Opportunities and Perspectives for the New Year

As we begin the new year, it’s impor­tant for CMOs to reflect on what went well in 2016 and what could be improved for 2017. Equal­ly impor­tant is con­sid­er­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties your brand will take advan­tage of in the new year. Sev­er­al con­trib­u­tors to our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com touched on these oppor­tu­ni­ties and offered some sug­ges­tions for how to look at mar­ket­ing from new perspectives.

Adam Phillips, Direc­tor (Sports) Europe of Wasser­man, shared the mar­ket­ing impli­ca­tions of ath­letes and sports stars expand­ing into the wider cul­tur­al land­scape through spon­sor­ship deals in areas such as pop cul­ture, fash­ion, finance, and sham­poos. Brands con­sid­er­ing spon­sor­ship deals should do their home­work and ensure that the sport or ath­lete they decide to spon­sor aligns with the val­ues and pro­file of their tar­get cus­tomer. When brands are able to make part­ner­ships where val­ues align, the mar­ket­ing impact is significant.

Gra­ham Rud­dick, co-founder of Com­mu­ni­tize, shared many of the chal­lenges com­pa­nies face when it comes to trans­for­ma­tion. Trans­for­ma­tion is dif­fi­cult and requires many com­po­nents work­ing togeth­er for a com­pa­ny to be suc­cess­ful. Accord­ing to Rud­dick, some com­pa­nies don’t need so much of a trans­for­ma­tion as an evo­lu­tion. The con­cept of evo­lu­tion cre­ates a less stress­ful goal for com­pa­ny mem­bers to strive for. Rud­dick offered some help­ful insights into how brands can approach evo­lu­tion in their companies.

CMO.com recent­ly sat down with Bet­ty Bekkali, CRM acti­va­tion man­ag­er at Nes­tle Suisse, to talk about deliv­er­ing engag­ing expe­ri­ences to cus­tomers. For Bekkali, this means devel­op­ing a holis­tic view of the cus­tomer by com­bin­ing data from all avail­able sources. She urges mar­keters to be at the right place at the right time with the right mes­sage to give cus­tomers an expe­ri­ence they won’t forget.

Sam Shaw, Head of Insight at Canvas8, dis­cussed the chal­lenges CMOs face in meet­ing the demands of inno­va­tion. Although around two-thirds of CMOs agree that inno­va­tion is vital to their suc­cess, they are also under immense pres­sure to deliv­er inno­va­tion quick­ly. Shaw encour­ages CMOs to stay ahead of the poten­tial dis­rup­tion by look­ing out­side of their brands’ direct com­peti­tors. Draw­ing from rel­e­vant exam­ples from Wal-Mart and Dol­lar Shave Club, Shaw illus­trat­ed the need to look at how cus­tomers are behav­ing in “dif­fer­ent con­texts that sur­round the brand.”

Klaus Som­mer Paulsen, CEO, cre­ative direc­tor, and founder of Adven­ture­LAB, pre­sent­ed an A‑to‑Z list of mod­ern mar­ket­ing trends that is sure to be help­ful to CMOs as they begin to think about the com­ing year. Paulsen’s list is full of impor­tant insights on what is cur­rent­ly on cus­tomers’ minds that might affect how a brand approach­es mar­ket­ing chal­lenges in the near future.

We hope you’ll spend some time engag­ing with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and learn from some of the top mar­ket­ing minds. Please let us know what you think.