A session that captured this particularly well was titled Who Owns Trust Now? Retail in the Age of Fragmented Platforms. It pointed to a world where many of the platforms that retailers rely on to reach customers are fragmenting, becoming politicised, and losing trust.
The implication for marketing leaders is uncomfortable but clarifying; trust can’t be outsourced to third-party channels, and it can’t be solved by creativity alone.
It has to be baked into the way brands collect, use and protect customer data.
For South African CMOs in FMCG and retail, these global insights land in the very local reality of PoPIA and its steadily tightening approach to privacy and direct marketing compliance.
South Africa is uniquely regulated, and this allows us to shape what “good and responsible marketing” can look like. It ups the expectations of the modern CMO.
PoPIA’s section 69 is explicit: direct marketing via electronic communication is prohibited unless the data subject has consented (with limited allowances for existing customers under specified conditions).
It also sets expectations around how consent can be requested, what each marketing communication must contain, as well as clear sender identification, and a means to stop further messages. That is the letter of the law.
Truecaller data shows that South Africans answered 8.7 billion spam or scam calls in the first 3 months of 2026, and rising media coverage of enforcement activity is signalling that tolerance for unsolicited direct marketing is wearing thin, with the regulator taking an increasingly assertive stance.
In other words, this is not a theoretical compliance discussion for “someday” – it’s gathering speed now.
For marketing leaders, the shift is clear: growth that depends on ambiguous consent or unclear provenance of data is becoming harder to defend and riskier to scale.
This is where the South African conversation still feels undercooked. POPIA is often discussed as a legal or IT issue. Yet the real operational pressure frequently lands with CMOs, where their marketing team has to drive customer acquisition, manage segmentation, personalisation, build customer loyalty, and strategise the use of automated decisioning and AI-enabled tools.
A better framing is now emerging for the modern CMO: to become the steward of customer data and the ethics surrounding its use. This is not about becoming a PoPIA technician.
It’s about taking leadership responsibility for how trust is earned and protected, especially when marketing becomes more data-driven and automated.
The Spencer Stuart research on AI in marketing highlights that “brand trust” and “human judgment” remain central as AI reshapes marketing teams and ways of working.
That is a useful reminder that the tools may change quickly, but trust remains stubbornly human. Similarly, Spencer Stuart’s CMO tenure research points to a role that is expanding, with CMOs carrying increasingly broad responsibilities and, in many cases, moving on to larger roles.
The outcome is that marketing leadership is becoming more enterprise-shaped, not less. Data ethics sits naturally inside that broader leadership mandate.
A practical consequence of this shift is that the most effective CMOs will not try to “own PoPIA” alone. Nor will CIOs be able to solve marketing’s trust challenges purely through technology controls.
The work is shared, and the overlap is growing. In many FMCG and retail organisations, the opportunity lies in building a “trustworthy data engine” together, where marketing ambition and compliance discipline reinforce each other.
That typically includes:
If customers are asked to share data, the benefits must be tangible and honest. Loyalty and personalisation can feel like service, or surveillance. The difference is the intent, the transparency and the consistency of the experience.
With PoPIA’s direct marketing rules and the post-2025 tightening of consent expectations, organisations need systems and governance that can evidence how consent was obtained and how objections are honoured. This is as much about operational maturity as it is about brand reputation.
A common fear is that privacy and regulation will slow marketing down. The reality is more nuanced. A privacy-first posture can create strategic advantage in three ways.
Firstly, it encourages stronger first-party relationships at a time when platform dynamics are less predictable and trust is more distributed.
Berlin’s conversations about fragmented platforms underline why direct relationships matter.
Secondly, it de-risks innovation. When consent, provenance and governance are clear, teams can move faster with personalisation, experimentation and new digital propositions because the foundations are defensible.
And finally, it elevates the CMO internally. When marketing leads with trust, ethical data practice and fosters cross-functional partnership, the discipline earns a stronger strategic seat at the table.
What we heard in Berlin reinforced a simple truth: trust is being rebuilt in a world where consumers have more power over reputation, and where the “how” of data use matters as much as the “what” of brand messaging.
In South Africa, PoPIA is one of the forces accelerating this shift. The modern CMO’s opportunity is not to treat that as a compliance burden, but as a leadership mandate.
To become a builder of trust, a steward of ethical data practice and a genuine partner to the CIO and governance functions. Not because it sounds virtuous, but because in the decade ahead, it may be one of the most commercially practical strategies available.
