Is Chief Digital Officer a Temporary Role? CMO, CIO, and CDO Trifecta
Mert Damlapinar
Empowering CPGs with strategy & tech solutions in digital commerce, MarTech, AI, retail media, digital shelf. ex. L’Oreal, Mondelēz, Sabra/PepsiCo | Advisory Board, Speaker, Investor, Author | Amsterdam & New York
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Chief Digital Officer- a “change agent” who sets the strategic direction of organizations by converting traditional non-digital businesses into digitally based ones using rapidly changing platforms such as mobile technology, digital transformation, change management, actionable insights, and even social media channels.
The CDO is a digital native that has spent their career in various digital disciplines. They have an understanding of both IT and marketing, so they can bridge the gap between these two effectively, leading major efforts for web development before moving on to something else new again with knowledge from one side or another refreshed by the experience.
The person holding this position should be aware not only of technology but also of how it applies to company-wide business initiatives, as well as overall business goals.
The CDO must understand the organization's overall marketing strategy and branding to ensure that IT doesn’t lose sight. A CDO knows that every digital project is about function, usability, business strategy, branding, and customer experience. The Chief Digital Officer is in charge of figuring out how to get from where the company wants to go strategically.
How can Chief Digital Officer (CDO) enhance the C-suite?
As offline and online commerce converge in acceleration mode, many companies have evolving roles such as Chief Digital Officer (CDO), Chief Digital Marketing Officer (CDMO), Chief Marketing and Sales Officer (CMSO), so forth and so on.
At its core, it's all about adapting to digital acceleration and transforming the organization as consumer behavior shifts rapidly.
Chief Digital Officer (CDO) can enhance the C-suite
??For CEO: CDO can act as a catalyst to drive digital transformation, innovation, and acceleration agenda for the CEO.
??For CFO: CDO can impact the bottom line with improved outcomes. Utilize digital as an enabler to drive revenue and bring costs down.
??For CMO: CDO can drive the shift from transactional marketing to hyper-personalized experience and engagement through dynamic content, social, mobile, wearables and search.
??For CIO: CDO can build a cross-functional team of digital talent with business understanding and new skills while the CIO oversees the back-end and CDO the front-end.
??For COO: CDO can digitize internal operations and create new user applications to accelerate execution with data.
??For CSO: CDO can support the strategic roadmap by developing new business opportunities and creating new revenue streams.
CMOs Must Partner with CIOs and CDOs to Enable Data-Activated Marketing
CMOs and their teams can only produce and deploy hyper-personalized content and offerings by utilizing a deeper understanding of customer needs and wants and segmentation -- by collaborating with their internal data leaders, CIO and CDO.
In the digital world we live in today is one where brands are being pushed to hyper-personalize, meet shifting customer demands and quickly react. For building brand experiences through real-time data to maintain and grow loyalty, CMOs need data leader partners to build robust data pipelines and generate actionable insights. Because accelerating data-infused marketing creates brand loyalty. By collaborating with CDOs and CIOs, marketing leaders can accelerate their data-infused strategies to meet ever-changing consumer expectations.
According to 2022 Gartner's Annual CMO Spend Survey, marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenue have climbed from 6.4% to 9.5% in 2022.
The pandemic has forced many organizations to re-evaluate their marketing strategies and budgets. In 2023, it will be a pivotal year for marketers as they seek new ways of reaching clients in an effortless way that meets today's customer needs while also preparing themselves against the ever-changing landscape trends ahead.
Digital accounts for 56% of marketing spend, but offline channels rebound, as shopper journeys recalibrate and CMOs balance awareness and performance.
CPG brands see marketing stagnate as inflation starts to bite.
Marketing Budget and Strategy for CMOs in 2023
For the offline channels, spending in events and sponsorship bounces back post-lockdown. CMOs allocate budget to fund brand awareness, engagement, and performance marketing, they reported that:
? 50.1% of their budget is spent on brand awareness and engagement.
? 49.8% is spent on performance media.
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Top Areas of Program Spend
The top programs are campaign creation and management, brand strategy and activation, marketing operations, demand generation, sales enablement, and #digitalcommerce.
CMOs' core priorities match CEO’s goals, but 61% lack the in-house capabilities to deliver their strategy, and marketing’s capability mix presents CMOs with a complex and often challenging situation. That's where CMO, CIO, and CDO can partner to deliver those capabilities.
Top 3 Strategically important capabilities gaps for CPGs
Many CPGs are pressured to elevate their CDO to CDO 4.0 levels, that's imperative. Besides, CDO 5.0 is coming soon, and it will bring new skills and focus on top of the previous four versions. The CDO is important to creating successful projects and is essential to finishing a digital project on a strong note while being accountable for the digital P&L. The Chief Digital Officer ensures that the company's digital business strategy aligns with its mission. They play where revenue generation meets customer needs and accomplishments are achieved! As with the CMO role, the CIO role is critical in making any digital project successful. CMOs are often faced with whether they want a traditional brand-centric agency specializing in branding but may need more technical strength when it comes to executing user experiences. Chief Digital Officer
Is the role of the Chief Digital Officer (or CDMO, CMSO) and their teams temporary as we go through this digital transformation?
For many industries, digital will be so infused with the overall business, and is it going to make sense to have a separate leader for digital?
What do you think?
Take care & smile.. Mert
Resources: TDWI, ChiefMartec, Gartner, CMSwire
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About Mert Damlapinar
Mert Damlapinar has been in director roles for eCommerce, digital marketing, and sales; he's currently the Principal, CPG Business Consulting at EPAM Continuum. He holds a master's degree in Applied Business Analytics from Boston University, executive management degrees in Integrated Digital Marketing from Cornell University, and Applied Data Science and Digital Transformation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He published his second book, Agile Analytics for Startups, on October 2022, and he's currently working on his 3rd book.
I help transform Your Business with Data & AI | Delivered $100M+ in Value | Follow for Digital Transformation Insights | Head of Data & AI Solutions @ MoneyLion | Northwestern Kellogg
1 年Mert Damlapinar great piece and informative article!
Chief Growth Officer | CMO, Board Member, Mentor and Advisor | CPG, B2C, Retail, EComm, DTC, B2B | Consumer Marketing | Product Innovation | International | ex-Starbucks | ex-P&G
1 年Mert your insights are always so valuable and I appreciate the time you take to share them with us. Question - what are the learnings so far about when is the right size ($M revenue) or complexity of a business where a CDO becomes an additional role to CMO?
Commercial Lead Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa. Asia eCommerce Leader of Year Multiple Award Winner. eCommerce, Marketing & Digital Commerce Expert | 20+ markets |
1 年Certainly believe it is a necessary and ongoing role in all companies. Change is always a constant
CEO - KOMERZ | Applied Economic Growth Models | Experienced CXO-level leader, Thought leader, Commerce, Data, Technology | VMLY&R, Ogilvy, WPP, Entrepreneur |
1 年Very nice article Mert Damlapinar CDO is going to be the pivotal role to integrate marketing, sales and supply chain by building a great data and technology infrastructure