From business buyouts to pioneering machine learning: In Marketing We Trust’s Paul Hewett on leading through marketing’s AI era

In this ADMA Spotlight, we speak with Paul Hewett, CEO of In Marketing We Trust and chair of ADMA’s Media and Communications Working Group, as he reflects on his big career moments and unpacks the ways in which AI is reshaping marketing.

To start, can you tell us a little about your career to date?

I studied product design at university with a focus on cybernetics and human-computer interface design. While I was there, I taught myself to code and was building websites when the first version of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) landed, so I was early into front-end design at a time when the web was still finding its feet.

My first role out of university was with Research and Marketing Group (RMG) in the UK, where I managed the direct marketing division. We built and hosted marketing databases for large organisations and government departments before cloud computing.

During my time there, I was part of a management buyout of the business, which was one of the most formative experiences of my career. Looking back, if I had my experience today, I probably would have deemed it too risky. But it was a success and I learned a huge amount working with some great people.

I exited RMG in late 2012 to start my own digital and direct agency called Nuance & Fathom, which blended martech, data and creativity. I then sold the company to join Frederic Chanut in growing In Marketing We Trust (IMWT) in Australia.

Throughout my career in data-driven digital marketing, I've been heavily involved in industry associations. Today, I'm part of the Advisory Committee for ADMA, where I chair the Media and Communications Working Group and participate in the Regulatory and Advocacy Working Group. I'm also a Digital and Data Advisor to Asthma Australia.

What have been a few of your professional highlights along the journey?

The management buyout at RMG was a standout. RMG was a substantial operation running everything from inbound and outbound call centres to print, mailing, warehousing and logistics. It was a deal that taught me more about business than any course ever could.

I was young and probably naive but that combination of enthusiasm and necessity forced me to learn fast.

Founding Nuance & Fathom was another highlight. I built that agency from scratch, blending direct marketing with digital in a way that felt genuinely new at the time. Selling it and moving to Australia to join IMWT was a big personal and professional leap.

More broadly, I'm proud of the transition I made from offline to online marketing. I was early into SEO, paid media, email and using social data to inform strategy. That shift shaped the rest of my career and gave me a perspective on data-driven marketing that I still draw on today.

How important is maintaining and growing your marketing skill set in today’s environment? How do you approach this for yourself and your team?

It's critical. Everything is moving at pace. We're seeing it right now with AI fundamentally changing workflows and how people engage with information and services. Remaining curious is one of the most valuable things you can do as a professional in any sector.

Personally, I'm structured about it. I undertake formal courses alongside casual learning through reading and podcasts. ADMA advocates a 70-20-10 approach to learning and development: 70% on-the-job training, 20% coaching and 10% formal education. That's a useful framework for structuring how you and your team develop.

At IMWT, curiosity is a cultural expectation. Our team knows we need to be on the leading edge of what's happening in our industry. We dedicate time to exploring new tools, testing them with clients and learning as a team. That's how we stay relevant and continue to create value.

What is one thing you wish you’d learned earlier in your career?

Not to cling to decisions just to prove myself right. Following the data and being willing to change course is how you get to the right outcome.

This is something I learned later in my career and it was an important shift. I've become much more introspective over the past decade and that's made me a better leader and decision-maker.

Comfort with imperfection matters too. There are too many perfectionists in our industry and it can be a real barrier to getting things done. Progress beats perfection.

What is going to have the biggest impact on marketing over the next few years, and how are you preparing for that change?

AI, without question. I think its impact will be felt across three distinct vectors.

First, engagement - how customers find and interact with brands. The discovery landscape is fragmenting. Search is no longer just Google. People are finding products and services through AI assistants, social platforms and conversational interfaces. Marketers need to understand and optimise for these new surfaces.

Second, production - how we create marketing assets. Generative AI is transforming content creation, design and campaign development at a speed and scale that wasn't possible even two years ago.

Third, operations - how we work internally with data and knowledge. AI is changing how teams access information, make decisions and collaborate.

At IMWT, we're preparing on both sides. Internally, we're making the business AI-enabled by centralising our corpus of business knowledge and operations data. For our clients, we're successfully helping them across all three vectors.

We were fortunate to be working with machine learning for large websites over the past decade, so we had the capability to move into generative AI early.

What are some of the key regulatory developments in progress right now that you think will shape the future of data-driven marketing?

