Is it time to shake up marketing? Jared Blank of Bluecore says yes. Should the CMO report to a CDO of some flavor – a chief officer that heads up the digital experience? Barb Mosher Zinck looks at the reasoning behind a marketing department rethink. Her take involves the tricky balance of data and storytelling.
Marketing is very much about data. It’s about collecting, sifting through, analyzing and deriving insights from terabytes or more of data related to customers, products and services, competitors and more. The word is – if you can’t wrap your head around the data, you will fail. The CMO has a decision to make.
We like to think that we are years past the time when marketing was only about creative messaging and imagery. But it wasn’t that long ago. And although CMOs know that’s only part of what they need to do, the struggle with the data is still real, and it’s very raw for some.
So here’s a question for you. What if we shake things up a bit? What if we put the Chief Data Officer in charge of customer experience and, as a result, marketing, and reposition the CMO to a supporting role, focused on the creative aspects of marketing?
This is the suggestion from Jared Blank, Senior Vice President, Data Analysis and Insights at Bluecore, a decisioning platform for commerce. Blank said CMOs are dealing with a world that has changed and their role has had to adapt, both in terms of understanding the importance of digital and data to decision-making, as well as leveraging the right technology.
But Blank said the biggest challenge CMOs face is “managing up.” The CMO may realize that their role has changed, but he doesn’t believe many CEOs and boards understand that. Expectations haven’t changed, or they are unrealistic given the state of the world today. He said that’s why we see so much turnover of CMOs across industries.
The idea that the CMO has some magic tool or magic advertising campaign is simply wrong. Yet, Blank said that’s what companies seem to think, or expect – that a new CMO comes in, cleans house, brings in a new digital agency, launches some new campaigns and everything will change. More often though, within eighteen months, the CMO is gone.
The CMO’s job is not solely to buy advertising. Blank said a great marketing campaign on its own cannot turn things around.
So what does a CMO do? First of all, Blank said, they need to be upfront and realistic to management about what they can accomplish. CMOs need to be very aware of their market and how that affects what they do. They also need to be clear that transformation takes time and things will change over a few years, not one year. And that means they need to have a plan that addresses short-term and longer-term changes, avoiding any talk of quick fixes.
To enable the CMO to have that kind of conversation, Blank said the Board needs to play a key role. The Board must have a good understanding of the market and what external factors are influencing the business. Then, if the company still wants a CMO, they need to decide what success for that person will look like.
“If the company still wants a CMO…”
Is it possible the CMO role is in jeopardy? Blank sees a future – for some organizations – where the CMO is not the head of marketing. In these instances, the CMO role is replaced by the Chief Digital Officer (CDO). The CDO, said Blank, is ultimately responsible for understanding the customer, focusing on the data and marketing falls under that.
Essentially, you have the marketing department report to the Chief Data Officer (i.e. the head of brand, the head of digital, the head of events, and so on). The CDO looks at the data a level above a particular department or purpose to get a deep understanding of customers and how the organization as a whole must engage and interact with them.
To take it step further, Blank suggests that if as a brand you really know who you are and what your company stands for, then you may not need a CMO. Maybe a VP of Marketing who implements strategies and plans is all that’s required, and you look to a role like a CDO to provide the data insights and recommended actions to keep your implementation plans on the right track.
But is this just a name change? Does it come down to how you define the role of the CMO?
Or…
Is it time to shake up the marketing department?
One the one hand, I get where Blank is coming from. Making sense of the data is critical to success. It gives you the insights into your customers and prospects you can’t get otherwise. It keeps you up to date with the industry, the competition and anything else you need to understand to build a better customer experience.
If you are looking at that data from a holistic customer perspective, it’s a full-time job. It is more work than a CMO can do on his/her own. Maybe you need a Chief Data Officer – or more appropriately (in my mind), a Chief Customer Officer.
But does that additional role replace the CMO? That may depend on what your CMO does. If the CMO is more about branding, messaging and building awareness, then sure it could replace the CMO. And you could simply have in place a VP to lead the marketing department who focuses on implementing campaigns and creative design, not high-level customer strategy and planning.
My take – customer experience isn’t just about data
There is a bigger picture to consider. Customer experience isn’t just about the data. It’s about the story – the messages, the journey, how a customer feels, the help and guidance they desire. Data influences these things, but it doesn’t define them. It’s a creative process that requires a creative mind. That does require a CMO to work through and develop.
We seem to often fall under this single aspect view. A CMO is data-driven, a CMO is story-driven, and it’s hard to find a CMO that does both well. That is the biggest challenge for CMOs today – straddle both lines effectively. Because without the right data, you don’t know the customer, but without the right story, the customer doesn’t know you. If you expect the data will tell you everything you need to do and how to do it, you’re wrong. Sometimes it starts with a feeling and bubbles up from there.
Maybe the CMO can’t realistically understand and manage the entire customer experience from end-to-end. Maybe it does require a CDO or a CCO to hang out with them and feed them the data and insights needed to figure out how the work they do fits into the overall experience. Maybe we need to relax a bit and empower our CMOs to dig deep and find that story that resonates and then find the best ways to tell it. Just maybe.
Besides, CDOs typically report up to a CIO. Can you see marketing falling under the CIO’s purview? Naw, neither can I.
Source: Diginomica
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