Year 2014 – Evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Before big data and analytics, marketers especially Chief Marketing Officers’ (CMO) decision making process and way of working was quite different. Their thinking and ideas were more based on historical data and lagging indicators. They had to wait for weeks if not months to see any results of a campaign or media-mix adjustments.

After digital disruption and emergence of mobile devices, 24/7 connectivity became an integral part of people’s life. Technology has empowered consumers and new buying behaviors are developing and shaping the market dynamics faster than ever. Consumers’ browsing and use of social technology generate plethora of data, and every day new data footprints get appended to the older one. This phenomenon has expanded CMOs scope by adding technology to the traditional arsenal of brand management and creativity. CMOs and their teams should use this great opportunity to crunch structured and unstructured data and deduce meaningful patterns of it. Currently, in 2014, data management is in a state where CMO can target consumers and tailored messages at an individual level. Consequently, personalization and relevance are the name of the game. In my view three things will be in the CMOs agenda for the year 2015:

• Seamless customer relations across multiple channel
• Knowing individual customers instead of customer types
• Innovation

We are in the early stages of technology-marketing evolution. With new developments and evolving capabilities we will see a very diverse CMO role in the coming years.

Have your say: ashok.bhatt@freshwaters.co

What’s in the name – Technology with different speeds

Lately a concept has surfaced and it’s catching up fast in the consulting word. It’s about dividing technology function based on speed and operations. I am in agreement that companies need to have right mix of talent. Talent that can efficiently maintain legacy system and keep up with new technologies. However, the way this idea is positioned in the mind is wrong. By creating an imaginary line and dividing technology based on unreal preeminence criteria, we are needlessly creating silos within the same function.

On the one hand we are emphasizing the need of an agile environment, but on the other hand we deliberately draw the line within the same function. This will defeat the very purpose of the agile environment – seamless collaboration with speed.

I think instead of dividing, the focus should be on developing and sustaining right talent with an emphasis on comprehensive technology. That way business leaders will send the message that they are committed to address both innovation and legacy challenges more efficiently and rapidly by addressing speed along with collaboration, simplification, and unification.

Have your say: ashok.bhatt@freshwaters.co