What keeps the modern/today’s CMOs awake at night? What resources and skills do they need to enable them to thrive in the always-on world of digital and social media? What talent and external consultancy are they looking for to help their brands to grow?
Ebiquity’s Group Head of Marketing, Richard Hemming, shares the findings of a new study of CMOs worldwide. The research shows that, while concerns are similar the world over, CMOs in post- recession Europe are now actively tackling the issues and challenges of harnessing and exploiting digital data and new channel choices, to some extent following the lead of their North American counterparts.
The CMO of 2015 is required to be a very different animal from the CMO of even just five years ago. The demands placed on today’s CMOs are intense, and the biggest challenges center on capturing, harnessing, and managing consumer and customer data. The CMO who can become the master of Big Data to personalize and tailor individual customer experience – combining both logic and magic, in the words of Marc Mathieu, Unilever’s Global SVP of Marketing – is the CMO who will thrive. As IBM Europe’s CMO Caroline Taylor recently said, Big Data is “marketing heaven,” adding that “the biggest challenge as a marketer in the current marketplace is trying to achieve the transformation of being a ‘digital CMO’ with the speed at which digital is evolving.”
Global research findings
The Ebiquity/CMO Council study asked CMOs to rank 12 challenges on a scale from most to least challenging. Across the world, the top three challenges were consistently agreed to be centered on Big Data and multi-channel analytics, specifically:
1 – Managing the explosion in consumer data
2 – Analyzing and exploiting consumer data to automate and/or personalize marcomms
3 – Exploiting new consumer channel and device choices
72 percent of our global sample ranked managing the explosion in consumer data as one of their three leading challenges, compared – for instance – with social media management, which just 4 percent ranked in their top three concerns. Indeed, CMOs appear to be reaping the benefits of investment of time, resources, and personnel in social media management, an area that has historically been a major area of concern. Moreover, today’s focus on data and tech contrasts strongly with a 2007 study from Forrester that found fewer than 15 percent of CMOs ranked tech-savviness as important to their success.
What this new research demonstrates is that CMOs today find it difficult to deal with and harness the benefits from the smog of data that digital and social media assets generate. They’re aware that digital analytics – in essence, understanding how their customers experience their brand across multiple channels and devices – offers the prospect of automated, personalized, and highly-targeted marketing communications, but they are also honest enough to aDMit this is still relatively uncharted territory.
Our findings echo a recent study conducted by IBM which showed that 79 percent of CMOs feel underprepared to manage the impact of key changes in marketing, particularly the data explosion, and growth of channel and device choices. Moreover, although globally CMOs are most concerned about how to manage, analyze, and exploit consumer data across channels and platforms, they are nevertheless confident that they will succeed.
77 percent say they feel fairly or very well-equipped to manage the explosion in consumer data – 69 percent feel they are fairly or very well-equipped to automate and personalize marketing communications. But it’s clear they won’t be doing this alone or using solely in-house resource. One of the consequences of the rapid drive to digital analytics is a global talent squeeze, and seven in ten global CMOs plan to recruit external consultancy help to manage consumer data, and almost eight in ten plan to work with external partners to automate and personalize marcomms.
Our finding that managing and exploiting consumer data is a pain point for CMOs specifically and not for marketing executives in general is backed up by a recent article in DM News. This showed that while 64 percent of CMOs have marketing analytics as a responsibility, by contrast only 31 percent
of marketing executives say that harnessing insights from Big Data is a pain point. The onus of data-into-insights rests with the top women and men in the marketing world.
The European ‘data dawn’
It is generally agreed that North American businesses lead the world in the application of digital analytics to grow their businesses, tailoring marcomms at the individual customer level. During the recessionary years around the end of the first decade of the new millennium, many European businesses stalled investment here just as customer data was exploding and new opportunities for more effective and measurable targeting became possible.
The responses in the CMO Council’s research for Ebiquity from CMOs based in Europe suggest that the continent’s marketers are at a critical inflection point in the history of commerce managing digital customer data to automate and personalize marketing. Europe’s pause in developing solutions in this space means that European CMOs see managing the explosion inconsumer data as even more of a priority than their peers in North America or elsewhere (79 percent rank this concern as among their top three challenges against 72 percent globally).
Morag Blazey, CEO of Ebiquity UK, commented: “Consumer data analytics features in more and more of our client briefs. It is clear that marketers across Europe have realized that embracing multi- channel analytics – a new skillset for many – is critical to the future success of their business.”
Like their North American counterparts, European CMOs say they are confident they will be able to address this challenge, with 78 percent saying they are fairly or very well-equipped to tackle it, but they will be even more dependent on external consultancy help in managing the explosion of consumer data. 82 percent in Europe – compared with just 58 percent of CMOs in the USA/Canada, and 70 percent worldwide – will turn to external help, suggesting that the talent crunch is even more pronounced in Europe.
ietmar Kruse, CEO Continental Europe at Ebiquity, added: “Our experience helping US brands in this area (see sidebar) is leading to deeper conversations with their European counterparts. What is clear is that Europe’s ‘data dawn’ is very definitely upon us, and we’re ready for the challenge.”
Transforming business through digital analytics
Stratigent, Ebiquity’s North American Multi-Channel Analytics subsidiary, has an
established track record in helping businesses to manage, analyze, and harness the power of digital data from across the customer journey to commercial advantage.
For InterContinental Hotels Group – operating 4,800 hotels across 100 countries and nine brands – Stratigent has helped the hotel operator innovate at scale, from effective tag management to global web analytics. See the interview with IHG’s Garrod Gibb also in this issue (page 10).
For a major FMCG player, Stratigent implemented an evidence- and behavior- based redesign of the client’s webpage, enhanced the shopping cart experience and functionality, and maximized cross-sell and upsell opportunities.
And for a leading airline, Stratigent has improved the customer journey at every step to deliver an additional $30m in annual revenue.
About our research
The CMO Council is a knowledge-sharing, by-invitation network of thousands of senior-level marketers from across the world. In early 2015, Ebiquity commissioned the Council to poll a representative sample of 224 of its members to help us understand CMOs’ biggest concerns and challenges. While four in ten of the sample polled are based in North America, three in ten work in Europe, and two in ten in Asia. Their most common job titles were SVP/EVP Marketing, Head of Marketing, CMO, Marketing Director, and VP of Marketing.
Respondents came equally from B2C, B2B, and B2C-B2B hybrid businesses, with a third in each group. They work in a broad cross- section of categories, with entertainment and leisure (18 percent), retail (17), and consumer electronics (12) the best- represented.
Respondents ranged from Adidas to Mondelez, Burberry to Samsung, Yum! to Jaguar Land Rover, with 60 percent of their companies having revenues in excess of $1bn. A third of those polled have media budgets greater than $50m.
Dietmar Kruse, CEO Continental Europe at Ebiquity, added: “Our experience helping US brands in this area (see sidebar) is leading to deeper conversations with their European counterparts. What is clear is that Europe’s ‘data dawn’ is very definitely upon us, and we’re ready for the challenge.”