10 Marketing and Life Lessons from Top CMOs (BrandWeek 2019 Coverage)

The second ever annual BRANDWEEK, a CMO symposium, brought together 800 marketers who together generated $3 trillion of revenue and created $767B of brand value.

Having been lucky enough to interview several of the CMOs in attendance, while also attending several of their inspiring presentations, here are the top 10 lessons we took away from BRANDWEEK 2019.

If you're interested in learning more about what other CMOs have to say about brand purpose and would like access to other CMO interviews we have conducted outside of BRANDWEEK, please let me know. We would be happy to share more content with you.

Here are 10 Lessons from Top CMOs at BRANDWEEK 2019:

1) Do You Eat Lunch with Your CFO Regularly? The majority of CMOs at BRANDWEEK mentioned they were facing intense pressure to demonstrate the ROI of their marketing spend. Several of them were looking for innovative ways of improving the efficacy and efficiency of their working media dollars. We also asked CMOs what their best advice for up-and-coming marketers was when it comes to managing the pressure on ROI and they suggested spending more time with your CFO and working together to identify ways effective ways to measure attribution.

2) You’re Probably Undergoing “Marketing Transformation”: Kellyn Smith Kenny, CMO of Hilton, shared her perspective on leading successful marketing transformations across three different industries. She asked the audience who was currently going through a marketing transformation and it seemed that the entire audience raised their hands. Kellyn introduced three pillars to a successful transformation: a crisp, coherent vision that people can follow; a coalition of key change agents; and finally, a sense of urgency or burning platform behind the change that inspires people to race towards the future rather than to run away from it.

3) The Secret to Unlocking a Winning Brand Purpose: The secret to unlocking a winning purpose is to find the intersection of something that is core to your brand, your employees, and society. Peter McGuinness, President of Chobani suggested that most organizations falter at brand purpose because it isn’t manifested and executed consistently every day across all touch points. Michelle Wald, the US Country Manager for Tony’s Chocolonely, explained to me that their chocolate bars are molded into unequally divided pieces to help bring more attention to the issue of “inequality” in the cocoa value chain – a smart way of using product to drive awareness of their brand purpose: 100% slave-free chocolate worldwide. Jim Stengel, former Global CMO from P&G, who now produces The CMO Podcast, suggested that the key to a successful brand purpose is creating a measurement system to track how consistently you are bringing your purpose to life across several touch points.

4) Major Marketing Skills Supply and Demand Gap: Vineet Mehra, CMO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, reported that most organizations are facing a tremendous skill gap. He suggested that having years of marketing experience is no longer a proxy for capability and that while we have an oversupply of traditional product marketing skill sets, demand is outstripping supply when it comes to native digital marketers. Brands that succeed in the future will require technology-enabled marketers that are data fluent. They will need to be brand builders, but also data scientists that have a multitude of skills including performance marketing and shopper-based design.

5) Do Marketers Need to Learn Python? I asked data expert, Jodie Antypas, VP of Global Analytics & Insights at EA, whether marketing leaders should consider learning Python or other programming languages. She laughed and suggested that while it would not be a bad skill to have, the starting point is to become more data savvy. She advised building your organization’s data maturity by asking tough questions about customer behavior, understanding what data you have and translating it into insights and actions that drive growth and ROI.

6) It’s Time to Start Building Your Audio Strategy: In speaking with Gina Garrubbo, President & CEO of National Public Media, the sponsorship arm of NPR and PBS, it was clear that all marketers should be thinking about how to grow their brands through audio. As people search for ways to minimize screen time and podcasts grow at a rapid pace, voice is becoming an integral part of our lives for finding information and entertainment. Leading marketers understand that importance of sonic branding and have built an audio strategy that delivers a consistent and authentic sound experience for the brand. This audio strategy aligns with their visual identity to create mental and physical availability for their brand.

7) Be Both the Shepherd and the Warrior: Peter McGuinness, President of Chobani, encouraged marketers to channel both your inner Shepherd and your inner Warrior at the same time. The Shepherd, which in Turkish means to give unconditionally, represents the good your brand puts into the world. Peter suggests that there is no compromise when it comes to your brand being purpose driven and making the world a better place. On the other hand, the Warrior represents an intense winning attitude where you need to figure out the one thing that makes your brand - and you as a marketer - special, double down on it, and be fiercely competitive. In doing so, you should feel backed by the confidence that your brand is doing the right thing and making the world better.

8) Who is Your Brand Including and Who Else Can It Invite In? Rick Gomez, CMO of Target, used two words to describe what success looks like for his brand: “for all”. With 75% of Americans living within 10 minutes of a Target store, Rick’s team wants to “help all families discover the joy of life” and not just their stereotypical guests. Rick suggested that strong brands can transcend divisiveness, helping us to embrace our differences and build community. His team’s most recent holiday campaign had a 125-member cast capturing 89 distinct holiday moments and he continually challenges his marketers to ask their teams “who is your brand including today and who else can you invite in tomorrow?”

9) Build Authentic Brands, Including Your Own: Rodney Williams, President and CEO of Belvedere Vodka, started off the discussions on authenticity with a great perspective on “fake news”, suggesting that it is not a new phenomenon, but that technology has created the ability for it to travel at unprecedented speed. He shared examples of how some marketers have leveraged information fragmentation to try to help their brands grow but reminded us that brand building is essentially about building trust. This holds true for all brands you build, including your own personal brand. Lisa Valentino from Disney suggested that we should all let our authenticity make people uncomfortable and that big things happen when we do. Perhaps the most memorable example of a leader demonstrating authenticity was Michael Benson, formerly at Amazon, now the President and CMO of CBS Corporation, who used FaceTime to call his wife while he was on stage received an award because he wished she could be there with him instead of being stuck at home with strep throat. What a great reminder of how “being human” creates connection and trust.

10) Focus On What You Can Control: Your Mindset and Your Skillset: Meg Galloway Goldthwaite, CMO of NPR, shared the three things she would do if she was a marketer just starting his or her career. She said over time you can build this skill of “figure-it-out-ness” which means that if you commit to investing the time to learn any skill, you’ll build competency over time. Her second piece of advice was in our highly digital world, don't forget about human connections. Ask leaders that inspire you for their stories, find out how they got to where they are today. Finally, as important as it is to be strategic and planful, she pointed to the fact that some of your biggest personal and professional moments will come unexpectedly, so live life with a sense of openness and focus your attention on the controllables: your mindset and your skillset.

Final Thoughts:

In closing, it is clear that there were a few different themes at BRANDWEEK 2019 that focused heavily on impactful strategic decisions around brand purpose and marketing transformation, but also explored key skillsets marketers require to succeed in our quickly changing world.

From performance marketing, to building audio strategies, and becoming data fluent, being a marketer in today’s world is not easy.

What makes it motivating is the impact you can have on the world around us, especially if you do it in a way that is authentic. So why not live life with a sense of openness and keep working on your mindset, while growing your skillset?

Don’t forget to enjoy the ride!