Global Chief Marketing Officers wanted

Here is another interesting report written by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by Google: Future Tense: The Global CMO.

The EIU conducted a global survey of senior marketing executives to addresses two important questions about the changing role of the global Chief Marketing Officer (CMO): What are the greatest challenges faced by CMOs around the globe? What strategies are they implementing to surmount these challenges?

According to the report, there is a need for a greater degree of integration of marketing and communications within an organization and direct involvement of consumers in brand development. Providing a comprehensive view of how the role of CMO is evolving to address the changes in technology, consumer behavior, and the media landscape, the EIU report has identified the key focus areas for today’s CMOs:

- Global versus local balance: CMOs must balance global brand awareness and consistency with local market relevance. Centralizing global marketing functions such as advertising development and production can create economies of scale and save money, but they must be guided by the needs of the local market and customer insights.

- The connected consumer: The interactive nature of the digital media has expanded the sources of information for consumers and businesses. This requires the integration of various forms of marketing and communications and consistent contact with all corporate audiences and customers. To remain competitive, companies must engage customers to create a stronger affinity with their brands.

- Rapidly changing marketing tools and resources: The instruments available to the CMOs require new skills and develop new partnerships to communicate the marketing message to consumers through interactive media.

- Relevance to the business: Measuring the return on marketing investments is a challenge and CMOs will focus more of their budgets on digital marketing, where effectiveness can be measured more precisely in click-throughs, downloads and other interactions.

The report suggests that the latest digital-media tools provide the opportunity to develop deeper insights into customer dynamics and allow the CMO to become the corporate champion of customer insight and innovation.

To learn more about the imperatives for marketing leaders download the full “Future Tense: The Global CMO” report.