Marketing’s lost generation

CMOs need to learn to use digital tools, too

The Economist recently published this piece by me on the need for CMOs to become more digital-savvy. They've been kind enough to let me reproduce it here.

I spent a day last month in East London learning to code. As the CMO of the second largest advertiser in the world, this wasn’t because I had some spare time to kill hanging around in a building with some exposed brick walls nursing a flat white, stylish as it may be.  It was because I was putting my money where my mouth is in terms of training and capabilities.

I have talked a lot—both internally to our Unilever marketers, and on external platforms as well—about the value of capability-building in this fast changing world.  Training, skills development and coaching is the obvious thing to do to succeed in sport. I don’t see why it should be any different in business.  People who are too busy and important doing emails and being in meetings to look after their own development are going to find it very difficult to survive and thrive in today’s dynamic, changing, connected consumer landscape.

We are no longer doing “digital marketing,” but marketing in a digital world, and marketers need to embrace technology to keep ahead. And so off I went to the fantastic Decoded in Shoreditch to learn how to build a website, embed an API and get consumers interacting with brands on mobile—amongst other things!

I firmly believe that an understanding of digital is a core skill to any businessperson or marketer working to build brands today. As Angela Ahrendts said, “I grew up in a physical world and I speak English. The next generation is growing up in a digital world, and they speak social.”

In the marketing industry I see us facing a real challenge to reach our consumers, let alone stay ahead of them, if we do not upskill ourselves in all things digital and mobile. There is a lost generation of marketers in our midst, marketers in their late 30s and early 40s who are too young to have children old enough to immerse them in the digital age, and too old to be digital natives. And yet in many places these are the people leading our social and mobile strategies and execution.

At Unilever we have launched a company-wide capability programme to get our marketers to the future first in today’s connected world, a programme that everyone, from the CEO right down to the trainees, have to take part in. It’s only through wide-ranging programmes such as this that we will start to tackle the lacuna of digital skills that I see widening in front of me. Understanding coding was just element of this skillset that I wanted to make sure I picked up—but a crucial one, as it gives insight into a whole new world of how our brands can reach consumers where they increasingly are: on mobile.

This year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Advertising we saw some fantastic examples of creativity from marketers across the digital space. This area is only going to increase, so I encourage all of you to get out there and learn and tool up.

Understand it. Live it breathe it. Change is not something that happens by accident. People like you and I need to make it happen.

Check out all the coverage from The Economist’s Wake Up Cannes panels during the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity on Marketing Unbound, and go to our YouTube channel for video highlights and more.