Marketing bosses need to get tech savvy - CMO study

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) must learn how to better understand and use technology and finance, a panel of experts said.

IBM hosted a panel discussion for its global CMO study, conducted between February and June, which surveyed 1734 CMOs in 19 industries, across 64 countries.  Brands included Qantas, Ricoh and Samsung Cheil, and 57 CMOs were surveyed across Australia and New Zealand.

The survey found that 79% of CMOs surveyed expected a high level of complexity in business over the next five years, with 48% saying they felt prepared for this.

The data explosion was the main source of concern with 71% of respondents feeling unprepared to manage its impact, with 68% feeling unprepared to manage the impact of social media and 65% feeling unprepared to manage the impact of the growth of channel and device choices.

Facilitating the panel was chairwoman of the Marketing Association Debra Hall, who said CMOs and marketers needed to learn the language of technology and finance in order to handle the demands of the future. 

This included better interaction between the different departments of a business, she said.

IBM New Zealand marketing manager Michael Friedberg said CMOs needed to step outside their comfort zones and begin to work in areas in which they had not typically been seen before, particularly in Information Technology and finance. 

He said CMOs needed to build their credibility of working across an entire business, and work on all four Ps – products, place, price and promotion, rather than just the traditional promotion.

There was an emphasis on the importance of getting and using data correctly in his experience in the industry across businesses and countries, Mighty River Power general manager retail and corporate affairs James Munro said.

He said while New Zealand faced the challenges of a small market when it came to employing the technology required for data analytics, there were options such as collaboration and the use of cloud computing to implement such technology. 

New Zealand businesses tended to think they had to do everything themselves, he said, whereas collaboration with like-minded businesses could be the solution to the barriers of implementing data analytics in a small market, such as expense.

Analytics, the application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry, and social media skills were key, IBM Australia marketing and communications manager Mark Willson said, and IBM was adapting its marketing team as quickly as possible to meet these needs.

The survey showed there was a need for CMOs to pay attention to individuals and not just markets in order to get the necessary insights into customers’ behaviour, values, needs and preferences.  82% of respondents said they used market research to influence strategy decisions, with 26% using blogs, 48% using consumer reviews and 42% using third-party reviews and rankings, three key sources to understanding individuals, the survey said.

There was a global feeling of moving from seeing consumers as a market, to seeing them as individuals, and the technology consumers had been using to access a brand had supported this, Warner Brothers Music Group New York director of direct to consumer marketing Eric Morse said. 

This technology made it possible to access customers on an individual level based on how they were interacting with the brand and their past use, he said.  Engagement via different channels such as social media became a one-to-one relationship, he said.