Marketing

No more CMO at Heineken. Is this the start of the demise of the Chief Marketing Officer?

Heineken made quite a few restructuring changes last week, amongst others announcing that the CMO and chief sales officer roles would now be combined under one new Chief Commercial Officer role. While Heineken says this and the other changes will allow them to focus more on growth opportunities and be more agile, it raises the question, is the role of the CMO becoming obsolete?

I have worked with and for a number of organizations where marketing and sales operate as separate entities, with different goals, processes and especially strategies. But what good is a strong marketing plan with no buy in from sales? And what good is a strong sales force with a weak marketing plan behind it? In today’s world it is all about customer engagement and while marketing and sales may not use the same channels, they now need to provide one common experience. That is why marketing and sales should not think twice about working together under one and the same strategy.

Does that mean the CMO no longer plays a role in the organization? Of course not. Marketers need to understand that just as businesses are moving more and more into the digital age so must our roles. This may just require that marketing and sales act as one with one strategy.

Inroads in social media marketing for financial services

Consumers have long moved on from just using the internet for information-gathering. Social networks are growing at an incredible pace. We all know that social media lower costs and optimizes marketing spending. Now is the time for financial services companies to move from just “being” on social media and start to truly “engage” with their customers. At the end of the day it is all about using social media tools to build personalized customer relationships.

There are many financial companies, like American Express or UBS, already optimizing their use of social media. Accenture has identified 11 social media tactics that can help achieve a specific outcome and that should ideally not just be used in isolation.

It is important to keep in mind, that social media marketing always needs to be fully integrated in your company’s digital and corporate strategy to achieve the best impact possible.

Here is a link to the full report.

Marketing Transformers

The Accenture Interactive 2014 CMO-CIO Alignment survey – released this month – interviewed over 1,100 senior marketing and IT executives around the globe. The main result ? The desire for CMOs and CIOs to work together is strong. CMOs feel that marketing’s move to becoming more digital means the need for more technology, while CIOs see the opportunity of applying technology to marketing. All the more reason to collaborate more.

Digital Disruption

Brian Solis, Principle Analyst at Altimeter Group, posted this amazing “Wheel of Disruption” in a recent article. While it may be full of buzzwords, we cannot deny that digital technologies are impacting our customer’s behavior already today and even more so in the future. And businesses need to respond to these changes if they want to remain competitive. Brian interviewed over 20 strategists from leading global companies to find out how they are changing in light of this. Very interesting to hear that most felt that the way to adapt to this transformation was not only through investing in new technologies. But to adapting to the behaviours of customers and employees. At the end of the day is it about “creating a culture of adapation and innovation” in your business. And that is something us in marketing communications also have a large role to play in.

The digital economy. Cheap smart phones will change everything.

I gave a presentation at the European University as part of the American Germany Business Club Exchange yesterday together with another marketing colleague of mine on “Marketing Strategy in the Digital Economy”. And I realized the 45 minutes we had to present just did not suffice. So much has changed since digital hit us and hit us in all industries and the way we need to do business now and will be doing business in the future.

Catching up on my reading this Sunday morning, I came across this interesting article in WIRED which is just one of the many examples of how changes are influencing our digital economy. Cheap smartphones are popping up everywhere. But don’t dismiss them. For many people around the globe it will be their first screen and their only screen. Their primary interface with the world. This means a huge array of new opportunities huge impact on both social and political issues.