The growing popularity of interactive tools such as wikis, blogs and mashups has enabled consumers to engage with firms as never before, creating new opportunities and challenges for global marketers. According to Future tense: The global CMO, a free white paper sponsored by Google, marketers are increasingly able to reach out to consumers at all points along the value chain, no longer just at the moment when a purchase decision is made. Many companies have moved to put customers at the centre of their operations: 56% of the 263 marketing executives around the world who responded to the Economist Intelligence Unit survey agreed with the statement that their company is highly customer-centric and that marketing functions and sensibilities are interwoven throughout their operations.
Firms are responding to the fact that consumers have many sources of information and are becoming more sophisticated in their purchasing decisions. “Now when you push a marketing message out there, something comes back. If it’s a great message, if it resonates and it’s real, the boomerang is going to be positive. But if it’s off message and it’s not genuine, or if it’s perceived as being disingenuous, you get slammed,” says Lauren Flaherty, CMO of Canadian telecommunications company Nortel Networks, an interviewee for the report.
CMOs continue to face the difficulty of measuring effectiveness, return on marketing investment and relevance to the business. Now, the widespread dissemination of information is causing global CMOs to adopt a broader role by engaging all corporate stakeholders—not only their traditional audience of customers and prospects, but also investors, employees, government regulators and others. This often entails integrating marketing and communications into all aspects of the enterprise in order to gather, develop and use customer intelligence.
“The CMO of the future must be the chief proponent of close engagement with customers,” says Nigel Holloway, Director, Americas, Industry and Management Research, at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Rather than merely pushing out the corporate message to consumers, marketers must draw them in so that they are regarded as helpful participants in the development of the brand."
Other key findings of the report include the following:
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Balancing global brand awareness with local market relevance. Centralising global marketing functions, such as advertising development and production, can create economies of scale and save money, but they must be guided by the needs of the local market. At the same time, marketing budgets must be decentralised so that regional directors can make appropriate decisions based on market demands.
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Integration of marketing with other forms of corporate communications. Both the interactive nature of Web 2.0 technologies and the transparency of corporate messages among different constituencies require the integration of various forms of marketing and communications. Businesses can no longer segment audiences and messages as if audiences don’t talk to each other.
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Adopting new media. Companies should consider setting aside a specific budget for experimenting with the newest Web 2.0 technologies. The CMO should have the foresight to anticipate how different constituencies will respond to different events, messages and channels, and should be able to deal with the proliferation of new-media tools and expanded audiences.
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Developing new skills, capabilities—and partnerships. CMOs must understand the fundamental business model, brand, culture, policies and values of the organisation. Equally important in terms of adapting to the evolution of new media are partnerships with vendors whose expertise can be used to take new initiatives to market faster—and more effectively—than a company would on its own.
