Marketing and Technology in 2016: how my 2012 predictions played out (and didn't)

This week, I attended a CMO-CIO “Uncomfortable Breakfast” in Singapore hosted by the Asia Marketing Society. We had Daniel Zoe-Jimenez of IDC present on digital transformation and he shared some of IDC’s predictions for 2016. I was excited to attend because the topic is one that I blogged about in early 2012 on my Desi CMO blog. The night before the event, I re-read my post and here is what I had predicted 4 years ago, when I was CMO of IBM India/South Asia:

 “We will start seeing marketing and IT come together on key initiatives to drive significantly higher ROI of both marketing and IT budgets. Marketing and IT will go into business together and the successful alliances in the market will financially enable more strategic risk taking by CMOs. Both roles will collectively wield more influence in the boardroom, than individually and if played well, they will become the left and right hands of the CEO and define the long term business strategy for the company. CMOs will become the voice of the customer; will come out looking like heroes; because IT initiatives with strong business alignment and sponsorship are inevitably successful."

Daniel from IDC and the CMO/CIO audience shared some interesting points I will summarize in this post. Their comments also helped me assess how my 2012 predictions played out.

In the face of major disruption in all industries, mostly because of new competitors, companies need to enter the battlefield armed with data they can use in order to win the ultimate prize: the relationship with the customer.  Despite the stakes being higher than ever, CMOs and CIOs in 2016 still have dramatically different KPIs and priorities. According to the IDC APeJ C-Suite Barometer 2015:

CMOs focus on:

1. Increasing marketshare
2. Accelerating multi-channel strategy
3. Improving marketing processes, measures and metrics
4. Increasing customer satisfaction rating/Net Promoter Score (NPS)
5. Harnessing Big Data and analytics as part of the marketing strategy

While CIOs focus on:

1. Developing innovation cells to harness ICT to gain competitive advantage
2. Improve or simplify IT infrastructure
3. Build better management tools
4. Improve security
5. Enhance enterprise architecture

Sadly, in the last 4 years, CMOs and CIOs do not have a single priority in common. So much for the first part of my prediction! Let’s see how I did on part 2, about them wielding more influence in the boardroom and on the business strategy, by understanding what is on the CEO agenda.

According to the IDC CSuite Barometer, APAC CEOs are focused on:

1. Escalating cost of operations
2. New business models
3. New competitors
4. Customer buying patterns
5. Government relations

Let's double click on CEO priority #4 above around understanding the customer. Where CMOs have become the “Voice of the Customer”, they indeed influence the business strategy and have become an influential members of the board. I know and am friends with some of these successful CMOs. But, how many of us CMOs can really claim to truly understand customer buying patterns especially when 50% of the buying process happens before the person even contacts us or comes to our website?

The key is whether CMOs have been able to effectively execute on their 5th priority above, harnessing big data and analytics. Here too, the CMO scorecard is quite lackluster. According to IDC, while 34% of APAC organizations integrate, combine and analyze their transactional data (i.e. data once the prospect makes a purchase), less than 20% analyze web clicks, social data, customer text or mobile engagement.  If 80% of us or more don’t understand the digital body language of our prospects in a world that has moved towards social media, marketing and selling, then becoming the “Voice of the customer” in the boardroom is a far cry from what I predicted for 2012.

Clearly, I need to keep my day job and quit making predictions!

Daniel from IDC was rather polite in the category he put most CMOs today...we are “retro digital”, companies that mostly use email and websites to interact with their customers.  But let’s face it, retro is not where we want to be in 2016, unless it's a retro themed New Year's Eve Bash.

But wait, I wasn’t completely wrong and misguided in my “youth” (ok, 4 years ago)…

There is another trend I predicted and wrote a post about later in 2012, which was about the rise of the “Chief Marketing Technologist” which seems to have actually come true. According to IDC’s APeJ C Suite Barometer, 91% of CMOs leverage now IT for marketing and most adopt a multi-pronged approach to leveraging IT – whether it be sourcing it directly from IT vendors or channels (34%) or working with their CIO (43%) or even asking their agencies to shortlist IT partners and integrate the solutions into their campaigns (25%). 32% of CMOs even have a dedicated IT budget given to their department! This widespread and mainstream adoption of technology, no matter how it is sourced, shows how the role of CMO has indeed evolved to become that of a Chief Marketing Technologist.  Yay!

Now that I am done being self-congratulatory about my predictive prowess, let’s get back to the real point of this post. Once the IDC session concluded, the “uncomfortable conversations” between CMOs and CIOs began, as the organizers intended.  CIOs in the audience raised a concern about “Shadow IT” but emphasized that this is could be the impetus for change amongst the CIOs and get them out of their “comfort zone”.  One of these CIOs, Tony Yeoh, VP of Technology of Inter-Continental Hotels, thoughtfully shared that, “IT recognizes that they need to innovate to be relevant otherwise marketing will go outside to find their IT”. Another CIO, R. Gopalakrishnan, of Citibank, shared that they run a Fintech competition to infuse innovation and nimbleness in their function.

A priority area that clearly emerged from both the CMOs and CIOs in the audience, that did not come up in the IDC predictions, was around talent management and the ability to attract the right employees. Incidentally, talent was a topic of the May Marketing Society “Uncomfortable Breakfast” where I shared some highlights from the 2015 Talent Trends Report and talked about how leaders and their organizations can consistently build a positive reputation as a great place to work. If talent is a top priority for you in 2016, regardless of role, check out the LinkedIn Talent Solutions Blog for some excellent studies, case studies and general goodness.

Special thanks to Lesley Olejnik, Director of the Marketing Society, Asia, for putting together an excellent series of events for us members! Looking forward to being more uncomfortable topics in 2016!