The Three Strategies Shared by the World’s Top CMOs
In my role as chief marketing officer of BCG—and in the on-the-ground marketing work I still get to do—I travel the world and meet many other CMOs. This is what I NEVER hear them say:
- “My marketing resources and budget are so huge, I simply don’t know how to spend what I have.”
- “The talent pool is so abundant—especially digital-marketing talent—that I just don’t know what to do with my team.”
- “I’m so lucky that everyone understands how much value our marketing activities bring to the company. There’s such awareness about what marketing can do!”
We may never reach that level of marketing nirvana. But as I said in my opening remarks atthe Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, when Forbes unveiled its list of the World’s Most Influential CMOs, the best marketers—including those in the audience at that event—have cracked the code despite the obstacles they face. They’re doing incredible work with the money and talent they have. And the non-marketers among us are beginning to understand what these influencers can do and the value that they can bring.
Successful CMOs are at the front of the pack because they are including these three strategies in their approach:
1. Leveraging Technology and Digital. As marketers, we live in an incredible time of change. Today, 50% of the world’s advertising money is devoted to digital innovations. In China, it’s 65%. The potential of targeted reach is powerful and effective—and remarkably advanced compared with just five years ago. It’s hard to imagine what the digital game in marketing will look like five years in the future.
Two-thirds of marketers today say that they will continue to spend more on digital to advance what they can achieve. At the same time, however, those marketers confess that they’re currently using only 60% of what their digital and technology capabilities have the potential to deliver. It can be difficult to know how to get the most from what we have—and easy to invest in the wrong direction. This is why the best CMOs know that their CIO should be their best friend, and the best CIOs see the CMO as their best customer.
2. Leveraging Diversity. As talent becomes more scarce, it is ever more important to look beyond what’s familiar in order to build extraordinary marketing teams. BCG data shows that more diverse organizations are more innovative. In fact, companies with above-average diversity within leadership report revenues that are almost 20 percentage points higher than those with below-average diversity.
For CMOs, this means hiring a pool that’s diverse along many lines, including gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ status, national origin, and more. But it also means looking beyond marketing majors to the data scientists and cultural anthropologists who are out there. Hiring a mosaic of people creates a marketing team with muscle, creativity, and resilience—and the greatest potential for success.
3. Leveraging and Amplifying Purpose. The technology at our disposal has the potential to bring great value to marketing—but not without the human touch. Marketing has always been made up of a wonderful combination of art and science—of EQ and IQ. These two qualities can thrive when an organizations and the teams it’s made up of are built on a foundation of purpose. Socially minded younger generations—millennials and those even younger—choose and stick to the brands that convey a sense of purpose, and the marketers that excel at expressing that purpose will continue to win.
Maintaining a higher purpose requires no shareholder return tradeoff. In fact, organizations poised to find success in the next decade will be those that understand that corporate strategy and social impact are inextricably linked. Defining purpose and putting it into action will also be crucial in attracting top talent—as the younger generations care deeply about what their employer stands for.
It’s an exciting time to be a CMO—to be witness to the breakneck speed of change within our industry and to be able to push forward agendas that can do the world good. I look forward to seeing what the best CMOs deliver next.