"Once a marketer, always a marketer," declares Thomas Barta. "Marketing is about creating change and desire, and I'm still in it."

Later this month, Barta is flying to Sydney from Cologne to present a keynote at Mumbrella 360 around the "catalyst" theme of the conference. He aims to provide a framework to close the gap between knowing what needs to change, and actually making change.

His overriding premise is that “companies don’t create the future — people do”, and that individuals inside organisations are the ones who propel change.

"If you wanna be a catalyst ... it's not about some skills you were born with and then you suddenly are that.

"It's that you need to very simply learn how to do two things very well. The first thing is ignite ideas that lead to growth ... second, you also need to learn to rally an organisation.

"We have a lot of people who have lots of good ideas that go nowhere. We have a lot of people who execute like hell and maybe are hitting a wall because they're in the wrong direction, and they have lots of people who do none of the above because they just tick along.

"But then there are these few people who lead the company and that is the role you can take, even if you are 21-years-old, and you are starting out in this profession.

"That's what we need to learn: How do you ignite and how do you rally? And if you take these two themes and you work on them a little ... your career will clearly take a positive turn."

Listen to the entire podcast to learn why Barta thinks the terms 'performance marketing' and 'brand marketing' are "complete bullshit"; how marketers can treat the infux of AI in marketing as akin to choosing the red pill or the blue pill; and why Donald Trump is the best marketer he's ever seen.

Mumbrella360 runs from May 26-28 at Carriageworks in Sydney. Get tickets here.

Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.