The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) holds one of the most innovative and demanding roles in any organization. But the last 18 months have put more strain on senior marketing leaders as they stepped up to lead their teams through one of the most challenging periods in business history. The pandemic has impacted the approach to marketing leadership.
As marketers start to recover from the pandemic, they are more acutely aware of the opportunities that have to transform the way marketing works for the better. While existing CMOs need to step up and help their teams make those changes today, future CMOs have a strategic, operational, and creative approach to marketing leadership.
Here are key attributes of the future CMO and what they are expected to bring to the boardroom table:
Agents of change
The biggest motivator for CMOs of tomorrow is that their path of career progression isn’t money or notoriety; it’s the opportunity to innovate and change marketing for the better.
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They see the opportunity to drive marketing transformation by investing in ways to:
- Improve visibility into top business priorities and strategy.
- Reduce repetitive or mundane tasks.
- Reduce the distraction caused by using so many digital tools.
- Create a single place for managing all work.
The next-gen CMOs don’t believe in simplifying. Streamlining and aligning strategy to outcome is the aim of this next generation of leaders.
Hybrid creatives
While marketing science is essential, marketing skills and the drive to maximize creativity are crucial for young marketers.
According to a survey by Adobe Workfront majority of marketers agree that creativity suffered during the pandemic—more than a third plan to hold face-to-face meetings to encourage critical thinking when employees return to the office. While bringing people together again will hopefully reignite the creative flame for companies, the next generation of CMOs also recognizes that technology can help open up space for innovation. They want to see investment in technology that fosters a culture of creativity and delivers transparent creative processes.
This will give rise to a new generation of hybrid creatives, capable of navigating the digital and in-person ways of working, to maximize creativity and innovation and deliver stand-out customer experiences.
Digital first
The next generation CMOs will be technologists and are fully bought into the power of the right technology to fuel success across every part of the marketing ecosystem, completely believing that data is the lifeblood of that ecosystem.
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A new survey of 1,100 senior marketers carried out across Europe and Australia by Adobe Workfront shows that 79% of the marketers use data regularly to make informed marketing decisions. And more than three quarters rely on technology to:
- Manage multi-featured campaigns, programs, and creative assets
- Adjust the flow of marketing activity and resources
- Customize the customer journey
- Demonstrate marketing’s value to the rest of the business
Experiencing life on the marketing front line during a global pandemic has given tomorrow’s CMO the impetus to innovate and drive positive change within the marketing industry.
The science of marketing — a data-driven, logical approach — will be the foundation for future CMOs.
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