5 Insights for CMOs from Davos 2020

Right at the start of every year, the World Economic Forum takes place in Davos and helps define, shape and kickstart a global dialogue on the key opportunities and challenges that our world will face in the coming year. Given the presence of 3000 delegates, comprising a majority of the CEOs and Chairpersons of Global 1000 companies, over 100 Heads of state, Deans of the most prestigious academic institutions, Civil society leaders and a range of the world’s most influential journalists and media companies, it ends up being the only gathering of its scale and kind across the year.

Increasing, there is another persona type who is making the trek up to the “Magic Mountain” (a historical reference made to Davos by the Nobel prize winning author Thomas Mann). This 50th edition of Davos, saw over 150 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) present either as delegates or as Sherpas supporting their chief executives.

This expanding group is helping both steer the dialogue and also gaining perspective from being there. Here are my top 5 insights, as takeaways for CMOs from this year’s Davos:

1.      Climate is front and center of the agenda: The theme of the forum this year was Stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world, with a significant focus on climate change. The curtain raiser to Davos, the WEF’s global risk report, stated for the first time in history that all 5 of the Top 5 risks that our planet faces in the next 10 years are related to or derived from climate change. Companies are starting to both proactively or with societal pressure (think Great Thunberg and student strikes in 125 countries) do more on this front.The CMOs role, working together with the CEO, in defining the company’s purpose on this front will be a major priority for all companies. Microsoft for example made a historic declaration of aiming to become one of the first companies in the world that will go carbon negative. TCS and BrandFinance hosted a dialogue between leading CEOs and CMOs on corporate purpose, of which climate was a key part of the debate across all the industries represented. As just one example, the CMO of Ericsson, Stella Medlicott and Bernd Eitel, the CCO of Lafarge Holcim, spoke about engaging stakeholders and the role that technology has to play in reducing our carbon footprint.

Interestingly, I also had a conversation yesterday with the CMO of a leading Data Center company, who was concerned with and working on mitigation strategies related to their carbon footprint. Given that a recent report indicates that the emissions from data centers are predicted to go up from 2% of global emissions currently, to an astounding 14% by 2040, undoubtedly this will remain the top dossier on the desk of reputation managers at those companies.

2.      The rise of brand China: Unveiling the Global 500 Top brand report at Davos, the CEO of Brand Finance, David Haigh, shared a staggering statistic. Brands originating from the US continue to dominate globally, accounting for 204 of the Global 500 Top brands with a combined brand value of US$ 3.2 trillion.

Yet the story of the last decade has been the dramatic rise of China, whose 20 companies had a combined brand valuation of just US$ 112 billion in 2010, now has 75 companies featuring on the list, totaling to a combined brand value of US$ 1.37 trillion. This represents an exponential rise in the brand presence and brand value for a region traditionally not known to invest in building global brands. India, by contrast, had just 11 firms in the Global 500, led by our own group – Tata.

CMOs who do not have a China brand strategy yet, need to sit up and take notice of this trend. Walking my own talk, I made my first trip to China last year to learn more about the country and participate in the World Economic Forum in Dalian. It was very inspiring to meet our high energy team there and see the full scale and ambition of China at play.

3.      Technology, Technology, Technology: At Davos, one of the proxy measures of which sector is on a rise can been seen by walking along the main street there (the Promenade) and seeing which companies were expanding their presence and lounges. Over the past few years the promenade has come to be, as the Financial Times confirms, dominated by technology firms. Be it SAP, Salesforce, Facebook, Google, AWS, TCS, IBM, Accenture, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Cisco, HCL, Microsoft – every company has expanded their presence on the high street. In strong correlation, technology was the top sector in the Global 500 brand list, accounting for a growing share of 15% of global brand value. The WEF has also reorganized its center for the 4th Industrial revolution into 6 major platforms focusing on advanced digital technologies: Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Blockchain, Internet of Things & Robotics, Urban mobility and Drones. In today’s reality every company already is or is journeying to become a digital company, hence CMOs need to understand where technology is going and its impact on their businesses and brands.

4.      Inclusion is no longer progressive, it’s the basic standard: One of the points that Davos has often been historically criticized for is the fact that only a fraction of its official delegates are women. Although much more needs to be done to attain gender parity, there is already a progressive change on this front, with women accounting for 24% of the delegate list in 2020, up from just 15% in 2014. Organizations like The Female Quotient, led by Shelley Zalis, and Women Political Leaders, founded by Silvana Koch-Mehrin, have upped their presence at Davos demanding a faster acceleration towards gender parity in boardrooms, executive committees, parliaments and in Davos itself. CMOs who host events at Davos do have a responsibility to ensure that the speakers at their events look for this balance as well.

We are proud this year that our own events with MIT, Brand Finance, EdCast and Bridgital Nation at Davos fielded a range of inspiring women leaders who are blazing new trails in their fields.: Becky Frankiewicz from Manpower Group, Stella Medlicott from Ericsson, Vanessa Colella from Citi, Julie Bishop - former foreign minister of Australia, Filmstar Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Minister Rania Al-Mashat from Egypt, Hayat Sindi from IDB, Joumanna Bercetche from CNBC and many others.

 Image Credit: TFQ

5.      Create memorable experiences: In today’s context, experiences certainly trump materials. For CMOs of the past, it was adequate to perhaps push advertisements in magazines or broadcast TV as their primary strategy to engage audiences with their brands. While many of those investments have now moved to digital or social media, any good CMO knows that nothing engages the emotions of their consumers more than live experiences. An EventTrack study concluded that 85% of consumers state that they are more likely to purchase a product if they have engaged in a live experience with it. Whether it is Adidas, Google or Amazon, brands are increasingly curating experiential marketing activations that engage their audiences. Ad Age composed a list of the best experiential activations in 2019 which is thought provoking. In TCS, we have armed a very elaborate strategy behind our marathon platforms which engage our clients and employees in an emotional and experiential journey to fitness and towards a better life.

As Davos, our Tata Tea Kiosk was a major hit and at our 360 degree experiential geodesic dome hosted a reception for 400+ world leaders, with a “Digital Garden” as a backdrop. The theme was ordained in support of forest conservation efforts worldwide. The event also paid tribute to and made a donation to the Australian Koala Foundation, which will make efforts to restore the habitat of Koala bears post their destruction by the recent wildfires in Australia.

One of the “warmest” experiences created was by Zurich Insurance, whose uber friendly South African team served hot chocolate and caps to keep delegates warm. I always enjoyed passing by their zone and quickly grabbing a hot beverage in between hectic days of events and meetings.

 We are certainly going to see an increasing number of brands (whether B2C or B2B) indulge in more and more innovative B2H (Business to Human) activations of experiential marketing in the days to come.

The 2020s are undoubtedly going to be a decade where the role and impact of CMOs is set to surge. This gives us great opportunity, but also great responsibility. Wish all of you great success in the year and decade ahead!  

Since I am connected to so many of you who are accomplished marketing and communications leaders, would love to hear what you think about the points and trends above, so do chime in with your comments.