What do CMOs need to be successful?
Last week VB held its first-ever CMO Council meeting at the Battery Club. Founding members include the CMOs and top marketing heads of Virgin America, Old Navy, Keurig, Google Glass, TOMS Shoes, Dun & Bradstreet, and Harvard University gathered to guide us on our journey of providing value for marketing executives everywhere.
Marketing technology may be proliferating wildly. Tools may be popping up left and right. New solutions may be hitting the market at an ever-increasing pace. And all of them are important -- even critical -- to what CMOs need to manage while leading their organizations.
But as these eminent CMOs told us, the core of marketing remains the story of the company, the story of the brand: the emotion and reality of what an organization does, and what it represents.
And as we open up the challenges of technology at our CMO-focused GrowthBeat Summit event (June 1-2 in Boston), that will be front and center.
We'll focus our presentations and conversations on four key themes:
- Agile, explosive growth We've all seen the unicorns of the mobile-first and mobile-only world, startups that have raced to multi-billion-dollar valuations faster than any companies in history. Agree with the inflated numbers or not, a few things are clear. First, these companies have no legacy issues; they are free to implement whatever tools for growth they find. And second, they have managed to capture the attention and time of millions, tens of millions, and in some cases hundreds of millions with almost incredible speed.The question will be: What can we learn from these unicorns, and how can we apply it to both established brands and new brands?
Customer journey, identity, and personalizationEvery CMO wants to know, understand, and engage his or her customers. But that's no easy task in an omnichannel world, and no simple challenge for both older and younger brands that are wading through the masses of web, mobile, and social technologies that promise to enable it.
We'll talk about the right way to approach this opportunity, the simple and not-very-high-tech ways to start, and yes, we'll talk about the technology stack that you need to have in place to make this possible. What's old is new again Despite the fact that mobile is the new black and the endless pursuit of new, there is still a huge amount of unmined gold in existing technologies such as web and email. In fact, according to a 5,000 marketer study by Salesforce, most of the new investment in martech this year will go into those "old-school" tools and technology. If we're honest with ourselves, our ability to capitalize on this existing opportunity is immense. And, value gained here will amplify value from social and mobile channels. Organizational innovation and transformation If there's anything we learned from the CMOs of companies like Old Navy, Virgin America, and Keurig/Green Mountain, it's that marketing leaders' first task is to build a strong marketing team. In fact, many VB CMO Council members said that they needed to take the first months -- in one case, the first year -- to get the team right. Once you've done that, the challenge is to align the entire organization for success ... a process that is usually transformational and often revolutionary, as organizations seek to disrupt themselves before an upstart does it to them.We want to gather marketing leaders in Boston to discuss these issues in depth, in small groups, among peers. And in high-leverage, intimate boardroom settings as well as larger keynote and fireside chat style sessions.
We invite you to be our guest, to connect with other CMOs and top marketing executives, to share your insights, and to learn from others.
Apply for your ticket today.