Marketing where trust matters most
Matt Farnham is an award-winning marketing leader specialising in brand, growth and customer engagement in regulated and high-consideration categories.
He is the Head of Marketing & Engagement at Heartland Bank Australia and the 2024 AMI Future Leader of the Year. He specialises in marketing where trust matters most, with experience across banking, financial services, brand transformation, customer engagement and commercial growth.
Matt’s work focuses on how brands build trust, create memory and influence customer behaviour in regulated and high-consideration categories. He writes about trust-led marketing, AI search, positive emotion in financial services, challenger brand growth and the role of memory in brand decision-making.
He is available for podcasts, panels, interviews, conference sessions and media commentary on marketing, brand strategy, customer behaviour and growth in financial services and other trust-led sectors.
Speaking topics
Marketing where trust matters most
Trust is not just a soft brand metric. In categories like banking, financial services, insurance, superannuation, aged care and health, trust directly shapes consideration, decision-making and growth.
Matt explores how brands can move beyond attention-led marketing and build the signals that make people feel confident enough to choose, switch or stay.
The Trust-Memory Framework
Most marketing conversations treat trust and memory separately. Matt’s Trust-Memory Framework explores how the two work together.
Memory helps people know who to consider. Trust helps them decide who to choose.
This topic is especially relevant for high-risk, high-consideration and low-frequency categories where customers need confidence before they act.
Brand growth in regulated categories
Regulated brands often face tighter rules, lower customer attention and higher barriers to action. That does not mean their marketing needs to be dull.
Matt shares how brands can build clear, distinctive and commercially useful marketing while operating inside regulatory, compliance and reputational constraints.
Positive emotion in financial services marketing
Financial services marketing often leans on fear, urgency or rational product messages. Matt argues that positive emotion can be more powerful, especially when brands are trying to build confidence, reduce anxiety and make complex decisions feel more approachable.
This topic is well suited to discussions on retirement, home lending, banking, customer trust and behaviour change.
AI search, trust and earned media
AI search is changing how brands are found, understood and recommended. For marketers, this creates a new challenge: what does AI understand about your brand, and is that understanding accurate?
Matt discusses why trust, earned media, consistency and credible third-party signals are becoming more important as people use AI tools to compare brands, products and services.
Challenger brand growth in banking
Challenger banks cannot outspend the majors, but they can out-position them.
Matt shares lessons from banking campaigns that used clarity, customer insight, trust signals and distinctive messaging to create commercial impact without relying on big-bank budgets.
Marketing leadership in small teams
Many marketing leaders are expected to deliver brand, growth, media, content, customer communication, stakeholder management and commercial outcomes with lean teams.
Matt speaks about prioritisation, team structure, internal influence, agency management and how to build momentum when resources are limited.
Previous media and commentary
Matt has been featured and quoted in marketing and business media on topics including banking growth, customer loyalty, challenger brand strategy and trust-led marketing.
Previous coverage and appearances include:
For event organisers and media
Matt is available for:
- Podcast interviews
- Panel discussions
- Conference presentations
- Webinar sessions
- Media commentary
- Expert quotes
- Moderated discussions
He can speak to marketing, brand, customer engagement, financial services, regulated industries, AI search, earned media and trust-led growth.
Contact
For speaking, podcast, media or commentary enquiries, please get in touch.