Search is fragmenting – credibility and trust create the new visibility
Online search behaviour has changed significantly with the rise of AI. How can African brands adapt to this new marketing landscape?
FUTURE OF MARKETING
How marketing can chart the future of corporate decision-making
By our News Team | 2022
Forward-thinking chief marketing officers should lead the way in navigating the way to better brand decisions.
In the 21st century, businesses face a hyper-responsive digital reality wrapped around every person, object and process. To thrive in this cyber era requires a faster, more collaborative approach and decision-making model.
And leading this model, soon to be sweeping the C-suite, will be chief marketing officers. This is according to Kirsten Allegri Williams, Chief Marketing Officer at Optimizely, a leading US-based digital experience platform.
Photo by Ann H from Pexels
In an article written for marketing industry publication Ad Age, Williams outlines several key ways she believes CMOs can help their organisations chart the way forward:
To meet the moment, look to marketing
Business leaders must embrace the digital world or be left behind. In particular, this signifies a sea change for marketers, who must now be driven as much by digital tools and processes as they are by traditional marketing tactics. And while digital marketing technology has promised smooth sailing, the reality has seen rough waters. It’s in this storm that a new paradigm will emerge.
There’s currently no collective understanding of what a digital experience platform is and how best to leverage it. This has created a widening rift between what business leaders and users expect and what teams can accomplish.
Without science-led systems to guide teams forward, new value creation remains out of reach, and organisations struggle to think bigger, but without insights enabled by quick iteration and easy experimentation. Navigating the unprecedented complexity of this digital reality requires marketers to be at the forefront of innovation.
Digital defines the moment
Traversing disjointed tech stacks and dealing with unorganised data can feel like navigating the open ocean without a compass. To be a marketer today entails experiencing and embracing tremendous change. The future of work will undoubtedly thrive on optimised insights drawn from the limitless digital potential that defines the present moment.
The rise of digital has accelerated changes in customer expectations – every time customer demand shifts, it impacts the way marketers must reach them. Mobile technology, for example, has created a seemingly infinite number of customer touchpoints. The face of a brand no longer belongs to a customer service representative or a static web page that’s essentially a brochure on a desktop computer.
Future-facing digital experiences require meaningful personalisation, community, interactivity, immediacy and the ability to look beyond the bottom line to cultivate a positive social impact. Marketers need purpose-built tools and processes, not hand-me-downs from developers and manufacturers.
Where marketers lead, the business will follow
Without a great marketer experience, there is no great customer experience. To unlimit what marketing can do, we must unlimit how marketing works. It must be prepared to converge with the only global constant, which is ever-accelerating metamorphosis.
Read the full article here.
The move toward future-ready food packaging where materials meet AI
Researchers propose a framework for packaging that senses, learns and acts – making packaging an active, AI-powered tool against food waste.
Malawi’s marketers urged to put trust at the heart of the profession
Country needs marketers to build recognition and consumer trust around Malawian products and national brand, says Deputy Minister.
Lingerie brand creates street-stopping advertising in Manhattan
Fashion brand suspends giant lingerie high above the city’s streets, using shadows to create a moving billboard for pedestrians and motorists.
We know AI influencers aren’t real – so why do we trust them?
Researchers describe AI influencers as having a ‘dual identity’. Consumers evaluate both ‘person’ and ‘technology’ identities at once.
Why trust has become a critical asset for hotel industry marketers
Reputation and trust, once modest influences on hotel choice, have become some of the strongest predictors of patronage, study finds.
FNB bank’s eBucks programme dominates the 2026 SA loyalty awards
South African brands are increasingly setting the global benchmark for customer loyalty strategies, organisers say.
Zambia’s strongest creative ideas are emerging from local truths
Global influences among younger consumers are still present, but they are being filtered through a distinctly Zambian lens.
Consumers have doubts about products when they’re designed by AI
Researchers find that lack of perceived ‘genuine care’ is the mechanism connecting AI involvement to lower trust ratings.
Top African marketing voices confirmed for AMC 2026
Explore the 2026 AMC Conference speaker line-up. Top African marketing voices gather in Zambia to tackle AI, AfCFTA, and brand power. Register today.
Broadcast Research Council confirms launch of total video measurement
New industry currency will bring South African television and online video audiences together in a single measurement system.