2024 – a pivotal year for marketers

We’re going to cover this because, well, it’s important. No, in fact, it is critical. Building and maintaining customer trust is core to marketing. It’s what ensures credibility in our brands, products and services. Customer trust not only means that customers will consider and trial a company’s offering but also earns repeat business and advocacy helping brands attract new customers. And key to earning and retaining customer trust is ensuring that as marketers we are across the appropriate regulations and any legal obligations related to what we do. It’s not enough to dust off your hands and leave this to the legal, compliance and risk teams. As marketers, it is most certainly our responsibility to have a good overall understanding of the landscape so that we are able to ask the right questions and understand how our processes need to adjust to mitigate risk for our brands. 

Head of Regulatory and Advocacy at ADMA, Sarla Fernando said, ‘Over the last couple of years we have seen the regulators crack down harder in holding businesses accountable to their compliance responsibilities, issuing huge fines to businesses who have been complacent. Beyond just the financial price that a brand may need to pay, there is also a level of significant damage to brand equity. ADMA is committed to ensuring marketers across Australia really understand the importance of upskilling in this space to protect not only their customers but also their businesses and brand/s’. 

The regulatory framework exists to provide guidance and structure for marketers, aiming to strike a balance between protecting consumers from harm, whilst enabling marketers to responsibly communicate their products and services to these same customers in the way that they are comfortable. 

‘The expected regulatory reforms will see a real shift in the onus of responsibility from customer to the business to act more responsibly, and to be more transparent in data practices and notices as to those practices’ says, Andrea Martens, ADMA CEO. 

2024 will be a pivotal year for marketers in the governance, regulatory and risk management space. So how can we look ahead, upskill and prepare ourselves and our teams for the changes ahead. Let’s take a quick look at what is coming: 

Privacy Law Reform

The Australian Government has committed to introducing legislative reform in relation to Data Privacy. This will be the biggest overhaul to the Privacy Act since its inception in 1988 and the expected changes are likely to have a major impact on data-driven marketing responsibilities, operations and compliance.

Clearer (and stricter) data and privacy regulation is a theme which can be seen globally

Given the complexity of the data landscape, we will likely see this reflected in the international privacy ecosystem throughout the coming year with the EU AI Act and some major updated privacy laws in the US.  Given the borderless nature of the digital ecosystem, marketers will need to understand how to both create a globally compliant marketing strategy and/or avoid the pitfalls of unintentionally getting caught within scope of considering increasingly varied regulations. 

Cookie deprecation in 2024

Google has now set a date for the deprecation of 3rd party cookies, this will significantly impact a range of marketing strategies, campaign optimisation metrics and reporting, understanding how this works in new regulatory environments will be key to gaining or retaining your competitive edge.

Responsible use of AI

Generative Ai is not only here to stay, but there are so many ways in which your marketing teams may be considering implementing it and this shouldn’t be left to trial and error. Your brands reputation cannot afford to be collateral damage.

Developments in consumer law

The emergence of the concept of dark patterns and the greater issue of what constitutes unfair trading practices is seeing marketing need to step up to its responsibilities across various functions from product design, obtaining consent for use of data, and the way in which the customer experience is optimised.

Martech effectiveness

As AI becomes more predominant and makes its way into your martech stack, marketing teams will need to understand what best practice looks like so that marketing efficiency is matched with effectiveness.

Skills and capability competitiveness

As the Industry continues to evolve at a pace never before seen- the skills and capabilities of marketing teams will also need to evolve rapidly.

Regulator focus

With the SPAM Act 2003 now being around for 20 years, regulators are cracking down on holding businesses accountable for errors.

With the spotlight firmly focussed you can see how 2024 really is the year to stay informed. And, while this may seem somewhat overwhelming, ADMA are here to keep you in the know and support and represent you in the consultations that matter.

‘Whether that is preparing submissions for government consultations, advocating on your behalf, or keeping you updated on how changes in regulation could impact a marketers day to day operations ADMA provides relevant content and training. Basically - we’re here to help’ says Fernando.

‘Whilst there are no clear timelines for many of these issues, there is significant activity and ADMA helps you decipher what needs to come into the marketer's focus and what is just (for now) noise. ADMA’s mission is to provide as much support to the marketing community as we can. It’s certainly going to be an interesting year’.