Being A Top CMO Now: 10 Insights On Marketing, Data & More

CMOs from Dentsu Aegis, Bloomberg, Face­book, and AOL talk about how the role has evolved and look to the future.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

CMOs from top brands and agen­cies gath­ered recent­ly to talk about what they do, how their skill set has evolved, where mar­ket­ing is shift­ing, and why they are excit­ed about the future.


Here are 10 take­aways from the CMOs of Dentsu Aegis, Bloomberg, Face­book, and AOL on mar­ket­ing, data and ana­lyt­ics, art and sci­ence, in-house agen­cies, and more from Adver­tis­ing Week.

1. A CMO Is The Brand’s Top Storyteller/Advocate

Don­na Wiederkehr, CMO of the Amer­i­c­as at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny Dentsu Aegis Net­work, said the CMO role hasn’t changed wild­ly and her job remains act­ing as the chief sto­ry­teller, which includes com­mu­ni­cat­ing the agency’s ambi­tions, as well as inspir­ing oth­ers.

2. There’s Never Been A Better Time To Be A CMO

Accord­ing to Face­book CMO Gary Brig­gs, it’s the best time ever to be a CMO.

You have the abil­i­ty to go to the CFO and the CEO and have account­abil­i­ty for what you’re doing,” he said.

Fur­ther, Brig­gs said in many ways, mar­ket­ing is return­ing to its roots in terms of find­ing key insights about what con­sumers care about and con­nect­ing sto­ries to what mat­ters to them, which also makes this a great time to be a CMO.

3. The Balance Between Art & Science Is In Flux

Brig­gs agreed sto­ry­telling is a key com­po­nent to the CMO role, but not­ed one evo­lu­tion is that there’s “a lot more math.”

Wiederkehr added that mar­ket­ing roles were at one point all art, but it’s now more of a mix of art and sci­ence, which com­pli­cates the CMO role, but also presents oppor­tu­ni­ty.

It’s just that we have bet­ter access to bet­ter data to fuel bet­ter cre­ativ­i­ty,” she added.

4. CMOs Are Still Figuring Out The Right Mix

AOL CMO Allie Kline not­ed if mar­keters aren’t using data as a means to an end, things can quick­ly get cloudy.

For so long, the non-data side was the one weight­ed down heav­i­est, but we’re start­ing to see that even out,” Kline said. “But it feels like we’re over-index­ing and there is a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to move where data, math and sci­ence become one very sol­id under­pin­ning to unleash a pool of cre­ativ­i­ty.”

Anna Fiel­er, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at online media net­work Pop­sug­ar, agreed even cre­ative types can ben­e­fit from infus­ing data and insights to cre­ate more effec­tive con­tent.

Data and algo­rithms can help [CMOs] do their jobs bet­ter, but the deci­sion about how to get bet­ter is a CMO’s job and can’t be out­sourced to sci­ence,” she added.

For her part, Bloomberg CMO Deirdre Bigley also called for bal­ance.

We get caught in the con­ver­sa­tion about data, data, data, which is wild­ly impor­tant, but we can’t lose the bal­ance of cre­ativ­i­ty,” Bigley said. “When you mar­ry tech­nol­o­gy with cre­ative and put them all togeth­er in a group, mag­i­cal things can hap­pen. They are think­ing with dif­fer­ent parts of their brains.”

5. A CMO’s Humanity Is Still Vital

Brig­gs, how­ev­er, said we might under­es­ti­mate how much data mat­ters. He sees a longer trend in which there will be much more sci­ence in mar­ket­ing, while also con­ced­ing, “You can’t take an algo­rithm to lunch.”

6. CMOs Need Tech Skills

In addi­tion to math, tech-savvi­ness is anoth­er require­ment of today’s CMO, Fiel­er said.

At the enter­prise lev­el, we’re expect­ed to be well-versed on big data and even at the con­sumer lev­el, we bare­ly got Snapchat and now we’re expect­ed to mas­ter Periscope,” Fiel­er said. “The bar is so much high­er and the job is so much more intel­lec­tu­al­ly rig­or­ous.”

7. CMOs Be Comfortable With A Lack Of Control

Accord­ing to Kline, CMOs have to expect the unex­pect­ed.

I think an impor­tant point about con­trol is that this is the first time in his­to­ry where con­sumers have com­plete­ly tak­en con­trol of media away from brands,” Kline said. “If you think back to soap operas being invent­ed by CPG brands as car­ri­er pigeons for adver­tis­ing, we’ve had the notion of mar­ket­ing under­writ­ing con­tent cre­ation for so long. And with the vast major­i­ty of the world’s pop­u­la­tion with a machine in their pock­et, every­thing they want to inter­act with is hap­pen­ing on a device.

We’ve gone from a con­tained envi­ron­ment where mar­keters have full con­trol to now nar­rowed down to a small screen where they can share and say what they want,” Kline added. “The notion of flex­i­bil­i­ty inside a mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tion and deeply under­stand­ing data and nim­bly react­ing is not option­al.”

8. A CMO’s Performance Is Very Public

Fiel­er agrees mar­keters have less con­trol as they can no longer sim­ply adhere to brand guide­lines, but rather have to orches­trate and con­trol sto­ries told by mil­lions of cus­tomers.

Now your score­card is pub­lic of your per­for­mance as CMO,” she added.

9. In-House Agencies Are A Great Asset For CMOs

Accord­ing to Brig­gs, Face­book cre­at­ed an in-house agency because it need­ed speed and also because the plat­form con­stant­ly intro­duces new apps and fea­tures and wants its agency to be tight with prod­uct man­agers.

Fur­ther, Fiel­er not­ed most brands aren’t pub­lish­ers or con­tent mar­keters, so they are able to ben­e­fit from col­lec­tive learn­ing when they work with an in-house agency.

In-house agen­cies can also help bet­ter exe­cute native cam­paigns and, Fiel­er said, this exe­cu­tion of native with the help of in-house con­tent stu­dios will be increas­ing­ly impor­tant as inter­rup­tive mar­ket­ing is los­ing its effec­tive­ness.

Fur­ther­more, the mar­ket over­all is still try­ing to fig­ure out what native con­tent actu­al­ly is/means.

There’s this evolv­ing con­cept of brand jour­nal­ism and how to tell sto­ries about brands,” Kline said. “Native is the catch-all, but we haven’t nailed what it is as a cat­e­go­ry.”

10. CMOs Are Optimistic About The Future

For her part, Fiel­er said she is most excit­ed to see devel­op­ments from future gen­er­a­tions, like Gen­er­a­tion Z.

They’re kind of born with two brains,” she said. “It’s excit­ing to see what they’ll do.”

Fur­ther, Kline said live con­tent is going to be huge and rea­son­able reac­tion times from mar­keters are only get­ting short­er.

We’re see­ing live social and live pro­gram­ming and all these dif­fer­ent ver­sions, which rein­forces the notion that there’s no wait­ing and every­thing has to be able to react in some­what real time,” she said. “Watch­ing live events, I feel like they want it right there and then, which is anoth­er big wave.”


What take­away res­onates with you most? Why?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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