Insights and data will leapfrog marketing in terms of influence on business strategy and growth as a shift towards customer centricity takes hold, according to the CMO of Millward Brown Vermeer.
Marc de Swaan Arons, the consultancy’s global CMO, was in Sydney to present the findings of the Insights 2020 report at the AANA Reset conference this week.
The global research identified a set of 10 drivers that differentiate the way over-performing businesses, and those that are under-performing, treat insights and analytics.
Worryingly, however, Australians emerged as below the global average in terms of how customer-centric they believed their organisation to be – 23% to the global average of 36%.
Customer centricity, much like big data, de Swaan Arons said, is like sex in high school - it's something everyone is talking about, but not many are actually doing it.
Ahead of the conference, he told AdNews: “The traditional reasons for competitive advantage are over and now it comes down to customer centricity. Does it lead to business growth? The short answer is yes,” de Swaan Arons said.
“But what are the drivers of it and how do businesses achieve it?
What we’re hoping to do is equip insights and analytics people to connect better with their marketing colleagues on that quest to make customer-centric visions."
Currently, around 70% of companies have their insights teams reporting in to marketing, but de Swaan Arons believes the trend towards customer centricity and the total experience means it will swing the other way.
“You’re seeing more often a chief client or chief customer officer who sits above the CMO (and reports in to the CEO); they have marketing and comms and insights and analytics,” he said.
“We’re seeing COOs becoming customer experience officers and I think the trend is that insights and analytics will leapfrog marketing.
I’m going a few years out, but that would be my vote.”
Currently in Australia, the number of insights directors who report into the CEO is half the global average – at just 8% – so there is a way to go. De Swaan Aron also believes the age of the 'creative CMO' is over, with the role becoming more business-like and less about marketing.
The report is a follow-up to the consultancy’s Marketing 2020 report last year and polled more than 10,000 marketers and insights leaders across 60 markets.
This article first appeared in AdNews in-print (30 October issue). Click here to subscribe to the AdNews magazine or read the iPad edition here.
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