung, Telstra, and Woolworths to name a few.

Danny is passionate about creating memorable and impactful retail consumer and shopper experiences – both in store, online and essentially anywhere brands can be engaged and transactions can be influenced or made.

Matt Allison is the Managing Director of Ubiquity Lab.

Matt is renowned for pioneering a customer-led ecosystem that creates meaningful experiences, in a way organisations can monetise. He believes you must integrate all touchpoints across the customer journey to ‘win’ at marketing.

Matt was previously Bupa’s Head of Global Content Strategy, responsible for building and scaling a content-led ecosystem locally and globally – including Bupa’s award winning publishing hub the Blue Room and internationally acclaimed Bupa Blog Awards.

He drove the internal change management that enabled Bupa to connect brand, content, and performance marketing. This saw the Blue Room become Bupa’s most effective channel to drive brand love, as well as to increase customer acquisition and retention.

He advises top CMOs how to embed a content-led customer ecosystem.

Matt’s cutting-edge views and real life experience has seen him become a regular speaker and workshop host at numerour high profile events.

Suzanne Harman has a passion for growing iconic Australian food brands while engaging and developing talent at all levels.

In 2017 and 2018, Suzanne was recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 CMO’s by CMO Magazine. Today she is the General Manager-­Marketing at Simplot Australia, leading marketing for the business across all multi channels and brands for Australia and New Zealand.

Suzanne leads a large team of dedicated marketing individuals while also championing and coaching Australia’s newest marketing talent as part of Monash University’s Marketing Honours program.

“In the ever changing marketing environment we work in, developing a culture of continuous improvement, inspiration and motivation is key to consistently creating high quality work that matters”

With over 17 years of marketing and commercial experience in the FMCG industry with leading companies in Australia including Fonterra, L’Oreal and Simplot Australia; Suzanne brings a deep understanding of the importance of innovative thinking, cultural insight and the ability to connect with customers and consumers on a physical, social and mental level.

Driven by a desire to make a genuine difference in the shopping and eating habits of customers and consumers; Suzanne has a strong track record of developing impactful consumer focused, winning growth strategies for some of Australia’s iconic brands such as John West, Birds Eye, Leggo’s, Bega, Mainland and Perfect Italiano.

“For brands to stay relevant innovation remains a key driver to achieve growth.”