CMO.com Highlights – The Evolving Market Drives the CMO to CEO Journey

Mar­keters know that the world of con­sumers is con­tin­u­al­ly evolv­ing with new tech­nolo­gies ever lead­ing the charge. Last week’s exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com touched on sev­er­al of the chal­lenges mar­keters face in this evolv­ing mar­ket. From the role and pur­pose of adver­tis­ing cam­paigns to the insights to be gained from oth­er mar­kets to the way adver­tis­ing is used in dig­i­tal TV, last week’s exclu­sives pro­vid­ed many action­able insights for brands to bet­ter reach their tar­get audi­ence. Addi­tion­al­ly, last week’s inter­view touched on the CMO to CEO jour­ney, which is sure to be an essen­tial read for many mar­keters who dream of being at the helm of a corporation.

Drew Nichol­son, CEO of Ogilvy­One Busi­ness, began the week respond­ing to a pre­vi­ous CMO.com piece by Rod Ban­ner, enti­tled, “Brace Your­self for the Ad-Poca­lypse.” Banner’s arti­cle pre­dict­ed the end of mod­ern adver­tis­ing and relied heav­i­ly on the idea that peo­ple engage with what inter­ests them. Nichol­son agrees that rev­o­lu­tion is inevitable when it comes to adver­tis­ing. As a part of this rev­o­lu­tion, social media and con­tent mar­ket­ing are becom­ing a much more vital com­po­nent to get­ting in front of con­sumers. The rea­son is that peo­ple seek rec­om­men­da­tions from peo­ple they know as a sig­nif­i­cant deter­min­ing fac­tor in their buy­ing behaviours.

Last week’s CMO.com inter­view was with Mar­tin Glenn, CEO of The Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion in Eng­land. Glenn has a long track record of man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence. The dis­cus­sion touched on Glenn’s jour­ney from work­ing in mar­ket­ing to becom­ing a CEO. Glenn encour­ages mar­keters who want to make this jour­ney to learn the lan­guage of the board­room. He also believes that mar­keters need to make their pres­ence known in the most impor­tant areas of their organ­i­sa­tion. For Glenn, it’s impor­tant that the peo­ple in an organ­i­sa­tion work coher­ent­ly togeth­er instead of being iso­lat­ed in silos.

Doreen Wang, Glob­al Head of BrandZ Mill­ward Brown, out­lines some insights Euro­pean brands can learn from brands in Latin Amer­i­ca. The crux of these insights focus­es on the oppor­tu­ni­ties brands have used to build clos­er con­nec­tions with con­sumers dur­ing eco­nom­ic down­turns. She gives sev­er­al exam­ples, such as the Brazil­ian beer com­pa­ny Skol, which is Latin America’s most valu­able brand this year. Brands can also build clos­er con­nec­tions by posi­tion­ing them­selves to give con­sumers a brand with a local feel.

Anders Schäffn­er, Dig­i­tal Con­sul­tant at Nordisk Film TV, dis­cussed the changes TV adver­tis­ing will have to under­go to con­tin­ue to be a viable brand­ing chan­nel. Schaffn­er encour­ages adver­tis­ers to move from tra­di­tion­al ad-fund­ed pro­gram­ming to some­thing much more native to the dig­i­tal TV for­mat. Today’s adver­tis­er fund­ed pro­gram­ming (AFP) involves cre­at­ing TV pro­grams that have a brand so ingrained in the pro­gram that pro­gram depends on the brand to exist and yet the brand itself doesn’t take away from the integri­ty and qual­i­ty of the pro­gram. He gave exam­ples of suc­cess­ful AFP as well as out­lined the val­ue this approach gen­er­ates to a brand.

Clos­ing out the week, Mon­i­ca Savut, Senior Research Man­ag­er of Econ­sul­tan­cy, shared some of the chal­lenges mar­keters see in tran­si­tion­ing to mul­ti­chan­nel mar­ket­ing. She shared that most com­pa­nies are neglect­ing an inte­grat­ed approach to their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Some of the fac­tors that have held mar­keters back from such an approach are effec­tive data man­age­ment, a 360° view of the cus­tomer, and the inca­pa­bil­i­ty to ful­ly analyse the cus­tomer jour­ney. Savut gives plen­ty of infor­ma­tion on how to face these chal­lenges head-on, but the most valu­able insight she pro­vides is the real­i­ty that con­sumers live in a mul­ti­chan­nel world. This, of course, means mar­ket­ing must change to meet con­sumer expectations.

We invite you to take some time this week to read and engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com. Please let us know what you think.