Trendsetters: IBM's John Kennedy Offers Global CMO Insights in a Debut Study
Called "From Stretched to Strengthened," the first Chief Marketing Officer Study from IBM's Institute for Business Values, which provides C-Suite research, debuted this fall. At a recent IAA New York luncheon, John Kennedy, Vice President of Corporate Marketing for IBM, presented some of the key findings from the 1,700 face-to-face conversations with CMOs in 64 countries, representing 19 industries.
Without question, CMOs today recognize that both market and technology factors are two of the most powerful external forces affecting their companies today. They also believe that these two issues will drive increasing levels of complexity in the way they market products and services in the next five years.
According to Kennedy, the top challenges -- "the universal game changers" -- facing today's marketing leaders include:
- The explosion of data
- Social media
- The proliferation of channels and devices
- Shifting consumer demographics
Interestingly, the most proactive CMOs are trying to understand individuals as well as markets. Customer intimacy is critical for 21st century success, and this requisite fits squarely in the CMO’s domain. However, social media is changing many marketing assumptions and approaches. CMOs who mine new digital data sources also admit to learning more about customer needs. This is helping to define a tremendous shift in thinking from transactions to relationships.
How business behaves is as important has what it sells. Increasingly, CMOs are working to develop a clearer “corporate character” to insure that both management and employees exemplify a company’s values and purpose.
The ways of evaluating marketing success continue to change. Roughly two-thirds of CMOs believe that ROI or return on marketing investment will be the primary measure of effectiveness by 2015. However, half of those surveyed feel insufficiently prepared to provide real ROI numbers and admit that proving value is difficult.
"From Stretched to Strengthened" also underscores how the practice of marketing itself is undergoing unprecedented change and the role of the CMO is also evolving dramatically. The study points to three opportunities that successful CMOs are finding as critical to transforming their thinking:
- The empowered customer is now in control of the business relationship, and a CMO's goal must be to deliver value to those empowered customers.
- An organization's behavior is as much a part of the value equation as the products and services it provides
- The pressure to be accountable is not merely a symptom of challenging times; it is a permanent shift that requires new approaches, new tools and new skills.
