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Abstract
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AI in marketing. Artificial intelligence is rapidly redefining what it means to be a CMO.
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Roles need to be reviewed. As CMOs continue to evolve, leadership tactics must change with the times.
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Adapt to changes as they occur. The uncertainty in marketing leadership makes it difficult to predict what the CMO’s role will be 10 years from now.
For those busy preparing for quarterly earnings calls, preparing for the next decade of marketing leadership may not be a top priority. The average length of service is 3.3 years, and in the future he will probably have three jobs. Who could think that far ahead?
Being able to understand both technology and people is what makes a great CMO. This fact will remain true even as the role evolves over the next decade. But today’s CMO is considering whether his title will change, what his value will be within the organization, and whether his job will be replaced by an AI in a few years. You might want to.
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Deeper understanding of CMO
Marketing leadership varies by company structure and culture, but one thing they all have in common is staying ahead of the curve. This requires paying close attention to consumer behavior, trends, and technology, and knowing what to do with that information. Studying the specific human behaviors of how messaging is consumed and evaluated is an evolving challenge. Becoming a top-notch CMO requires not only understanding psychological factors, but also numerous customer data points.
CMO as General Manager
“Marketing leaders often need to think of themselves as general managers,” says Bill Tine, CMO of King Arthur Baking Company. “This puts them in a good position to be able to add value to the entire company and the people in their department. In fact, it is how they approach their work that matters most.”
Don’t forget your analytical skills and creativity
Tine also said that CMOs need to be both analytical and creative. No matter what the role looks like in 10 years, these qualities will likely still be in demand.
Will the title CMO remain?
“In the future, the title might be something completely different,” said Alex Romanovich, founder and CMO of GlobalEdgeMarkets. “I don’t even know if the CMO title is here to stay. Marketing has to be different. The marketing of the future has to be different.”
Romanovich echoed Tine’s idea of adopting the title “general manager” and suggested adding the word “growth” to focus on optimization.
Will this role evolve to Chief Optimization Officer?
“Could you imagine taking on the role of chief optimization officer?” Romanovich asked. “A person whose job is to optimize all processes within a company, such as marketing, human resources, finance, etc., and to apply specific methodologies for optimization.”
He went on to explain how that is a good thing in terms of value to the organization because marketing is no longer seen as a cost center. Whether the title is chief revenue officer or chief digital strategist, the best candidates for a company tend to be data-savvy individuals.
“Technology has influenced marketing more than almost any other function, and it also allows us to customize the customer experience,” said Lily Liu Mincove, former CMO of the Hair Katary Family of Brands. states. “But you don’t have to have all the skills yourself. You need enough leadership knowledge to know what skills you need to bring in-house to bring out the best in your team.”
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Minkove has worked in change management and has seen a variety of positions and roles related to marketing. Although leadership roles are often held by marketing communications professionals, she argues that this role is only a small part of the overall responsibilities that marketers must assume.
“This is a really important position,” Minkobe said. “Marketing is going to continue to play a fairly independent role. I think what I’ve seen a lot is a mix of chief customer officer or CMO. It might be similar on the B2B side, where the focus is on the customer. But marketing is one piece underneath that.”
How marketing leadership is changing
Marketing is undergoing a fundamental transformation with the shift from traditional spend allocation to direct revenue generation. In many organizations, this change is already occurring. In 2019, for example, Uber cut its marketing team by 33% and fired its then-CMO, even though the company saw revenue growth of 37%, up from 30% a year earlier.
take on a technical role
CMOs can increase their value by taking the throne of technology innovation and demonstrating how tools like AI can lead organizations through tough customer segmentation trends. Technology and data-driven approaches are key, so marketers must adapt to become technologists, analysts, and creatives.
Don’t forget to partner with financial institutions
“The financial connections must be strong enough to be flexible and embody a multi-faceted approach to driving business growth and profitability,” Tine said. “The marketing technology stack continues to get bigger and bigger. If a head marketer hasn’t grown that way, it’s hard to be one. It’s a really rewarding position.”
Can AI in marketing replace the CMO?
Romanovich is interested in whether AI can replace the CMO, as all departments look to it as a guide to achieving growth. “Imagine he puts an AI engine in the middle of a company that interacts and collaborates with other departments. All of a sudden, other departments are sharing information with this AI company by area or by function. It will be.”
He wants to know what the turbine division is doing to help large companies like General Electric incorporate learnings from its efforts into the marketing of other divisions and products. I gave an example. Marketing teams will interact with AI rather than departments as a more efficient way to gather information without disrupting the team’s daily operations.
“The role of the optimizer doesn’t necessarily have to be a human, it could be artificial intelligence, it could be an LLM, it could be various technological advancements that could be used. There is also,” Romanovich said.
Related article: What will happen in the next decade of marketing?
Prepare for the future of CMO
CMOs are notorious for competing with each other. But in recent years, more and more people have come together for support and resources. In fact, 15 years ago, Pete Kranik founded his CMO Club, a project of Salesforce, as an in-person community for his CMOs to meet in a peer-to-peer environment.
“He was ahead of his time,” Romanovich said. Salesforce recently discontinued the program, but nearly all of its members have reunited as club CMOs and run active chapters across the country.
get out of the office
“The best way to lead in the future is to host forums like the Club CMO Dinner in Washington, D.C.,” Minkobe said. “It’s important for the other guy to talk to the CMO and get out of the office because it’s about business or business.”
listen to an outsider’s perspective
She and Tine believe that breakthroughs can occur after listening to outsider perspectives. An open exchange of ideas (and grievances) with someone from a different organization or industry can usher in a new era in marketing leadership. Collaboration is key to evolving the CMO role.
“There may be best practices around elements of digital transformation that can inform us about how other companies are similarly stuck in legacy systems and facing the challenges we are facing,” Minkobe said. states. “I think it’s kind of lonely when you’re trying to find your brand and you always feel like you don’t have enough resources.”
Building a coalition
As a future CMO, Romanovich also emphasized the importance of building coalitions and having the courage to lead. Although he was referring to in-house resources, partnering with great resources is still important.
“We need to redefine the way we do things,” he says. “When I step into a leadership position, I say I’m not going to wait for them to ask me questions. I’m going to go in and tell them. But we also have to be ready for that, and this is where the coalition is. This will be important. Collaboration with engineers, collaboration with data scientists, etc.”
What about the next 10 years? What about the next 10 months?
Philip Kotler’s book, Marketing 5.0, describes the basic assumptions about how major consumer brands are currently using technological innovation in ways that are available to corporate marketers. We present modern examples.
“Technology should follow strategy,” Kotler wrote. “Importantly, these companies need marketers who know how to design strategies that apply the right technology to different marketing use cases.”
Perhaps it’s due to the law of revenue acceleration, but these CMOs feel too much will change over the next decade to determine how their future roles will shape. After all, the iPhone didn’t exist 20 years ago. Forty years ago, most people didn’t own a laptop.
But now, with AI and ChatGPT, the next generation of acceleration is on the horizon. To guess what marketers will be like in 2034, we need to know what consumers will be like, and that’s anyone’s guess.
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