In Australia, data reform and privacy changes will have a direct impact on how marketers collect, store and activate customer data. But I think the real frontier is Europe.

What's happening there around the regulation of AI training, data usage and permissions will inform the global precedent. Australian marketers need to be watching that closely because those frameworks will inevitably influence our domestic regulatory environment.

The intersection of automated decision-making and marketing is particularly important. As our industry increasingly relies on algorithms to target, personalise and optimise, we need to be prepared for greater scrutiny of how those decisions are made and whether they genuinely serve the customer.

What do you see as the biggest challenges confronting marketers today?

Staying on top of the pace of change. There's so much happening around us and things are moving faster than most teams can absorb. From a resource and knowledge perspective, it feels overwhelming.

At the same time, budgets are tightening and headcount is shrinking. Marketers are being asked to do more with less while navigating a more complex regulatory and economic landscape.

That said, it's a genuinely exciting time to be in marketing. The tools and capabilities available to us now are extraordinary. But we have to acknowledge the significant challenges our industry faces and equip ourselves to lead through uncertainty.

What’s the best piece of advice you would give to a university graduate starting their first role in marketing?

Build evergreen skills. Understand your customers deeply. Develop an analytical mindset so you can test, measure and iterate. Stay curious. Pair that with a strong understanding of technology and data.

The future belongs to people who can combine consumer psychology with the right tools. Without overhyping where we are heading, with AI, one person equipped with the right capabilities will do what used to take a team. That's a huge opportunity.

And be intentional about where you want to take your career. The industry will reshape itself around you multiple times. The skills that sustain you through that are curiosity, analytical thinking and a genuine interest in how people make decisions.

Why are organisations like ADMA so important for the wider marketing industry?

First, advocacy. ADMA gives our industry a voice to the government at a time when that's more important than ever. As the market evolves and regulation increases, we need a credible body representing the interests of marketers and the businesses they serve.

Second, capability development. Tools like ADMA's Capability Compass are genuinely valuable for marketing leaders who need to ensure they've got the right people in the right seats, trained to do what the business needs. Keeping teams skilled and current is one of the biggest challenges we face and ADMA plays a critical role in supporting that.

Is there a data-driven campaign or partnership you’ve admired recently?

I'll be honest, I'm less interested in the gimmicky, headline-grabbing use of data in marketing, which tends to be executed in creative. What I like is when marketers join the dots between different data sources they already have and use that to genuinely improve the customer experience while delivering better marketing outcomes.

The first example I can think of for this is Paylocity, a US payroll and HR solutions provider that shifted from optimising for lead volume to optimising for lead value. They discovered that only 12% of their Google Ads leads were successfully matching with their CRM, meaning high-value prospects were falling through the cracks.

By strengthening their data integration, they unlocked a connected view from initial click to final outcome. The result was a 62% lift in conversion value, a 19% increase in first-time appointments and a 61% improvement in marketing-qualified lead conversion rate. None of that required a flashy campaign.

The second is Elgiganten, a Danish electronics retailer that built a cloud-based machine learning model to predict customer value using first-party website data. They identified four behavioural criteria and used Big Query's machine learning capabilities to segment users into buyers and browsers.

They found that someone browsing over 100products in under 40 seconds had only a 3% chance of purchasing, while someone browsing 16 products over 20 minutes had an 80% likelihood, even without purchasing in that session. That insight drove a 7x improvement in retargeting performance.

On the whole, I think the use of data within marketing is still at low- to mid-maturity in most businesses beyond the basics of targeting. And in the context of automated decision-making now appearing on the regulatory horizon, it's important that we're using data to serve customers better, not just to optimise for our own outcomes

It’s exactly the kind of work I love doing for customers at In Marketing We Trust!

And finally, what do you enjoy doing outside of work?

My main passion beyond my family is playing guitars. I collect guitars and all the gear that goes with them. Like many marketers, I'm a failed professional musician but it's still a huge part of my life.

I also spend a lot of time expanding my knowledge in computer science and data science. I'm always reading, researching and playing with code. These days, I'm also experimenting with hardware to build localised AI and bots, which takes up more of my time than I'd probably admit.

I love learning, I love reading business books and I'll be honest, I do spend a huge amount of time working. But when I get those breaks, it's either guitar or tinkering with something technical.

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