Few marketers can claim to have watched nearly half a century of the industry evolve from the inside. Chris Combemale is one of them.

Over 47 years, Combemale has worked across advertising, direct marketing and martech. He has spent nearly 20 of those years at the DMA, the UK trade body for data and marketing, where he now serves as outgoing leader.

His career has tracked a period of relentless technological change. When he started, email did not exist as a marketing channel. Today, artificial intelligence sits at the centre of industry debate.

The industry has transformed again and again during his tenure, according to Combemale. But his central observation cuts against the noise: while technology has improved dramatically, the fundamentals of marketing remain the same.

For a generation of marketers now grappling with generative AI, that perspective offers context. Tools change. Channels multiply. The core discipline of understanding customers and communicating value endures.

Combemale's five-decade vantage point spans the shift from mass advertising to data-driven direct marketing, through the martech boom, and into the current AI era.