The face to face meetings at the CMO Summit are priceless

“A digital agency we met at the Summit is doing some work for us now. It was not on our radar before the Summit. The face-to-face meeting was very helpful” said Duncan Khoury, Head of Marketing, Octet Finance Pty Ltd, a delegate at the Marcus Evans CMO Summit.

What possibilities and business opportunities did the Summit bring your way?

It was a great opportunity to network with other senior marketing leaders, see what other brands were doing, connect with agencies, and pick their brains on different matters.

We had follow-up meetings with three organisations. We have started working with one agency already. When the timing is right, we plan to consider giving work to the other two around CRM and website user experience. We will explore these next year.

Was this digital agency already on your radar?

No. I do not think we would have connected if we had not been introduced at the CMO Summit. When we went to the Summit, we were considering our options in the digital marketing space, and wanted to work with a smaller agency that could be more dedicated to us in terms of time and focus. Our face-to-face meeting at the Summit was priceless. That opportunity to meet one-to-one with the owners themselves, to then spend time with them in a more social setting over lunch and dinner, allowed us to determine that they were the type of people we wanted to work with. It gave us a lot of confidence in their ability to deliver quality work.

After the Summit, we had a tender process with three agencies, and we ended up selecting this agency. We have signed a six-month contract and are planning to extend it indefinitely. It is a relatively significant arrangement with a lot of room to grow.

Even if we had come across this agency during our research, it is unlikely that we would have selected it. There are many agencies around and it may not have stood out from the crowd.

How would you compare the Marcus Evans Summit with other industry events?

I found the CMO Summit very valuable. For me, it is all about the quality of the delegates and agencies. I definitely took a lot out of the presentations. I found one of the panel discussions in particular very interesting. There is value in knowing you are on track and facing the same problems and opportunities as your peers. The value of networking functions should also not be underestimated.

Find out more about the upcoming CMO Summit.