Marketers have shaped how the world thinks and feels about most things we interact with. It may be time we turned that talent on ourselves and asked how the function is perceived, and needs to shift, inside the modern organisation.
At the heart of Deloitte’s Remarketing Marketing report, sits a question that many marketing leaders have yet to answer clearly. "What are we fundamentally for?”.
Seven years after first writing about the future of the CMO, David Phillips, Partner at Deloitte Digital, revisited the topic in collaboration with the Marketing Associiation of Australia. In 2026, he sat down with some of Australia's most recognised marketing and customer leaders, from organisations including NAB, ANZ, Woolworths, Coles, Optus and Kraft Heinz, to explore how the role of marketing is changing.
What stands out is not the scale of the challenges these leaders face, but the purposefulness with which they are responding. They are making tangible progress, redefining the role of marketing, and building functions that are more commercially influential than at any point in recent memory.
Combining global quantitative research with in-depth interviews from Australia's leading marketers, the report explores where marketing theory meets practice and what that means for the future of the function.
David Phillips is a Partner at Deloitte and leads the CCO/CMO Advisory Practice. For more than a decade, he has advised some of the region's leading organisations on customer strategy, growth and marketing transformation.
Before joining Deloitte, David was recognised as one of the leading strategists across the region while leading Strategy and Media at McCann following long stints leading brands, insights and innovation within global CPG businesses.
Today, he works with customer leaders across the region to identify emerging consumer opportunities and build the capabilities and operating models required to capture them.
David first authored this paper seven years ago and has spent much of the time since being proven partially right, which, in his experience, is about as good as predictions get.
