Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are going to have to fight to keep their roles, according to 2020 predictions by global market research house Forrester.
Dozens of high-profile CMO positions have been eliminated since 2018, including those at Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Netflix, and Walmart.
"The remaining CMOs must now demonstrate the value of still having a chief marketer at a time when the need for one is becoming less and less obvious," says Forrester in its report, Predictions 2020: CMO.
"The real-time, data-intense reality of the digital age has turned the CMO from a brand-building or even direct marketing boss into a generator of customer outcomes.
"But the reality is that most CMOs haven’t effectively navigated this transition. 2020 marks the beginning of a final desperate fight for survival.
"Those who succeed will do so by being accountable for it all — the brand, communications, sales enablement, CX, and technology selection — while influencing the employee experience and driving the innovation and change that customer obsession requires."
Forrester says CMOs must master these truths:
Establish a span of control in the name of customer value. Forrester says: “You can’t build, express, sell, communicate, connect, or service today’s brands without continuity: A company must demonstrate its brand promise everywhere.”
Brand is freed from the exclusivity of marketing. Forrester says: “Counterintuitively, eliminating the CMO position sets the brand free from the confines of marketing, reuniting it with the business. When Mars replaced its CMO position with a chief growth officer, it forced the brand to think differently, both from a marketing and a recruitment perspective.”
CMOs become crucial to employee loyalty and acquiring top talent. To employees, brand and business are personal. Forrester says: “The same principles that endear brands to customers and prospects — salience, fit, and emotion — also apply to employees, especially in today’s environment.”
Participatory CX. Forrester says: “By orchestrating CX, external causes, and startlingly new opportunities for co-creation, CMOs will become more than storytellers; they will become story-makers, placing consumers at the center of their company values, experiences, and processes.” For example, the Apple Watch allows consumers to contribute their data to health research. Apple gets credit for helping save lives.
Tech spend gets a strategic calibration. Tech spend has reached new heights, but productivity is in decline and CX quality has stalled for the fourth year in a row. Forrester says: “It’s clear that buying more technology before you have a strategy is no longer a solution for waning growth.”
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