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.

For senior marketing leaders, the economic environment isn't background noise — it's a strategic variable. As New Zealand navigates a period of sustained pressure, the decisions you make now about brand investment, positioning, and audience trust will define competitive advantage for years to come.

Kiwibank's chief economist Jarrod Kerr delivers an unvarnished read of the macro forces reshaping the New Zealand market — interest rate trajectories, consumer confidence trends, wage growth dynamics, and the global signals most relevant to domestic brand performance. This isn't a generic economic overview; it's intelligence calibrated for marketing decision-makers managing significant budgets in a constrained environment.

Erica Beagley, Head of Brand and Content at Kiwibank, translates that economic intelligence into brand strategy — drawing on the hard-won experience of stewarding one of New Zealand's most prominent financial brands through cycles of uncertainty. She'll address the central tension facing every marketing leader in the room: how to protect long-term brand equity when boards are demanding short-term efficiency, and how to lead with conviction when the data is still catching up.

Together, Jarrod and Erica offer something rarely found on a conference stage — a genuinely integrated perspective from two executives operating inside the same economic reality you face.

Retail media is becoming the connective tissue between discovery, decision and purchase. This session presents the frameworks CMOs need to make the case for commerce investment at board level, including attribution, MMM-readiness and retailer–brand data collaboration. A NZ brand voice co-presents what they put in front of their CFO.

 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. 

Rise and Shine! Kick off your day with a buffet breakfast, served bright and early from 6:00am in the Garden Court Brasserie.

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.

Digital targeting finds individuals. Physical media creates shared experience — the kind that builds brand memory across a whole population at once. Commercial evidence plus a NZ brand CMO who changed their media mix because of it.

Using first-party behaviour data from the open web, this session surfaces the specific gap — where brands are buying reach that isn't landing, and why the mismatch is invisible in the metrics they're reporting.

This session will challenge leaders to rethink how brands connect with audiences in a fragmented landscape and how the open web will challenge leaders to rethink how brands can become a critical driver of both performance and brand equity in the next era of marketing.

Insights from a NZ brand that experienced a major platform disruption, had to rebuild reach from scratch, and learned that concentration risk in a media portfolio is as real as concentration risk in a supply chain.

Fuel up: Get your caffeine fix with barista coffee or tea, perfectly paired with a tempting selection of food.

Rise and Shine! Kick off your day with a buffet breakfast, served bright and early from 6:00am in the Garden Court Brasserie.