Content Marketing Mag is the official media partner for CMO Summit 2027

Content Marketing Mag has teamed up with Marcus Evans to become the official media partner for the 20th edition of the CMO Summit 2027.

The event will take place on 24-25 February 2027 at the InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto.

With the marketing function of most businesses now under more pressure than it has faced in years, boards want proof that marketing spend drives growth, not just brand awareness.

AI has moved from a talking point in strategy decks to a tool reshaping how customers discover, evaluate and choose brands. The CMO’s role itself is being pulled in new directions, expected to deliver commercial results while also leading transformation across the wider business.

These are the exact tensions that will sit at the centre of the CMO Summit 2027, a landmark 20th edition of the annual invitation-only gathering that brings Australia’s senior marketing leaders together.

Hosted by Marcus Evans, a global business intelligence firm with four decades of experience in producing premium executive forums, this milestone event marks 20 years of shaping how CMOs think, connect and lead.

A different kind of marketing event

Unlike the typical conference circuit, the CMO Summit operates on a closed, invitation-only model. There are no trade show floors, no oversized crowds and no generic panel discussions built for broad appeal. Instead, the format is built around peer benchmarking, curated one-to-one meetings and case study-led discussions between CMOs, marketing directors and the solution providers shaping their next move.

Six themes anchor the agenda:

The AI-First CMO examines how marketing leaders move past pilot projects and actually embed automation into daily operations.

The Growth Mandate looks at the shift away from activity metrics toward demonstrating marketing’s direct contribution to revenue and business value.

The Customer After Search addresses a genuinely urgent issue: how AI is changing the path to purchase as customers increasingly rely on AI tools rather than traditional search to find and evaluate brands.

The Marketing Organisation of the Future tackles team structure, headcount and capability building in leaner, faster-moving organisations.

Customer Experience at Scale goes beyond personalisation basics to explore connected, anticipatory customer experiences.

The Next-Generation CMO looks at how the role itself is expanding to include broader responsibility for transformation and growth strategies.

Who’s in the room

The calibre of current and past collaborators gives a clear sense of the level at which this summit operates.

Confirmed speakers for the 2027 edition include Hayley Bates, general manager of Marketing at Aspen Medical; Michael Magee, chief marketing and category officer at Kraft Heinz; and Persia Gough, chief marketing and communications officer at Hickory.

They join a legacy of senior marketing voices that has included Daniel Chan, global chief digital and marketing officer at L’Oréal Luxe; alongside CMOs and senior leaders from organisations including Nine, Tourism Australia, THE ICONIC, Youi Insurance, Schneider Electric, Tabcorp, ABB and Link Group.

Futurist Bernard Salt AM and trend forecaster Michael McQueen have also featured as keynote voices, alongside sector bodies such as the Australian Marketing Institute and ADMA.

This is not a room of observers. It is a room of people making the decisions that shape how Australian brands compete and, after 20 editions, the calibre of that room has only sharpened.

Why the invitation-only model works

For attendees, the closed format means conversations happen with genuine peers, not with a room full of vendors chasing the same handful of decision-makers.

For agencies and solution providers, Marcus Evans applies a selective vetting process before any introduction is made, ensuring the parties in the room are relevant to each other’s actual needs. It replaces the usual scattergun approach to business development with something closer to a matchmaking service built on a real strategic fit.

The result, based on feedback from past attendees, is a working environment rather than a networking obligation. As one head of Brand from Village Roadshow Theme Parks put it after a previous Marcus Evans summit, the sessions and one-to-one meetings were “so well-organised and structured”.

A partnership built for this moment

As Content Marketing Mag steps forward to become the media partner for this milestone edition, the timing could not be better. Twenty years in, the CMO Summit has become one of the most respected closed-door gatherings for marketing leadership in the country. Expect exclusive speaker insight at the event, behind-the-scenes previews and front-row coverage of the conversations set to define the next chapter of Australian marketing leadership.

This is a partnership built on a shared belief that the best ideas in marketing come from the people actually doing the work, and we could not be more excited to help amplify them.