CMO’s Notebook: AMA Conference Highlights Challenges, Dispels Myths
Among the discussions: “Marketing’s Seven Big Problems.” Each of these topics was tackled at the conference by a highly regarded panel of C-suite marketers and marketing researchers.
A few months ago, Russ Klein, CEO of the American Marketing Association (AMA), told us about his team’s mission to lead the organization’s transformation. CMO.com had the opportunity to see how the AMA is putting this mission in action earlier this month at the Summer AMA Conference, in Atlanta.
Among the discussions: “Marketing’s Seven Big Problems,” which Klein touched on in our earlier interview. They are:
- Effectively targeting high value sources of growth
- The role of marketing in the firm and the C-suite
- The digital transformation of the modern corporation
- Generating and using insight to shape marketing practice
- Dealing with an omnichannel world
- Competing in dynamic, global markets
- Balancing incremental and radical innovation
Each of these topics was tackled at the conference by a highly regarded panel of C-suite marketers and marketing researchers. CMO.com had the opportunity to speak with two of them.
First up was Rob Malcolm, the AMA’s outgoing chairman, a senior adviser at Boston Consulting Group, and current “executive in residence” at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Malcolm participated in a panel called “Competing in dynamic, global markets,” which explored various commercial go-to-market models, structures, capabilities, cultural considerations, and scaling options to consider as firms compete more globally.
CMO.com: You were part of the AMA team that identified “Marketing’s Seven Big Problems.” What is the back story and why do these matter?
Malcolm: The genesis was a recognition that there was a need and an opportunity to bring the AMA commercial and academic communities together around the AMA’s new theme, “Answers in Action,” to make progress on understanding and creating actionable solutions around the burning issues and challenges that marketers face today. This will provide focus for commercial and academic marketers in applying the best knowledge to the most pressing problems.
CMO.com: You’ve spent most of your 40-year marketing career working globally. What is one of the biggest challenges CMOs and the C-suite face today?
Malcolm: My panel’s discussion was all about managing and winning in the global marketplace. My presentation was about the challenges and opportunities we’d like to understand better around building brands globally, such as developing new strategic models and frameworks to help CMOs do more rigorous thinking about global brand building to make the right big decisions.
We see lots of companies going back and forth between “think global, act local” and from centralization to decentralization. One of the challenges is that there is no framework to help evaluate where the unique value is in their particular industry, geographic spread, and business. These types of decisions have historically been driven through more cost-driven, supply-side models than actually understanding where the unique value is. For example, why is it that Kimberly-Clark is more oriented to winning locally and using global resources to help optimize local team performance, and, at the same time, its primary competitor, P&G, has been oriented to central control and driving this into the local organizations? Here are two multinational companies competing in the same geographic and product market spaces using two very different strategies.
The second issue I covered is once you’ve identified where the value is in globalization, how do you then go after that value? How do you organize? What are the capabilities, talent, and culture you need in the organization to win based on your specific strategy?
CMO.com: Given your various industry roles, do you often get inquiries from the C-suite on this “global versus local” issue?
Malcolm: Through my BCG role, I get called into a lot of multinational organizations where they are trying to figure this out. And usually they say, “Tell us the best practices of how you did it during your time at Diageo and P&G.” But I always start with the questions, “What are you trying to accomplish? What geographic and product marketplaces are you competing in? Where is the value for you to be accessed?” Company leaders should answer these questions first.
Then I can give them better answers on how to organize and prioritize. It is completely wrong for them to assume that one model from a successful multinational is right for them. For example, Apple with uniform technology and iconic design lends itself to a highly centralized model where change is best orchestrated rapidly from global headquarters. The benefits and usability of the product is not a function of local cultural differences. However, if you were a food company, food tastes are very local and culturally very different. For example, Mondelez was very comfortable reformulating the iconic Oreo brand to have a green tea center and much smaller cookies in China to win the local consumer.
Next I spoke to three-time CMO Kim A. Whitler , Ph.D., now an assistant professor of marketing for the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. (Whitler also has written for CMO.com, where results from her “CMO Impact Study” were also published.) Her panel, “The role of marketing in the firm and the C-Suite,” explored how the discipline should be re-examined and how firms can best implement and manage the new role.
CMO.com: What is one of the important points you made that CMOs and the C-suite should know?
Whitler: I organized my talk around the myths that either executives or researchers have, and then I shared insights that debunked them. For example, there have only been a few academic studies done on whether, when, and how the CMO matters in the organization. When I talk with practicing CMOs, their perspective is based on their specific company’s and industry’s situations. The question for us to understand is when and why CMOs matter in different situations. There is a premise among some who have limited exposures to different firms and industries that all CMO roles are nearly the same.
CMO.com: What did you say to dispel that notion?
Whitler: One of the insights I shared is that there is no C-level position with greater variance in roles and responsibilities than the CMO. In my research, there are CMOs who are just focused on marketing communications, all the way to the CMO having mar-com responsibility plus primary responsibility for strategy, revenue, pricing, product development, e-commerce, market research, and new business development. This amount of variance doesn’t happen to the same degree with other C-level functions. One of the implications here is that we don’t know what types of backgrounds, training, and capabilities will be best for different types of CMO roles to perform at peak levels. Often, I see CMOs who have changed companies falsely assume that their new CMO role will be similar to their previous company’s CMO role. This can impact a CMO’s ability to be successful.
CMO.com: What are your observations on the science vs. art debate echoing through the marketing ranks?
Whitler: The second myth I debunked was related to CMO training—that today’s CMOs only need analytical skills. If you look at the education curriculum for the next generation of marketers, we are heavily moving to the quantitative side. This does make sense given all the big data and sophisticated analytics available through software programs. But in one study I conducted … I found that firms with high marketing capabilities had a disproportionate number of CMOs with a blend of analytical and creative experience. I found that only being a CMO with a quantitative orientation was not enough. Being able to analyze data isn’t sufficient. Marketers also need to convert this knowledge into insight that changes demand. It boils down to knowing what to do and being able to do it are two very different skills.
People undervalue the creative skills needed to do this. We are seeing a pendulum swing. In reality, marketers need the skills to be able to generate actionable insights from information, and then have the creative skills to communicate and engage with consumers to change their beliefs and behaviors. So this is a warning that as we value quant skills, which we must do, we cannot abandon creative skills. … If a CEO had to choose between a creative-oriented CMO versus a quantitative-oriented CMO, I would recommend selecting the individual who had demonstrated an ability to create a team with diverse skills, rather than somebody who only values the science or art of marketing.
CMO.com: If you had to pick one trait that today’s CMOs need to have to be successful, what would it be?
Whitler: It is critically important for a CMO to be a transformational leader in today’s rapidly changing environment. Often, CMOs are hired to be change agents to rapidly transform an organization’s capabilities and culture. But very few CMO teams have a dedicated group to build marketing capabilities. This is typically outsourced. However, leading-edge firms and CMOs are beginning to develop an internal organization that can build marketing skills and change culture globally. The benefit is that the entire global marketing team’s skills, and other functions’ understanding of marketing, improve consistently across the company.