The “New” CMO Role Is Nothing New

Many of us heard that McDonalds changed its marketing leadership and, rather than naming a new CMO, appointed two SVP roles, one an SVP of Marketing Technology who reports to the CIO. Though this made headlines, it shouldn’t really come as a shock. A quick search and recollection of articles over the years provide a timeline of sorts for this change:

In 2007 McKinsey noted that “Few senior-executive positions will be subject to as much change over the next few years as that of the chief marketing officer.” They noted that this thing called the Internet and changing customer behavior patterns would drive the change. Chalk one up for the shamans of shifting roles...

Spencer Stuart should get the “Crystal Ball Award” for their 2011 article that noted big data will be a distraction and insights that drive revenue will prevail when they noted that “To drive more revenue growth, companies need to translate that data into insights at the customer and customer-segment level.” Couldn’t agree more and that was 8 years ago!

And to bring us right up to the present for what may be the Crystal-Ball-Award-winner 10 years from now, just last month AdAge noted that financial accountability was the critical path forward for marketing leaders at brands like Coke and Hyatt: “Bringing the disciplines (marketing and growth) under a single leader helped Coke ensure that ‘building brands was not only creating strong preference and equity but also translating that equity into revenue and margin growth’.”

While I can’t predict the future, the tea leaves are showing a path forward amidst all this chaos and restructuring:

Shift from data-driven marketing to insight-driven marketing

If all our marketing activity was to stop for one minute so we could catch our breath and assess the state of data-driven marketing (wouldn’t that be nice!) we would see clear as day that today’s marketing leaders are data rich and insight poor. Consumers are pushing back against data stewardship practices and it’s time to hyper focus on game-changing insights, not just amassing more data riches.

Embrace technology and AI like a market-minded CIO

Marketing technology budgets outpace talent budgets and while specific line items will wax and wane over time, the inexorable rise of technology is here to stay. We need to figure out how to quickly ramp up CIO-like skills at managing and exploiting martech portfolios that deliver powerful insights and revenue-generating campaigns and creative. Leveraging AI to automate, predict and generate these powerful game changing insights is the path forward. For example, JP Morgan Chase has strategically leveraged AI and Machine Learning to optimize their direct response marketing programs to deliver double and triple digital performance improvements that make a real impact on the bottom line.

Do whatever it takes to sharpen a growth focus

We’re at the tail end of the longest bull market in history and while any fundamental changes to macroeconomic conditions will change market dynamics, the need to contribute growth in support of the CEO’s strategy is here to stay. That need may get obscured by a few quarters or years of recession-driven retrenching but the underlying need for growth is and always will be there.