Ask Jo Boundy, CBA’s CMO, if data or creativity comes first, and she’ll tell you it’s data hands-down.

“It gives you a window into what your audience really cares about –their behaviours, pain points and desires – so you can connect meaningfully through creativity,” the executive general manager and CMO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia explains.

But creativity still matters, and she’s willing to make big bets when it counts. One of her boldest? Redirecting CBA’s ad dollars to produce a TV show, known as The Brighter Side, an eight-part show on Channel 10, developed in partnership with The Project and Paramount.

It was a move that paid off when millions tuned in and the bank built new levels of trust and connection during a time of financial stress for many Australians.

For the cost of two commercials, she created 176 minutes of high-quality, evergreen content, reaching over 2.2 million via broadcast and 10 million through amplification. With 80 per cent of viewers taking positive action, Brighter isn’t just building brand affinity – it’s making a real difference.

Certainly, her style as a CMO is centred on trust, people, and culture. She expects modern marketers to be resilient, given the pace, stakes, and visibility of the job. “You won’t always get it right. But how you learn and adapt is key to growth and success,” she says.

While she has a healthy respect for marketing buzzwords, there’s one she’d rather retire: Authentic.

“Authenticity is critical to build trust, connection, credibility, and resilience. But it gets thrown around so often [authentic brand, authentic experience, authentic storytelling] that it’s starting to lose its meaning and become very, well, inauthentic.”

Boundy’s leadership is a case study in strategic clarity and executional agility. She knows when to be bold and when to listen to data, when to protect legacy and when to innovate.

As she continues to stretch the CBA brand into new categories – from travel to green services – her impact is clear: She's not just marketing a bank. She’s redefining what one can be.

Effective marketing strategy

Therefore, as she sits at the helm of marketing for one of Australia’s most valuable brands, Boundy isn’t just safeguarding legacy – she’s boldly reshaping what a bank can be.

As CMO, she leads with a rare mix of creativity, data smarts, and cultural relevance, delivering commercial outcomes with deep social impact.

Her marketing remit is vast: protecting and growing a 110-year-old brand, navigating a rapidly changing media landscape, and connecting with more than 10 million Australians across every channel imaginable.

Under her leadership, CBA has transformed its reputation, helping Australians through cost-of-living pressures while also becoming a platform for progress in areas like diversity, financial literacy, regional community resilience, and fraud protection.

Over the past three years, Boundy and her team have evolved CBA’s 12-year-old ‘Can’ platform into its current expression, ‘For all the ways we can,’ a brand idea designed to reflect and celebrate the diversity of Australians while positioning the bank as both hopeful and useful.

Under her leadership, CBA has also driven a multifaceted marketing program focused on real impact—from championing diversity and inclusion in sport through high-profile partnerships like the CommBank Matildas and the Australian Women’s Cricket Team, to delivering financial education that has empowered customers during the cost-of-living crisis.

The bank has also taken a proactive stance against scams and fraud, with awareness initiatives contributing to a more than 70 per cent reduction in losses over two years.

In regional Australia, CBA has invested in meaningful engagement through programs like the Bush Summit, Beef Week, and regional branch initiatives. At the same time, the bank has hosted over 1,000 events for institutional and business customers to build advocacy and trust, while also expanding its brand footprint into new service categories like Travel Booking, Green services, and Car sales.

CBA’s position as a market leader is no accident. Its $15.7 billion valuation earned it the title of Australia’s most valuable brand by Brand Finance.

As Boundy explains, “With a 110-year legacy, the Commonwealth Bank brand is part of Australian culture. Our team is privileged to be custodians of the brand and our greatest responsibility is both protecting and growing our reputation.”

Not content to play by traditional rules, Boundy is also behind one of the boldest innovations in Australian banking: the launch of CommBank Connect, the country’s first bank retail media network.

“In 2023, I developed a five-year business case to invest in the infrastructure of our key channels; to connect our first  party data with our owned assets; to build a sales capability and to create organisational alignment on the valuation of, and access to, the channels.”

This platform reimagines the role of a bank in the media ecosystem, transforming CBA’s owned channels—ATMs, branches, app, email, web—into a data-driven media network capable of delivering tailored messages to millions of customers.

“In 2024, CommBank Connect launched: an Australian banking first, offering CBA, CBA-partners and advertisers’ access to over 10m CBA customers through a connected physical and digital content ecosystem. This includes over 2000 digital screens across 660 branches (more screens than Westfield), on 2000 ATMs, in app, email and web. Powered by CommBank iQ, Connect uses de-identified transaction data and custom segment insights (alongside  audience targeting, ad-serving, campaign optimisation and monetisation software platforms) to deliver targeted  messages to customers.”

