Why Marketers Should Lead Digital Transformation

Marketing departments are experts in the field of change, so they have reacted quickly to the realities of the digital age. Now CMOs need to teach their companies.

It is well documented that media and entertainment were the two sectors most quickly disrupted by the web. First the music industry, and then newspapers, publishing, and TV were all forced to change their business models to adapt to the digital consumer. Failure to do so meant the end, or a long, slow drift into unprofitability and irrelevance.

For every other sector, this digital transformation has served as a warning. But for us, marketers, it was a game changer. It has altered the very nature of our discipline radically, and kept changing it every quarter, as new waves of media innovation have emerged.

What that game means for marketers was a shift—from telling great stories to audiences through big media channel—to telling great stories to millions of customers through an ever-evolving set of communications channels.

As the department closest to the customer in the digital age, it’s no surprise that marketing departments have responded to this change faster and better than other parts of most organisations, learning from hard-won experience of what it takes to change and transform.

And now it’s time to pass this on to the rest of the company.

Marketing Must Lead Organisational Change

The most sophisticated marketing teams in the digital age have created an organisational model, culture, and relationship with technology that need to be replicated across the company for competitive advantage. How have they done this?

• They organise for the customer. Brands that are thriving in digital have put the customer at the centre of how they plan and how they design their organisations. Focusing on platforms or media didn’t work—but the rise of customer experience as a discipline is a simple antidote to the feverish volatility of the digital media landscape: follow the customer, see what they are doing, and plan accordingly.
• To do this, they have had to break down silos. At first, marketing’s response to the digital revolution was to create more silos—a digital team, then a website team, then email, then SEO, then social media. The fragmentation created a crisis, which could only be solved by creating multi-disciplinary teams organised around customers.
• Tech doesn’t solve digital transformation. As the cause of the digital revolution, it’s tempting to believe that technology can be the answer. From the content management systems and listening tools, to the massive social media management tools of today, tech, however, falls flat without organisational design and culture change. Uptake of tech systems in marketing teams—teams of creatives, storytellers, and community builders—has been low when “solutions” have been imposed upon them. Designing the organisation, growing the culture, and supporting it with tech—often in small apps rather than grand systems—is a more sensible approach.

The transformation of U.K. fashion house Burberry, once the most traditional of luxury brands, into a truly digital brand is a prime example of how marketing can lead.

The customer-first approach to digital brought the brand closer to its communities of consumers and fans across social, web, catwalks, and stores. Activities such as the “Tweetwalk” in 2011 (a collaboration with Twitter to bring Burberry’s London Fashion Week show to fans via the social platform) was only the start of a stream of new ideas that have resulted in deeper relationships with customers.

The insights it gained from opening up the dialogue with customers have flowed into the organisation. Burberry’s catwalk shows have moved from being channel-centric in targeting retail buyers and media influencers only, to community-centric, targeting online and in-store audiences and online influencers, to customer centric—when viewers can buy product off the runway.

The capability to sell entire collections direct from the catwalk means major changes to Burberry’s supply chains and business operations—not as glamorous as live-streamed catwalk shows but just as essential.

Half Of My Digital Marketing Is Wasted—And I Know Which Half

What the best digital marketing leaders and teams have created is a system for understanding and talking with customers amidst the complexity of the connected age. When they do this, they win two things: the attention of the customer and real-time understanding of changing tastes, needs, and behaviour.

CMOs need to teach their companies how to become connected organisations around the customer. They need to seize the opportunity to lead their companies through challenges that only someone with their attention on the customer can truly understand.