Delegates will arrive at the hotel to register and check in ahead of the afternoon formalities. 

Join us for some snacks & refreshments before a big day of networking.

All networkers will be treated to a light lunch. Discover how to maximise your experience at iMedia, gain valuable insider tips, and ensure all your meetings are scheduled for Business Connect.

Marketers and Networkers, it’s time to head to the Ballroom and find your table for your very first Business Connect meeting. We’ll kick things off right after the Opening Keynote—so once you’re seated, you’re all set to start connecting without missing a beat and having to swap seats. 

Hailed as one of the most rewarding parts of the summit, business connect involves 5 x 10 minute meetings designed to float topline objectives and explore synergies. Delegates are required to request and confirm these meetings prior to the summit.

Delegates will be able to use this time to refresh, check-in with work and explore the surroundings.

Hailed as one of the most rewarding parts of the summit, business connect involves 5 x 10 minute meetings designed to float topline objectives and explore synergies. Delegates are required to request and confirm these meetings prior to the summit.

AI promised competitive advantage. What it's delivering — when used without strategic clarity — is convergence. When every marketer optimises for the same signals, audiences receive increasingly similar experiences. Efficiency goes up. Distinctiveness disappears. And without distinctiveness, there is no pricing power, no preference, and no long-term growth.

This keynote confronts the central tension CMOs are avoiding: the pursuit of optimisation is quietly undermining the effectiveness it was meant to deliver. Better targeting is not better marketing. And in a privacy-constrained, AI-saturated environment, "doing marketing better" has become the enemy of "doing better marketing."

The session diagnoses where marketing organisations are losing ground — capability gaps masquerading as technology gaps, over-reliance on automated systems eroding strategic judgment, and the slow disappearance of the bold thinking that builds brands worth choosing. It then maps the reset: how to rebuild distinctiveness, creative courage, and commercial impact as operational priorities — not aspirational ones.

Every brand is optimising. Almost none are differentiating. That's the crisis.

The risk in 2026 is not falling behind on technology. It's becoming indistinguishable in its use.

AI can now generate campaigns, design assets, write copy, build websites, and optimise media in real time. The tools that once differentiated marketers are widely accessible and increasingly interchangeable. As execution becomes automated and performance becomes a commodity, the question for CMOs is no longer 'can we do this better?' but 'can we still be meaningfully different at all?' This session argues that in a world of technological parity, brand is the only durable moat left — and challenges CMOs to rethink brand not as a creative function but as the core system that determines pricing power, customer preference, conversion efficiency, and resilience in volatile markets.

Trust is no longer a byproduct of brand building — it is a core commercial input that directly shapes acquisition, conversion, retention, and lifetime value. In 10 minutes: how reputation is formed in fragmented, AI-mediated environments; how trust signals influence marketing efficiency; and one concrete framework for operationalising reputation as a growth lever — not a communications outcome.

The boundaries between media, creative, and data are dissolving. In their place, a new operating system for marketing is emerging — one where discovery, targeting, content creation, and optimisation converge into a continuous intelligence loop. This session examines what this shift means for brand visibility when algorithms, not audiences, shape what gets seen and amplified. How leading publishers and brands are adapting: breaking down media, creative, and analytics silos to build fluid, AI-first marketing systems. For CMOs, the challenge is no longer reaching audiences — it is understanding how to be interpreted, ranked, and amplified by machine-driven systems.

As marketing accelerates through its most profound transformation in decades, CMOs are being asked to lead not just functionally — but strategically, technologically, and commercially across the enterprise. Looking toward 2030, this panel examines the forces already reshaping marketing today, and what CMOs must do now to remain relevant, credible, and impactful. Key tensions: marketing's ongoing enterprise credibility challenge; the CMO's evolving identity as a hybrid commercial-technology leader; what future consumers will demand from brands in terms of relevance, trust, and experience. This is not a speculative discussion about distant futures — it is a strategic examination of decisions that must be made in 2026.