With deep integration into CBA’s digital environments, Connect is forecast to deliver in a host of ways, Boundy says.

“Connect has improved the customer experience, serving more relevant, personalised and timely content offers and service messages in an  improved digital environment. Connect also enhances experiences for our Institutional customers, opening new  channels for them to communicate with CBA customers,” she notes. 

“The scale and complexity behind a bank becoming a media publishing business shouldn’t be underestimated – from deploying future-proof technology systems, deprecating end-of-life legacy platforms [CMS, hardware, posters, DVDs], compliance with relevant advertising, data and privacy legislation, overcoming cyber and technology risks, and  introducing new financial and accounting requirements.” 

Data-driven decision making 

Shortly after joining CBA, Boundy was instrumental in the launch of CommBank Yello in November 2023 – Australia’s first banking recognition program –built entirely on customer insight and data-driven decision making.

At its core, Yello is about recognising and thanking customers for their loyalty, while commercially supporting CBA’s strategy by incentivising customers to consolidate their banking relationships. The program’s design was informed by extensive market, ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative research to deeply understand what customers value most.

Since launch, Yello has become one of Australia’s largest loyalty programs, engaging over 5 million customers in just a few months, a growth rate unprecedented in the Australian market. Beyond engagement, Yello has become a powerful real-time feedback loop, providing rich behavioural and performance data that continuously informs product development, offer design, customer communications, and broader strategic decision making.

Through a blend of engagement metrics, offer activations, redemption rates, NPS scores, digital feedback, and communication performance data, CBA is constantly refining and expanding the program. This includes enhancing incentives and targeting, evolving eligibility criteria, and expanding Yello into new segments like small business customers through Yello for Business.

“We continue to evolve Yello by leveraging an extensive range of data points – including engagement metrics, offer activation and redemption rates, NPS scores, digital feedback, and communication and marketing performance – to inform the evolution of the program’s design," says Boundy.

Insights gathered from this data have led to ongoing improvements in incentive structures, such as enhancing benefits and more precisely targeting offers to customer needs. They have also shaped updates to eligibility requirements and driven product innovation, including the expansion of the program to support small business customers through Yello for Business.

The results speak for themselves: Deeper customer engagement, stronger retention, meaningful commercial growth, and, most importantly, a genuine sense of value and appreciation from customers. Yello is a flagship example of how data-driven decision making can power improved customer experiences, product innovation, and brand loyalty at scale.

People leadership

Leadership to Boundy is not just about setting a direction, it’s about shaping a culture where everyone is empowered to lead from where they stand.

“I’m incredibly proud of the culture our marketing leadership team have shaped together – one that fosters an inclusive environment with authenticity, adaptability and collaboration at its core. 

CBA plays a significant role in the lives of Australians, the economy and society. Our marketing team embrace this responsibility – putting it at the heart of our renewed team truths: ‘We are one team and we can make a difference in the lives of our customers, our community and the country’

“These truths, supported by a focus on transparent decision-making, have seen an evolution of our (large) team’s mindset, unlocking ambitious thinking and big ideas – with the customer at the heart.”

Additionally, her leadership approach has also embraced structural change. The enterprise-wide shift to agile ways of working enabled the team to form cross-functional teams that move faster, collaborate better, and learn continuously. By implementing quarterly retrospectives, she created feedback loops that allow for real-time improvements based on performance data and customer insights, a muscle that has strengthened over time and continues to drive effectiveness.

A critical enabler of this success has been its investment in people. “Development has also been a major focus, with 100 per cent of employees having an active development plan – focused on capability uplift [learning new marketing and technology skills] and practical application [through new and varied experiences].

This commitment to growth has not only elevated individual performance, but fostered stronger succession pipelines, and positioned Marketing as a trusted and indispensable business partner within the organisation.

Yet leadership also shows up beyond the day-to-day. One of the moments she’s most proud of came in 2024 during its annual Can4Cancer fundraising initiative.

“Over-enthusiastically, I signed up for all five events [21km walk, 50km team run, 20 km team swim, Barangaroo stair-sprint, 350km ride – the only employee to do so]. Having never ridden a bike; the training was  intense. I’m proud this leadership inspired many in our 300+ team to participate, raised considerable funds, but mostly built culture, comradery and friendship. The record fundraising speaks to the heart of our team and what we can accomplish together. For me, it was a humbling reminder of how far our leadership shadow reaches.”

As Boundy continues to push the boundaries of marketing at CBA, one thing is clear: She’s not just transforming the bank’s brand – she’s reshaping the very way Australians connect with it, blending data, creativity, and resilience in a way that sets a new standard for modern marketing.